https://news.usni.org/2023/05/24/logistics-logistics-logistics-is-now-marines-top-focus-says-cmc-berger ‘Logistics, Logistics, Logistics’ is Now Marines’ Top Focus, Says CMC BergerThe Pentagon needs to make the most progress in logistics to counter China, Marine Corps commandant Gen. David Berger said Tuesday.
“My focus is logistics, logistics, logistics,” he said at the Brooking Institution event. In the past, “we haven’t needed to protect our lines” of supply and communication. The Marine Corps’s need to be “more naval …. [lighter], more distributed” was a key lesson learned from war games that he participated in when Adm. Harry Harris served as commander of U.S. Pacific Command.
The games showed that “even our prepositioning posture was built for a different time,” Berger said. The war games highlighted the need for an alternative to a land-based force.
In looking to the future, Berger said logistics planning in this environment must grow not only to better control stocks and distribution, but also to keep tabs on operations and levels of equipment.
He added that U.S. Transportation Command also has put logistics at the top of its priority list to support the joint force.
At a Center for Strategic and International Studies forum a year ago, TRANSCOM commander Air Force Gen. Jacqueline VanOvost noted that an increased pace requires machine learning and artificial learning to better harness the streams of data coming in. Turning that data into knowledge “will give us time and space to give commanders options.”
Berger, whose tenure as commandant ends in July, said the approach to logistics is “it can’t be a chain; it has to be a web.”
For redundancy, “the industrial base matters,” he added.
On shipping, Berger used the example of the Landing Ship Medium to explain how the Pentagon’s acquisition process can delay a required platform. He described the process as one that sends a project like the LSM through so many steps, in which new “super expensive” weapons are added to the concept that raise the cost but eventually are rejected. In the end, he said ”you lose a year” in delivery.
“We need medium ships to move things around … we’ve got to move quickly,” he said.
more at the link
all of which applies to the LC games....