[This article was first published in Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin, which was then called Army Logistician, volume 3, number 1 (January–February 1971), pages 12–13. The text, including any biographical note, is reproduced as faithfully as possible to enable searchability. To view any images and charts in the article, refer to the issue itself, available on DVIDS and the bulletin’s archives at asu.army.mil/alog/.]
This recommendation and other major BRDP suggestions, if approved, would make sweeping changes in the existing organization for logistics in the Defense Department.
AFTER A YEAR-LONG STUDY, President Richard M. Nixon’s executive-level Blue Ribbon Defense Panel has made some far-reaching recommendations that may redirect and reorient existing logistics programs within the Department of Defense (DOD).
Appointed by the President in July 1969 to peruse and report on the organization and management of the Defense Establishment, the panel recommended 113 organizational and procedural changes in its findings last July.
Nearly all of the changes recommended are within the purview of the President and the Secretary of Defense to implement. Only a few of the recommendations would require legislative action. Thus, it would seem that there will be a facelifting or major proportions within DOD in the months just ahead.
Great importance has been placed on the Blue Ribbon Panel’s findings. As early as September, the Secretary of Defense named an action committee to implement many of the decisions made by the President and Defense officials in response to the panel’s recommendations.
Proposed Changes
Panel recommendations that, if adopted, will have widespread impact on the logistics community include —
- Creation of a unified logistics command within DOD.
- Assignment of the responsibility for providing supply distribution, maintenance, and transportation services to the combat forces in the unified and specified commands, under the strategic and tactical commands, to the unified logistics command.
- Assignment of the traffic management and terminal management functions now allocated to the Military Traffic Management and Terminal Service (MTMTS), the Military Sealift Command (MSC), and the theater traffic management agencies to the unified logistics command.
- Assignment of the Military Airlift Command and MSC to the unified logistics command.
- Development of an automatic data processing (ADP) logistics systems, encompassing supply distribution elements that can be shared among the services, by the unified logistics command.
By far the most important recommendation from a logistician’s point of view is the proposed creation of a unified logistics command. The reasoning behind the proposal is that Congress has been trying to reduce the overlap of the supply and logistics support of the three services for many years.
Supervise Support Activities
The unified logistics command, as envisioned by the panel, would exercise supervision of support activities, including supply distribution, maintenance, traffic management, and transportation for all combat forces.
The panel points up that under a single command significant military logistics improvements can be achieved through efficient, coordinated exploitation of new technologies in transportation, communications, ADP, and integrated procurement management. According to the panel, the full potential of these new technologies has not been realized to date and will not be realized in long-range logistics programs that are presently proposed by most of the military services.
Integration of supply, maintenance, and transportation systems for the support of proposed unified and specified commands could improve the effectiveness of logistics support and, at the same time, achieve greater efficiency and economy. At the present, responsibility for both traffic management and transportation of cargo for oversea distribution is divided largely by service and transportation mode.
The panel reports that a unified, vertically oriented supply, transportation, and maintenance system would allow the movement of items from the United States to oversea commands without financial transactions. With a vertical system such as this, integrated from the continental United States through theater management, items could also be withdrawn in necessary redistribution actions, since supplies in the United States and in all theaters, within a given supply class, would all be accounted for within the same stock fund or working capital fund.
There is a close interrelationship between the degree of logistics integration and the use of ADP. Effective logistics integration will require an advanced computerized control and information system, according to the panel. Lacking this, the resultant system would be a confederation with subdivisions so loosely connected that only a few of the potential benefits could be achieved. The panel found significant disparities in the level of sophistication of ADP systems the services have achieved to date. With this in mind, it has recommended suspension of all current development and procurement for separate ADP logistics systems that are not essential to the support of near-term operations.
Would Unify Logistics Chain
Unification of the logistics chain is hardly a novel idea. Establishment of the Defense Supply Agency (DSA) was a step toward reducing the overlap for common items of supply and there has been great progress. But, the panel feels this is not enough. Today, each service has its own transportation for sending weapons abroad, its own maintenance, and its own supply depots overseas. The panel feels the services could and should be supplied under a single logistics command.
It should be remembered that DSA responsibilities do not extend overseas. Logistics management overseas is currently the responsibility of four organizational units — one in each service and the U.S. Marine Corps — each of which has many elements. Because of inherent and continuing differences among these organizations, the unified commander must accommodate different terminologies, different measures of logistics performances, and, unfortunately, different degrees of readiness.
With the climate right for a change, it seems reasonably assured that some of the panel’s recommendations for logistics reforms will be approved.
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