Sustainment- Within any military operation, there needs to be a balance of logistics that combines personnel, equipment, and strategy to optimally deploy forces and therefore accomplish mission procedures. Prominent military commanders note that the operational environment has so drastically changed that joint, interagency and multinational operations are now the norm rather than the exception. This provides the format for new organizational structures and mobility/distribution platforms that engender more robust opportunities for deploying, employing, and sustaining operational capabilities to a higher degree. In fact, "tactical, operational, and strategic lines have long been blurred in the sustainment arena, and now joint and service planners can contemplate a similar blurring of the functional lines of deployment, employment, and sustainment" (Juskowiak & Williams, 2006).
Essentially, the new environment requires different views and attitudes towards sustainment command and control organizations and ways to help command continue to improve critical sustainment. It is then logical to assume that for regional combatant paradigms, new thoughts and procedures may be necessary to optimize planning and to achieve a more rapid and agile joint distribution network. Captain C.J. Deni, head of USFF's Joint, Synthetic and Sustainment Training Branch commented on one operation, Bold Spectrum, by saying this new organizational operation "… demonstrated the ability of Fleet Synthetic Training to help prepare a range of training audiences in critical mission areas and provide certifications" (U.S. Fleet Forces Command Joint, Synthetic and Sustainment Training Branch, 2011).
For the modern commander, this new paradigm may be broken up into 2 major areas that feed into the sustainment function: logistics and personnel services. Essentially, logistics is a manner of planning and executing a task, in our case, the movement and support of forces. Including in these operations are: 1) the design and development, acquisition, storage, ways of moving, distributing, maintaining, and disposition of needed materials; 2) movement, evacuation and hospitalization of personnel; 4) acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation and disposition of any needed facilities; and 5) the acquisition or furnishing of needed services. For the military commander, logistics concerns the complete integration of strategic,...
We then tie in personnel services which are those sustainment functions provided for personnel rather than systems or equipment/supplies. This would include: 1) Human resource support; 2) Religious ministry support; 3) Financial assistance and management, and 4) Legal support -- included is also psychological support as needed (Brlecic, 2009).
Finally, when looking at ways in which sustainment aids the Joint Forces Commander to integrate, synchronize and direct joint operations and staff, we find that there are nine major ways sustainment is functionally utilized within the prevue of the JFC: 1) Helping to coordinate the supply of materials (food, fuel, arms, etc.); 2) Providing a template for equipment maintenance; 3) Development, coordination and providing support for forces (field services, personnel services, mortuary and religious affairs, postal support, moral/psychological, recreational, financial and legal support; 4) Planning, building and maintaining sustainment bases that will aid in the tactical operation; 5) Ensuring that the infrastructure is adequately maintained through management and repair; 6) Management of fiscal needs to ensure support; 7) Providing a commonality of support in logistical planning that supports OGAs, IGOs, and NGOs; 8) Acting as the locus of opportunity in establishing and coordinating movement services; and 9) Working with all available agencies and forces to establish large scale services to detain and sustain detainee operations as well as provide security and cohesion to the operation (Joint Operations Chief of Staff, 2011).
Part II -- The Military Decision Making Process and the Joint Operation Planning Process-
Each historical period has added a new meaning to the word, but the essence of it still remained the same. War is always associated with terror, cruelty and unhappiness. Wars can be private or public, civil or national, offensive or defensive. Is it possible to live in a world without war? As far as we know war has been a part of human history and civilization since prehistoric times, so for one to simply assume that a world without war is inevitable is indeed incorrect. Since the early 20th century though, war has dramatically changed. Indeed, the so-called Cold War of 1945 to the Fall of the U.S.S.R. significantly changed the manner in which military planning was done, and the…
