REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. — Seated beneath a backdrop emblazoned with the words of the Army’s focus area tasked to Army Materiel Command of “Delivering Ready Combat Formations,” the principal logistics official within senior DOD management emphasized the “direct connection between sustainment, readiness and combat capability.”
The Honorable Christopher J. Lowman, assistant secretary of defense for sustainment, provided his insight and guidance on the future of joint force sustainment to an assembled group of AMC senior leaders at Redstone Arsenal, July 31, 2024, to include deputy commanding general and acting commander Lt. Gen. Chris Mohan; executive deputy to the commanding general Marion Whicker; and numerous senior executive service leads for the command’s general staff.
“We are at a critical point in the area of sustainment requirements and how sustainment is evolving as the national security environment evolves,” Lowman said, adding that “AMC is at the leading edge of developing processes and capabilities to ensure we can sustain the joint force in contested operations.”
As the advisor to the Secretary of Defense on DOD logistics, materiel readiness and product support, Lowman also oversees the Defense Logistics Agency and helped author the 2024 Regional Sustainment Framework, the concept and implementation of which he shared with the AMC team.
“We’re only about seven months into this, but we are moving pretty fast,” he said. The RSF aims to establish a globally connected, resilient, defense ecosystem through collaborative regional sustainment strategies that leverage the strengths of allies, partners and the Defense Industrial Base to ensure the materiel readiness of the force in a contested logistics environment.
“As we are seeing with the ongoing efforts in Ukraine, sustainment is more than just a national responsibility,” Lowman said. “It can be accomplished with a coalition of support and we need to establish ways to take advantage of our allied partner capabilities across the theaters of operation.”
The aim is to change maintenance, repair and overhaul strategies to better equip the warfighter with a network of globally dispersed capabilities that deliver [maintenance, repair and operations] closer to the point of need, Lowman said, citing the framework’s three primary goals: prevail in a contested logistics environment, enhance military readiness and strengthen regional partnerships.
In short, the RSF operationalizes the National Defense Strategy’s call for a more integrated and resilient defense posture and supports the National Defense Industrial Strategy’s emphasis on leveraging global partnerships. It establishes a distributed maintenance, repair and operations — or MRO — network that will support the joint and combined force.
In their introductory preface to the 2024 RSF document, Lowman and Hon. William A. LaPlante, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, emphasized that rapid regeneration of materiel readiness is critical at the speed of warfare and particularly in contested environments: “Integrated deterrence, a core approach outlined in the 2022 [National Defense Strategy], challenges our defense ecosystem to posture theaters of operations to be more distributed. Traditional methods that depend on retrograding materiel for repair and maintenance are no longer viable. To better meet the challenge and needs of our warfighters, we must establish distributed maintenance and repair capabilities closer to the point of need, thereby posturing our theaters of operation to capitalize on allies and partners capabilities.”
These capabilities may be owned by partner nations, industrial partners or through cooperative partnerships. Currently, assets are returned to the United States for major repairs, missing an opportunity to use existing ally or partner nation MRO capabilities for shared weapons systems. By integrating these resources, the RSF establishes an effective regional MRO strategy that supports both regional partners and the U.S. joint force in competition and conflict.
“We have to invest in long-term sustainment and maintenance, and this is another innovative way to do that,” agreed Mohan.
“It not only builds resiliency in the Defense Industrial Base,” Lowman added, “but it is a recognition that the concept of integrated deterrence applies as much to sustainment as it does to operational capabilities. We are adapting this across both the NATO and Indo-Pacific theaters as we develop maintenance hubs for Joint Force support for U.S. and allied capabilities.”
Lowman closed his RSF presentation by again highlighting AMC’s crucial part in the process: “AMC’s role is rather unique in product support development and life cycle design — we need the flexibilities to evolve sustainment strategies that will remain relevant 15-20 years in the future in a contested logistics environment.
“What you are doing here with the 15-year Organic Industrial Base Modernization Plan is a generational opportunity,” he continued. “The decisions made, infrastructure improvements and program enhancements are what the Army is going to live with for the next 100 years. You are setting the conditions here and now for the Army’s future Organic Industrial Base with sustainment strategies that are responsive, resilient and ready to deliver in a contested logistics environment.”
Following Lowman’s presentation, Mohan and AMC senior staff briefed him on AMC special topics, such as the Operational Readiness Program, advanced manufacturing/3D printing, Army Prepositioned Stocks, contested logistics, OIB modernization, and the AMC Predictive Analysis Suite for precision sustainment.
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