Seth Cropsey
The U.S.’ Brittle Logistical System is a Crucial Vulnerability in Great-Power War
Discussion of wartime logistics goes back at least to Thucydides’ account of Sparta’s march to choke Athenian food supply during the Sicilian expedition. Logistics is the key to victory, no less than any other combat variable. It enables a resilient force, one that can take hits and keep fighting. The United States military, particularly its Navy, is not that sort of force, particularly not in the Indo-Pacific, where it faces a possible sea war against China. No matter the equipment the U.S. builds, a lack of logistical forces will cripple American power and make Chinese victory a matter of time.
Logistical capacity is grossly underappreciated in warfare. The external observer focuses on tactical and technical aspects of warfare. In Ukraine, for example, during the early war commentators highlighted the apparently outsized effects of light anti-tank missiles. Throughout the summer the Western media emphasized the sheer number of shells Russia expended each day as it pounded Severodonetsk, along with the severe casualties Ukraine took while holding its defensive positions. Each interaction is relevant.
Yet neither explain the situation. Ukraine employed dismounted light infantry to disrupt Russian logistics during the Kyiv Offensive. By stalling Russian armored spearheads, the Ukrainian military could bring its artillery to bear against slowed, confused enemy columns, blunting their advance and ultimately forcing Russia to recoil and withdraw from northern Ukraine. In the east, Russia’s fires did not purely attrit Ukrainian forces. They also disrupted Ukraine’s ability to resupply units within the Severdonetsk Salient. Indeed, Ukraine held its position until Hirske and Zolote fell, thereby exposing the T1302 Road between Severodonetsk and Bakhmut.
More generally, except for Russia’s initial offensive, poorly planned as it was, both Russia and Ukraine have sought to disrupt logistics, not simply attack head-on. The scale of modern land warfare—that is, from the late 19th century onward—is too broad and encompassing to permit a single decisive engagement akin to Austerlitz or Koniggratz. There may be turning points, a Gettysburg or a Kursk. But victories like Germany’s in 1940 are far less common than long-term sequenced offensives. Sustaining these offensives requires immense logistical capacity and succeeding in them requires that the enemy’s logistics be collapsed.
The character of naval combat is distinct from that of land warfare. Soldiers fight in mud and muck using machines – in the modern-day artillery, armored vehicles, and missiles – while in the skies above, airmen pilot immensely complex aircraft. Yet warships are orders of magnitude more complex, and larger, than other combat systems. One U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team contains around 5,000 men, split into three line battalions, a cavalry squadron, a fires battalion, and other supporting elements. The BCT fights as a system, but each unit is reasonably self-contained, and could be split into its sub-components to execute specific tactical and sub-tactical missions down to the dozen-soldier squad or four-man fireteam.
Meanwhile, the smallest of standard surface combatants in the U.S. Navy, the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, is crewed by 320 sailors and officers, approximately the equivalent of an understrength battalion. But it cannot be subdivided, its units tasked to separate missions. Every sailor on that ship must fight that specific ship. The complexity of these warships requires well-trained manpower to employ them in combat.
This creates a unique casualty dynamic in naval combat. Ground warfare is brutal and will always generate the greatest number of casualties, for more men can fight in ground engagements than in the air or at sea. The simplest way to translate population into military power is through a ground army. However, ground combat casualties can be replenished more rapidly. In theory, any 1,000 men will do to constitute a new battalion. In practice, they require training and equipment. But that training requires only a large enough proving ground, and the requisite equipment is far simpler and cheaper to produce than a warship.
Hence naval forces are naturally more brittle than ground forces. This makes attrition, the physical destruction or disabling of enemy forces, decisive in naval combat.
Additionally, marginal superiority of forces can provide an outsized benefit. At sea, offensive is the strongest form of warfare. There are no ridges, marshlands, rivers, or urban areas upon which to anchor a defensive line or disrupt attacking momentum. Naval forces are exposed. Typically, the combatant that can land one great punch gains a decisive tactical edge.
All this would inform the rhythm and character of a U.S.-China War. The PLA Navy, like all navies, will have two primary objectives. Indeed, the genius of naval command comes not in Coup d'œil, the ground commander’s ability to perceive the battlefield in a single glance, but from the ability to distribute forces and manage competing objectives. The PLA Navy, along with naval air forces, air force strike aircraft, and long-range missile forces, will be tasked with degrading the U.S. Navy and allied navies, thereby providing China’s growing but still inferior blue-water force with sea control, or at least better odds for a fleet action. It will also be tasked with keeping the U.S. and its allies at arm’s length during an amphibious assault on Taiwan.
If the U.S. Navy can survive a punishing PLA first-strike – which with good planning, early warning, proper dispersion, and enough anti-air missiles and other point defense it can – the war will settle into an attritional pattern. With allied help, the U.S. may be able to keep a supply corridor to Taiwan open, deploy U.S. Marine Littoral Regiments to the First Island Chain to disrupt Chinese maritime movement, and even shuttle a rapidly-deployable division to Taiwan to hold the line on the ground. Indeed, this is a best-case combat scenario, for it would allow the U.S. to deny China a beachhead on Taiwan and turn back its amphibious assault waves. The PLA may have sea control within the Taiwan Strait, but as American and allied forces pour onto the island, breaking out from an urban lodgment in Taichung will be exceptionally costly.
The issue, however, is American staying power.
The U.S. may be able to hold the line in the first weeks of a Sino-American War. But bases may be destroyed at once, and over time, ships will take hits and airframes will be lost. The accumulated damage, alongside extremely high rates of ammunition consumption, will demand extensive resupply, a logistical undertaking far greater than anything the U.S. has conducted since the Second World War, when the U.S. constructed some 400 bases globally, including dozens of large and medium floating drydocks that could conduct repair and resupply, and 5,777 transports and tankers.
Today, the U.S. has an available logistics force of 125 ships, split into the Combat Logistics Force of oilers and ordinance ships, the Fleet Support Force of Expeditionary Transport and Special Mission ships, and the Combat Support Force of prepositioning and bulk cargo ships. These are designed for peacetime needs. All Defense Department planning assumes Military Sealift Command’s current fleet will receive extensive support, either through U.S. Maritime Administration’s (MARAD) 60-odd Maritime Security Program civilian-contracted ships and 40-plus Ready Reserve Force ships.
But RRF ships are incapable of activation within their supposed timelines of two days to two weeks. And the aging, shrinking U.S. Merchant Marine lacks personnel to crew a major logistics fleet expansion. Notionally, unmanned systems will reduce the burden, but these must also be designed and built. American yards have atrophied. During combat they will be tasked with repairs and construction. All the while, China’s navy will seek to push beyond the First Island Chain with its submarines to target the U.S. logistics force.
After some time – several weeks if the PLA gets lucky, several months if not – even if the U.S. maintains the munitions stockpiles to keep its ships in the fight, absent supply, U.S. combat power will simply vanish.
This creates an undeniable gap in deterrence credibility, one even more frightening than the naval shell crisis that is probable within a Pacific War’s opening six months, for that shell crisis may hit the PLA as hard as it hits the U.S. military. For once American supplies drop off, the PLA navy can rapidly gain the marginal advantage it requires to inflict decisive damage on the U.S. Navy. With sea control in hand, even several months into a Pacific conflict, the PLA can then assault Taiwan with impunity. Were Taiwan to fall, the PLA can then conduct a blockade of Japan. The U.S., driven back beyond the First Island Chain, will be forced to accept a settlement on Chinese terms, escalate to nuclear use, or commit to a half-decade-to-decade-long war to reclaim its Indo-Pacific position.
The solution is as clear as it is difficult. The U.S. must revitalize its domestic shipbuilding industry to produce the logistical capacity a great-power war will require. This demands direct Congressional support along with long-term contracts to civilian yards and, of equal relevance, a concerted effort to expand the pool of merchant mariners through aggressive funding and recruitment.
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