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the enduring naval logistics lessons of world war II and korea
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The transition to a peacetime economy, moreover, presented a number of new logistic
challenges for military leaders, in particular the growing pattern of uncertainty within
both British and American commands as to what was the nature and degree of control
that military commanders should now exercise over their logistic support. How much
control should be exercised by a civilian authority? Where does centralisation of
authority in logistical control enhance combat efficiency or detract from effectiveness?
This might not resonate so much in today’s world, but the concern post-1945 was how
best to achieve the necessary understanding between civilian and military interests to
determine the right interrelationship for achieving a sound and effective organisation
that could provide the right level of logistic support in peacetime.
Coalition command
The logistics concepts derived from a defensive strategic approach are usually inadequate
for supporting large scale global offensive operations that tend to produce an entirely
different set of problems for which different solutions need to be found. At the alliance
level too, a different challenge could arise, either at the practical or political level,
because what might work for British or American forces might not be appropriate for
other national forces, or vice versa. Either way, logistics cannot be looked at in isolation;
it has to be integral to the circumstances. 8
Calibrating teeth and tail
Force size must be governed by limitations of fleet support capability. Most of the past
failures to achieve a balance between combat and support forces had reflected, at the
command level, either a lack of good logistic planning or an unwillingness to devote
adequate resources or talent to address the underlying problem. But experience had
also shown that unless checked, logistic activities tended to grow out of all proportion
to the tactical forces they were originally designed to support. Often what happened
was that, having under planned for a particular event or campaign, the immediate
unsatisfied demand forced planners to overreact such that the risk of ‘snowballing’,
whereby excesses occur at the mature end of build-ups as the relationship of movement
between supply and the front gets out of kilter, becomes a problem that can get out
of control. 9 This tendency has a direct bearing on achieving the optimum balance
between ‘teeth’ and ‘tail’ in any operation, a task that becomes more difficult with
the introduction of increasingly complex weapons and platform technology. One is
reminded that towards the end of 1944 some 80 per cent of logistic supplies to US
naval forces overseas were maintenance items. 10
Korea also provides a good example of why it is so important to ensure that for every
major introduction of either new platforms or ordnance (where volume or velocity have
serious ramifications on underway delivery thresholds) the logistics implications must
be fully addressed and planned for to achieve a fully integrated workable solution.