ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Industry partners will be essential to supporting Army large-scale combat operations in a contested environment, said Gen. Charles Hamilton, commander of Army Materiel Command.

Speaking March 13 at a breakfast hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army as part of its Coffee Series, Hamilton called on industry to help the Army sustainment community meet one of the service’s top priorities—the delivery of ready combat formations.

Faced with an increasingly contested operating environment, the Army is working to deliver precision sustainment and incorporate autonomous vehicles for resupply missions.

“Everybody agrees that we’ve got to get after logistics in this contested environment,” said Rob Watts, deputy director of Army Futures Command’s Contested Logistics Cross-Functional Team.

Speaking Feb. 7 during an Association of the U.S. Army Hot Topic on contested logistics, Watts said the Contested Logistics Cross-Functional Team’s first “priority effort” is predictive logistics.

There will be “no safe harbor” anywhere in the world for the Army logistics enterprise as the air, land, sea, space, cyber and information domains are contested by adversaries, a senior Army leader said.

In a contested environment, “we’ll no longer be able to operate unimpeded, and this includes the homeland,” Maj. Gen. James Smith, director of operations for the deputy chief of staff of the Army for logistics, G-4, said Feb. 7 at a Hot Topic forum on contested logistics hosted by the Association of the U.S. Army.

Protection, deception and masking are key investments the Army must make as it works to ensure it can get to the fight—and stay in the fight—on a complex modern battlefield, according to the author of a new Association of the U.S. Army paper.

In “Contested Logistics: A Primer,” Lt. Col. Amos Fox writes that contested logistics are not a “new wrinkle of modern warfare.” Instead, it’s an issue that planners, strategists and industry have wrestled with “throughout the depth and breadth of armed conflict.”

The Association of the U.S. Army is hosting a daylong Hot Topic event focused on contested logistics.

Scheduled for Feb. 7 at AUSA headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, the Hot Topic is scheduled to feature speakers such as Lt. Gen. Heidi Hoyle, deputy Army chief of staff for logistics, G-4; Maj. Gen. Michelle Donahue, commanding general of the Army Combined Arms Support Command; and Robert Watts, deputy director of the Army Futures Command’s Contested Logistics Cross-Functional Team.

A new cross-functional team focused on contested logistics will get after a critical capability for the Army, senior leaders said.

“We can’t do what we do without logistics,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee during a March 30 hearing on the service’s fiscal 2024 budget request. “We’re seeing it play out in Ukraine.”

Sustainment soldiers operating on the future battlefield, particularly in a theater as challenging as the Indo-Pacific, will need the ability to move quickly and adapt to ever-changing conditions, a senior logistics officer said.