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Traditionally, soldiers have marched or ridden to battle; sailors ride ships and fliers, well, fly. Getting the troops into the battle seems to be a fairly straight forward issue; you're here, go there. As Murphy's law says, however; the important things are very simple, and the simple things are very difficult.
Supply functions are unglamourous, plebeian, even boring to most people; but they are absolutely essential to any campaign. Every Army unit down to company level and every Naval vessel has someone assigned duties in supply. The importance of supply becomes most obvious when there is a shortage of it. Otherwise, it's mostly taken for granted. Just how important is supply? The German Sixth Army in front of Stalingrad was beat militarily; but only after they were on the verge of starvation and forced to ration their ammunition. The encircling Soviets had cut off all but a trickle of airborne supply. The famous Red Ball Express in Europe in fall of 1944 was a direct result of the failure to provide adequate numbers of truck companies to haul the needed supply. All available trucks were consolidated into one system that supplied only a small portion of the front line troops. Three divisions at the beach head were stripped of their trucks to support the Express and many units in the line lost all but a few of their vehicles. The units not supported by the Express ground to a halt and struggled to provide just the essentials of life, using the few organic vehicles that had been left to them. Desert Shield/Storm is widely considered to have been a huge success; but it was within an ace of being a supply induced failure for at least the first month of Desert Shield. It took a full six months to build our forces to the point where we could fight the battle; but even that isn't the whole story. The U.S. merchant fleet has shrunk to the level that it can't provide adequate sealift during a major emergency. Even the reserve fleet (in mothballs) couldn't make up the difference. We rented foreign flagged vessels to get our supplies to the battle, including nearly a dozen from the former Soviet Union. The Civil Reserve Air Fleet (CRAF) was used for the first time; but air transport only provided about 5-6% of all supply to the Middle East. Supply problems caused a six month delay between the invasion of Kuwait and the beginning of the ground war; and that was with absolutely secure sea lanes and air space.
The copyright of the article Fueling the fight in Military is owned by Dennis Morehouse. Permission to republish Fueling the fight in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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