ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a renowned combat veteran who led Operation New Dawn in Iraq in 2011 and later commanded the U.S. Central Command, said there are lessons for the U.S. from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but not necessarily the lessons one might think.

Testifying April 5 before the House Armed Services Committee, nominally about the fiscal 2023 defense budget, Austin said a prime example of success is how the fire-and-forget Javelin missile and infrared-guided Stinger missile “have proven to be very, very effective.” 

The COVID-19 pandemic and the supply chain disruptions that followed have sharpened the Army’s focus on making sure soldiers have what they need on the battlefield, a senior leader said.

“The pandemic hit at a point in our Army history where we’ve embarked on the biggest modernization effort since World War II,” said Lt. Gen. Duane Gamble, deputy Army chief of staff for logistics. 

There will be no place to hide from the violence, speed and lethality of future warfare where the enemy will be able to “pretty much see the whole battlefield,” the Army’s top operations officer said.

During a forum Oct. 12 to discuss the transformation of the Army’s sustainment capabilities, Lt. Gen. James Rainey, deputy Army chief of staff for operations, said the “rear area” of the future fight “is going to be like the worst day we saw in [2005–2006] in downtown Baghdad.”

As the Army moves forward with its modernization priorities, the service’s sustainment enterprise is keeping up strategically and operationally by investing in new capabilities and improving existing ones, the Army’s senior sustainment officer said.

Informing the future of those sustainment capabilities will be lessons learned from the Army’s ongoing Project Convergence effort, which pairs soldiers with scientists in the field to test new capabilities.

DoD and other federal agencies are putting into motion plans to roll out a COVID-19 vaccine under Operation Warp Speed—and the Pentagon is set to play a key role in its distribution.

“The Department of Defense is uniquely positioned to help guide the OWS distribution strategy due to its vast logistical experience,” said Army Gen. Gus Perna, chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed. 

“Americans can trust that our country’s best public health and logistics experts are working together to get a vaccine to them as soon as available,” Perna said.

The delivery of 300 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by January is “potentially possible” depending on the length of human trials and the science behind the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, Gen. Gus Perna told a Senate panel June 18.

Perna, commander of Army Materiel Command, gave his assessment to the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose members are considering his nomination to be chief operating officer of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s new task force created to develop, produce and distribute a new COVID-19 vaccine.

The Defense Department inspector general’s annual report of top management challenges facing the military adds two new concerns. One is ensuring the welfare and well-being of service members and their families. The second involves security and management of the supply chain.

The fiscal year 2020 report continues to list threats from near-peer competitors and countering global terrorism as the top challenges facing the department, but troops and their families now rate as the department’s third of 10 priorities, and improving the supply chain ranks eighth.

A new paper from the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare warns the Army and joint force face a complex challenge with the growth of inter-state competition.

Written by Maj. Bradley Cooper, “Precision Logistics: Sustainment for Multi-Domain Operations” examines the Army’s transition toward a sustainment enterprise that can support multidomain operations.

The U.S. may not have the sealift capacity to quickly move the Army overseas for a large-scale contingency operation because of aging ships, manning shortages and insufficient training, according to a recent report.

The RAND Corporation’s “Approaches to Strategic Sealift Readiness” found that while the sealift fleet has never failed to meet an operational tasking, the Navy systems intended to demonstrate readiness “were found to be ineffective in showing the readiness of the force required to meet larger-scale activations.”

The logistical and maintenance approaches of armies at war can help explain why military organizations fight as well or as poorly as they do and uncover implications of a competitor’s operational strategies, according to a new paper published by the Association of the U.S. Army’s Institute of Land Warfare.