Military logistics is the discipline that is focused on the process of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of various forces within the military segment. To cut the long story short, military logistics comprises the following aspects: health and medical service support; development, design, storage, acquisition, distribution, evacuation, maintenance and disposition of materiel; personnel transport; the services furnishing acquisition, etc.
The military logistics is usually described as the “combat service support” and covers highly uncertain aspects which we will try to describe here. While it is pretty hard to make perfect forecasts, the forecast models can significantly reduce all doubts about what kind of supplies or services will be highly required, when and where they will be required in particular, or what are the best ways to provide them where they‘re needed. At last, all responsible officials are supposed to make thorough judgments on these very matters, sometimes making use of their intuition and properly weighing possible alternatives according to the requirements and needs of the very situation. All the decisions and judgments made by them must be based not only upon proficient knowledge of the various aspects of the military logistics itself but also upon solid awareness of the interplay of closely related considerations within the field (tactics, finance, strategy, personnel and training).
Nonetheless, according to the latest case studies, more statistical, quantitative analyses are most often a noteworthy improvement on human judgment. Among the most recent examples one may mention the use of well known Applied Information Economics by the Naval Research and the Marine Corps Office in order to estimate the requirements regarding the bulk fuel for the field of battle.
In most war conflicts, logistics matters are usually highly important when the question is about deciding the battle outcome. Take the tonnage war as an instance. The bulk sinking of cargo ships was the most essential aspect in the World War II. Allied anti-submarine campaign that was successfully performed and the failure of the German Navy to destroy enough cargo during the famous Battle of the Atlantic provided Britain with a chance to stay in the war and set a solid front against the opponent. Hard to imagine what would have happened if it wasn’t for successfully chosen tactics.
To speak more generally, keeping one’s own supply lines under protection and attacking the ones that belong to the opponent is the number one military strategy. As an example, one can name a purely logistical campaign known as the Berlin Airlift. It brought incredible success to USA and helped to soften up international tension if one remembers of history.
It is important to state that military logistics has successfully pioneered a wide range of various techniques that since that have become broadly applied in the commercial world. The operations research popped out of the World War II military logistics efforts. Just like that, military logistics borrows from widely used methods introduced for the first time to the commercial world.
The well known Kargil Conflict that took place in 1999 between Pakistan and India also referred to as the famous Operation Vijay is the latest most significant examples of high altitude warfare in mountainous terrain that caused many great troubles for the sides that were combating.
To sum up, one should mention that logistics is a very important aspect in military industry for the reason that it gives an opportunity to support an ongoing deployment and effectively respond to the various emergent threats. Without it army wouldn’t be able to act, everything would simply fall apart.
