As evidenced in real-time by the current Russo-Ukrainian war, government leaders and military planners often miscalculate or underestimate the impact of logistics on a campaign’s success or failure. Logistics is its own dimension of warfare, and modern warfare depends on agile and adaptive supply chains to connect the defense industrial base to the warfighter. The volume and mass of supplies required to support agile, combined arms operations is significant. The Russo-Ukrainian conflict provides a compelling case study for testing, modifying, and building new strategies and doctrines in the area of contested logistics. Contested logistics has been defined as “an environment in which the armed forces engage in conflict with an adversary that presents challenges in all domains and directly targets logistics operations, facilities, and activities” both at home site or in transit to the war zone. Working with the 2022 cohort of students from the Advanced Studies of Air Mobility program at the Air Force Institute of Technology as part of a course on strategic mobility, we modeled and simulated four hypothetical Russian military scenarios and their logistics requirements. The results obtained can be used to inform current and future contested logistics strategies.
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- United States of America
