Professionals Talk Logistics: Sustaining Strategy and Operations

by Jon Klug

Professionals talk logistics. It is an adage offered around many a military conference room, a time-honored piece of wisdom that serves as a cautionary reminder that logistics both enables and constrains military strategy and to ignore one imperils the other. Few book-length works have been written specifically on logistics, which are often overlooked by historians who instead focus on the great captains of battle. While exceptions exist, those rare volumes tend to focus on the past, tracing the echoes of history while ignoring the implications of those echoes on future conflict. Military strategy is most assuredly informed by logistics, and contemporary operations reveal that leaders require more professional-and nuanced-discussion of military strategy and logistics. Drawing on a wealth of experienced and insightful strategists and logisticians, Professionals Talk Logistics explores that relationship from antiquity into the contemporary context and concludes with a cautionary and provocative view through a directed lens of future conflict.

220 pages, Paperback

Published January 19, 2025

Reviews

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for military professionals, especially planners and strategists. The contributors highlight the importance of logistics and sustainment in the successful completion of military campaigns. Drawing on historical examples and personal experience the authors drive home the point that it is not just the sustainment personnel that must be thinking about logistics in support of operations, it is also incumbent on the combined arms maneuver force commanders and planners to add this dimension to their battlefield calculus.