The Army is reworking its sustainment doctrine and training soldiers in combat support and combat service support jobs to be “more datacentric” in preparation for large-scale combat, the Army’s top logistician said.

In remarks at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army as part of its Coffee Series, Lt. Gen. Charles Hamilton, deputy Army chief of staff for logistics, G-4, said the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February caused the Army sustainment sector to rethink its posture for large-scale combat and how soldiers are preparing to support the warfighter.

“We were checking our own traps, looking at our own doctrine, looking at our own gaps, making sure that we could support our forces and joint forces as well around the globe,” Hamilton said. 

At Fort Lee, Virginia, the Army’s center for sustainment training and home of the Combined Arms Support Command, Hamilton said a new course teaches soldiers how to maneuver through the heaps of data generated by sensors and other systems that serve to interconnect units.

Last February, when Army Secretary Christine Wormuth outlined her six objectives to the force, Hamilton said, one of them was to “ensure the Army becomes more data-centric and can conduct operations in contested environments.”

“When you think of that, all these systems and sensors, … it has to be connected,” Hamilton said. “It’s going to be a large-scale fight, which means it’s going to be across all domains. We are reworking our doctrine a little bit to be more datacentric.”

Along with becoming more datacentric, the Army also must incorporate speed. “It’s going to be intellectual capital, it’s going to be chess, and who’s the fastest, who can take that data and not just let it inform a past reality, but inform a reliable decision at speed,” he said. “That’s what we’re going to need.”