Army sustainment operations are critical to enabling Army freedom of action, extending operational reach and prolonging endurance, which commanders require to succeed during operations. Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations, published in October 2022, transitioned the Army’s operational concept from unified land operations to multidomain operations. Unified land operations emphasize the integration and synchronization of Army, joint, and other unified action partners during combat operations and shift the Army’s readiness focus from counterinsurgency to large-scale combat operations (LSCO). Multidomain operations are the combined arms employment of joint and Army capabilities to create and exploit relative advantages that achieve objectives, defeat enemy forces, and consolidate gains on behalf of joint force commanders. Multidomain operations require integration of Army and joint capabilities from all domains to defeat the enemy’s integrated fires, electronic warfare, cyber, and air defense systems, and to allow maneuver forces to exploit the resulting freedom of action.
This change in operational concept required a revision to the Army’s keystone sustainment publication, FM 4-0, Sustainment Operations, and has implications across the sustainment warfighting function. This change starts with revitalizing Army doctrine and training to meet the demands of conducting sustainment during LSCO in a contested operational environment. FM 4-0 reinforces the requirements for sustainment forces to overcome potential adversary actions from home station to forward locations. FM 4-0 shapes doctrine across the sustainment enterprise by aligning sustainment doctrine with FM 3-0. To meet the challenges of multidomain operations described in FM 3-0, FM 4-0 discusses sustainment tasks across the four levels of warfare in the Army’s strategic contexts, describes requirements for predictive logistics as a means to deliver precision sustainment, addresses the command and support relationships for integration across multiple headquarters, incorporates a discussion on sustainment in a maritime environment, and discusses leadership and training requirements for sustainment units.
The revision of FM 3-0 expanded the levels of warfare to four. The strategic level of warfare now consists of both the national strategic and the theater strategic levels. Along with the operational and tactical levels, these levels link tactical actions to achieve national objectives. The levels of warfare are conceptual, without finite limits or boundaries. They do, however, correlate to specific activities and responsibilities required to be performed at each level. They help commanders visualize the relationships and actions required to link strategic objectives, military operations at various echelons, and tactical actions.
FM 4-0 highlights a series of tasks executed within the sustainment warfighting function that enable the continuous provision of sustainment across the levels of warfare and executed within the Army’s strategic context of competition, crisis, and armed conflict. Operations conducted during competition include sustainment tasks for setting the theater and conducting military engagements. Setting the theater describes activities conducted to establish favorable conditions in the operational area for the execution of strategic plans. Military engagements during competition can reduce tensions and may preclude conflict while establishing agreements and partnerships that can be beneficial during operations. During a crisis, the theater Army receives rotational forces and prepares for follow-on operations.
Combatant commands tailor rotational forces based on the type of operation, geographic location, operational environment, and potential threat. In preparation for follow-on operations, sustainment plans and logistics estimates are refined, and initial distribution operations begin in response to the crisis. During conflict, sustainment forces begin execution of support plans. Support plans are designed to achieve operational objectives during LSCO by enabling freedom of action, operational reach, and prolonged endurance. The shift to LSCO requires rapid delivery of sustainment in comparison to counterinsurgency operations because of the increased operational tempo, increased lethality, and consumption of fuel, ammunition, and repair parts.
FM 4-0 describes the requirement for efficiency and the optimization of resources in the delivery of sustainment. It describes the importance of precision sustainment enabled by the delivery of sustainment through predictive logistics tools and sensors.
Precision sustainment is the effective delivery of the right capabilities at the point of employment, enabling a commander’s freedom of action, extending operational reach, and prolonging endurance. Precision sustainment also employs economy and ensures sustainment resources are provided in the most efficient manner so that the employment of assets achieves the greatest effect possible. It is conducted by a sustainment enterprise resource planning and decision support system employed at echelon. Precision sustainment is enabled by predictive logistics and includes the capabilities and decision support tools to improve readiness.
Predictive logistics provides the capabilities and decision support tools designed to improve operational readiness in multidomain operations. It is a system of sensors, communications, and applications (data support tools and data visualization) that enables quicker and more accurate sustainment decision making at echelon from tactical to strategic. For example, units can use the information received from predictive logistics applications to predict commodity replacement rates and request replacements before they are needed. Given the expected lethality of LSCO, those decisions allow the precision sustainment delivery of those replacements to the right location in the most efficient manner possible. Autonomous distribution also aids in providing efficiency during precision sustainment by allowing vehicles to operate for longer periods while reducing personnel requirements for those vehicles.
The revision of FM 4-0 expounds on the operational relationship of sustainment headquarters at echelon. It shifts from an organization-based discussion of sustainment headquarters to an echelon-based discussion, aligning sustainment roles, missions, and functions with corresponding operations at the levels of warfare. It also captures the tenets identified in FM 3-0 that leaders must build into all plans and operations to improve the probabilities of success. Additionally, commanders must take risks to defeat the enemy and achieve their objective at acceptable cost. These actions are imperatives that Army forces must take to succeed in a multidomain environment. FM 4-0 describes sustainment implications for each tenet of Army operations (agility, convergence, endurance, and depth) and discusses sustainment implications for each imperative described in FM 3-0. This allows for integration and synchronization of sustainment across echelon headquarters.
FM 3-0 tenets and sustainment considerations:
- Agility
- Employ sustainment capabilities and rapidly reorganize for follow-on support.
- Rapidly emplace, execute operations, and disperse to avoid detection.
- Understand, decide, act, assess, and adapt support to achieve favorable conditions.
- Convergence
- Understand support capabilities from different domains and employ in ways that generate advantages.
- Integrate sustainment capabilities where employment is most effective.
- Synchronize employment of sustainment capabilities to achieve desired effects.
- Endurance
- Set the theater.
- Improve interoperability with allies and unified action partners.
- Sustain employment of combat power through land, air, and maritime capabilities.
- Depth
- Improve infrastructure for force projection.
- Expand influence and support capabilities with allies and unified action partners.
- Understand capabilities to achieve advantages.
FM 3-0 describes adversary capabilities and capacities to contest U.S. forces and operations in and outside the continental U.S. throughout deployment, employment, sustainment, and redeployment. Sustainment commanders and staffs must therefore plan and execute sustainment within a contested logistics environment with the assumption that sustainment forces are always under observation and in contact through all domains.
FM 4-0 describes the requirement for sustainment forces to prepare for continuous visual, electromagnetic, and influence contact with adversaries. Army sustainment forces must maintain dispersion and remain as mobile as possible to avoid presenting themselves as targets to the adversary’s systems. FM 4-0 describes the requirement for sustainment forces to disperse for survivability, mass for effects, and disperse again during LSCO. If sustainment forces are required to remain static longer than short periods of time, those forces must harden their posture, employ military deception techniques, and mitigate signatures to increase survivability.
Since sustainers must be prepared to contend with adversary actions across all five domains, FM 4-0 introduces a new chapter on sustainment operations in a maritime environment. This chapter provides an overview of the planning considerations for conducting maritime sustainment operations. Key planning considerations for maritime sustainment operations include employment of Army watercraft and countermeasures. For example, adversaries may employ mines or submarines to interdict watercraft operations. Sustainment planners must be prepared to coordinate with joint and allied partners for assistance in securing sea lines of communications. An example of joint and allied capabilities includes use of mine sweeping, aerial reconnaissance, and sensor technology to identify and mitigate threats. The maritime chapter concludes with discussion on sustaining LSCO, executing reception, staging, onward movement, integration operations, and conducting theater sustainment operations in maritime-centric environments.
Sustainment operations require leaders at echelon to employ mission command and make decisions at the lowest level. Therefore, FM 4-0 includes a new chapter on leadership and training for sustainment operations. This new chapter highlights the importance of leadership during sustainment operations and the training required for sustainment units to operate and survive. The chapter begins with a discussion of the operations process, its importance to sustainment commanders, and their role in the operations process. Using the operations process, sustainment commanders drive the detailed planning necessary to understand, visualize, and describe the operational environment through staff collaboration, developing end-states, and identifying risks. This allows sustainment commanders to make critical decisions to lead and direct synchronized and integrated operations. This chapter also describes how sustainment commanders use operational art to develop strategies and operations to organize and enable tactical forces’ mobility and responsiveness in an ever-changing contested operational environment.
In conclusion, the Army’s shift to multidomain operations demands new approaches to sustainment operations within contested and complex environments. FM 4-0 integrates and synchronizes Army sustainment with the doctrine outlined in FM 3-0. FM 4-0 introduces sustainment tasks for all levels of warfare, describes requirements for predictive logistics as a means to precision sustainment, and discusses the relationships, roles, missions, and functions for sustainment integration at echelon across multiple headquarters. It also incorporates a discussion on sustainment in a maritime environment and the leadership and training requirements for sustainment leaders.
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Kirk Jones serves as the senior doctrine developer of Doctrine Division in the Combined Arms Support Command at Fort Gregg-Adams, Virginia. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Norfolk State University and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Ordnance Corps.
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This article was published in the winter 2025 issue of Army Sustainment.
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