The Illusion of Gradual Change
For much of the past two decades, Army sustainment adapted to the demands of war. From Iraq and Afghanistan to today’s global competition, sustainers have refined systems, improved efficiency, and expanded the scale and precision of support. The convergence of artificial intelligence (AI), cyber warfare, space-based dependencies, and persistent gray zone competition is not simply accelerating change within sustainment. It is altering the conditions under which sustainment exists. The system that once operated with relative sanctuary is now even more exposed, contested, and targeted.
This raises a critical question for the profession. Are we witnessing the continued evolution of Army sustainment, or are we in the initial stages of a revolution that will redefine it? This article argues that Army sustainment is undergoing a revolution. The scale and interaction of technological, doctrinal, and organizational change are altering sustainment’s nature and performance. The profession must recognize this shift and respond with equal urgency.
What Constitutes a Revolution in Sustainment
Revolutions in military affairs are often misunderstood as moments driven by technology alone. The scholarly consensus holds that technology must combine with doctrinal and organizational adaptation to fundamentally alter the conduct of war. The result is not incremental improvement but a discontinuity from prior practice. By that standard, the transformation underway in sustainment meets the threshold.
Philip L. Ritcheson has argued that revolutions occur when new technologies combine with changes in doctrine and organization to significantly alter how forces conduct war. They also tend to compress the boundaries between the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. Andrew Krepinevich reached a similar conclusion in his study of historical military revolutions, concluding that each required the combination of technological change, operational innovation, and organizational adaptation to produce a fundamental shift in the character of conflict. Williamson Murray and MacGregor Knox reinforced this framework in The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050, distinguishing between military revolutions driven by broad societal forces and revolutions in military affairs driven by deliberate institutional adaptation. Their work shows that recognizing a revolution while it is underway is among the hardest intellectual tasks a military profession faces.
Technology has changed the environment. AI and machine learning are reshaping decision making. Cyber operations have made logistics networks vulnerable in ways that were previously theoretical. Space-based systems have become indispensable to navigation, timing, and communication. The electromagnetic spectrum has appeared as both an enabler and a contested domain.
Doctrine has changed alongside it. Multidomain operations assume that sustainment will operate under persistent attack. The concept of contested sustainment reflects a shift from protected lines of support to actively defended and contested systems.
Through actions such as the Army Transformation Initiative, the Army is restructuring elements of its sustainment enterprise, modernizing the organic industrial base, and integrating advanced manufacturing and data-driven systems into operational units. These efforts represent an attempt to realign the institution with a new reality. Taken together, these changes redefine the sustainment system.
The Case for Evolution and Why It Falls Short
Before accepting the revolution thesis, the profession must confront the main counterargument. Previous generations of military sustainers believed their moments were transformational. The introduction of railroads, the mechanization of supply in World War II, the containerized logistics revolution of Vietnam, and the precision logistics of Desert Storm all appeared revolutionary to those who lived through them. Each produced real and lasting change. None, by itself, constituted a revolution in military affairs.
A skeptic could argue that today’s changes follow the same pattern. By this reading, the profession is experiencing rapid modernization, not revolution. This argument deserves respect but misses the critical distinction.
Previous changes improved discrete functions within a stable system. Railroads accelerated movement. Containerization improved throughput. Precision logistics reduced waste. In each case, the fundamental architecture of sustainment remained intact: centralized planning, hierarchical distribution, and operations conducted from relative sanctuary.
What distinguishes the current transformation is that these foundational assumptions are problematic. The planning environment is contested by cyber and information operations. The distribution architecture is targeted by long-range precision fires and autonomous systems. The sanctuary that enabled efficient sustainment no longer exists. The technologies may not be revolutionary, but their convergence, combined with doctrinal and organizational upheaval, is revolutionary. All this grows even more urgent given that our adversaries are pre-positioning within the information technology and operational technology infrastructure directly related to our ability to rapidly mobilize and sustain the joint force.
Sustainment as a Contested War-Fighting System
The most important shift is conceptual. Sustainment can no longer function as a supporting effort operating behind the fight. It now operates as a warfighting system that exists within the fight. Forces will have to fight for every inch of the battlefield required to support operations. This distinction changes how sustainment must be designed, led, and executed.
Historically, sustainment derived strength from efficiency and scale. Centralized distribution networks, optimized supply chains, and predictable demand signals enabled the Army to generate and maintain combat power. Leaders managed risk within established frameworks.
That model is increasingly fragile. In a contested environment, efficiency becomes vulnerability. Centralization creates targets. Dependency breeds predictability. Predictability invites disruption. The very attributes that once defined effective sustainment now expose it to risk.
The Russia-Ukraine War offers a concrete illustration. In the early months of Russia’s 2022 invasion, the Russian 58th Guards Combined Arms Army’s logistics columns advancing toward Kyiv became fixed along predictable road networks. Ukrainian forces exploited this predictability, using artillery, drones, and small-unit ambushes to destroy fuel and ammunition vehicles, halting the advance. Conversely, Ukrainian logistics forces adapted by dispersing supply points, using civilian infrastructure for concealment, and employing small, mobile resupply elements that reduced signature and improved survivability. These were not theoretical adjustments. They were survival adaptations that validated the core premise of contested sustainment.
The implication is clear. Sustainment must be designed for endurance under attack, not for efficiency in permissive environments. The mission endures; the system that delivers it does not.
The Rise of Data as Combat Power
Among the many changes affecting sustainment, none carries greater consequence than the elevation of data from a supporting tool to a central component of combat power.
Sustainment has always relied on information. What has changed are the speed, scale, and consequence of data-driven decision making. Systems that aggregate readiness data, predict maintenance failures, and optimize distribution are now integral to operational success.
Data enables unprecedented visibility. Leaders and staffs can anticipate requirements, identify vulnerabilities, and allocate resources with greater precision. Tools such as predictive maintenance models and digital twins offer the potential to move from reactive to anticipatory sustainment.
However, this reliance creates new dependencies. Adversaries can disrupt, degrade, or manipulate data systems. Overreliance on digital tools without corresponding analog competence creates brittleness. The sustainment leader must therefore balance the advantages of data with the requirement to operate without it.
The profession has begun to recognize this shift. The emergence of data-focused roles within sustainment organizations signals an institutional response. Yet the deeper implication is cultural. Sustainers must think about data as a resource they must manage, protect, and contest.
Blurring the Levels of War
Another indicator of revolution is the compression of the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of war. This compression is increasingly evident in sustainment.
Actions at the tactical level now carry strategic consequences. A disrupted supply chain, a compromised maintenance system, or a degraded network can affect operational reach and national objectives. Conversely, strategic decisions about industrial capacity, acquisition policy, and supply chain security directly shape tactical outcomes.
The sustainment warfighter must operate with an understanding that extends beyond the immediate formation. Leaders must connect tactical actions to operational design and strategic objectives. This includes understanding the defense industrial base, the implications of acquisition reform, and the vulnerabilities inherent in global supply chains.
Technical competence alone no longer suffices. Strategic awareness is now a requirement at every echelon where sustainment leaders make decisions that ripple beyond their formations.
The Tension Between Dispersion and Mass
One of the defining challenges of this unfamiliar environment is the tension between dispersion and concentration. Smaller, mobile sustainment elements reduce signature and complicate enemy targeting. They align with the lessons emerging from the Russia-Ukraine War, where large, static nodes have proved vulnerable to attack.
However, dispersion introduces risk. Smaller elements carry fewer resources. They may struggle to meet demand. They create friction in coordination and reduce the efficiency of distribution. Concentration, by contrast, enables mass and efficiency. It allows sustainment formations to deliver large volumes of support rapidly, but it also increases vulnerability.
The future of sustainment lies in managing this tension, not resolving it. Units must operate in dispersed configurations while retaining the ability to rapidly concentrate effects. This requires deliberate planning, disciplined execution, and leaders who understand risk at its operational level.
What Endures Amid Change
Amid this transformation, the profession must recognize what has not changed.
Sustainment still exists to generate and sustain combat power and readiness. The fundamental requirements for fuel, ammunition, maintenance, and medical support persist. Echelons of sustainment will continue to exist. The structure may evolve, but the need for layered support remains.
But enduring purpose must not be confused with enduring method. Revolutions do not eliminate fundamentals. They transform how those fundamentals are executed. Recognizing the continuity and the rupture is the central intellectual challenge now facing the sustainment.
Implications for the Profession
If sustainment is undergoing a revolution, the implications for the profession are significant and demand more than incremental adjustment.
The most urgent implication concerns how the Army trains and certifies its sustainment professionals. Several sustainment leaders have already called for changes to training management, and their instincts are correct. CPT Stephanie Torres, writing in Army Sustainment, argued that sustainment formations now operate inside the kill web as deliberate, high-payoff targets. She documented how Russian forces in Ukraine have used coordinated drone surveillance and rapid sensor-to-shooter linkages to destroy logistics convoys with lethal efficiency. Her conclusion is blunt: sustainment forces must integrate the same survivability, active defense, and deception measures as maneuver units or face destruction.
LTC Kimberly DeFour and her team at 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division (3/1CD), demonstrated what a structured certification program can achieve. Their sustainment qualification tables applied the logic of gunnery tables and the Integrated Weapons Training Strategy to sustainment tasks, creating a progressive, gated certification model that held sustainers to the same standards as tank and Bradley Fighting Vehicle crews. The results at the National Training Center validated the approach: a 28% improvement in logistics release point efficiency, a record low in back-hauled fuel, and an operational readiness rate exceeding 70% on combat platforms.
These efforts represent important first steps. The current training model was designed to produce competence in permissive environments. The contested battlefield demands a fundamentally redesigned approach to individual, collective, and gunnery training, one built around the threats that adversaries direct at the sustainment enterprise. What the Army needs is a next-generation sustainment gunnery model that integrates the sustainment qualification table framework with the threat-driven survivability tasks CPT Torres identified: counter-unmanned aircraft system (C-UAS) engagement, signature management, rapid displacement, deception, and operations under persistent aerial surveillance.
The Army has long acknowledged that it struggles to defend against threats from above. The proliferation of UAS has made this shortcoming dangerous. CPT Torres rightly argued that embedded C-UAS assets within sustainment formations are critical for defending logistics elements against drone and missile attack. A revised sustainment gunnery model must incorporate C-UAS detection and engagement as a qualifying task at the crew and section level, alongside traditional weapons qualification and convoy live fire. No amount of logistical expertise matters on a battlefield where the enemy can see and strike every supply point and convoy.
The training model must also build proficiency in dispersion operations, reduced-footprint logistics, and the command-and-control challenges these create. CPT Torres called for sustainment nodes to transition from static brigade support areas to collections of mobile sustainment teams that displace frequently and adapt quickly. LTC DeFour proved that progressive, repetitive training produces measurable improvement in sustainment execution speed and precision.
The next step is to combine these insights in a training progression that certifies small teams on logistics execution and on executing those tasks while dispersed, under limited visibility, with degraded communications, and under simulated aerial threat. Operating in dispersed configurations demands that small teams execute complex sustainment tasks with limited supervision and with reduced access to higher headquarters. This kind of competence requires repetitive, realistic collective training at the platoon and company level.
Achieving this will require higher headquarters to accept and mitigate risk so that subordinate units have the time, space, and freedom to train at echelon. LTC DeFour’s experience at 3/1CD offers a model: the brigade commander aligned sustainment qualification table certification with the brigade’s tank gunnery timeline, providing dedicated time, space, and standards for sustainment training. Too often in other formations, garrison demands, administrative requirements, and risk-averse training oversight consume the bandwidth that battalions and companies need to develop tactical proficiency. If the Army is serious about preparing sustainment forces for contested sustainment, senior leaders must protect training time, resource realistic scenarios, and create conditions where units can fail, learn, and adapt without interference.
Organizations must be designed for flexibility. The Army must consider establishing experimental sustainment formations tasked with testing contested sustainment concepts under realistic conditions, rather than validating new approaches exclusively through simulation and tabletop exercises.
The profession must adopt technology with discipline. Leaders must assess technologies based on operational relevance and maturity, avoiding both premature adoption and delayed integration. The history of military revolutions shows that organizations that adopt technology without corresponding changes in doctrine and training gain little advantage.
Conclusion: Recognizing the Break from the Past
The Army has long adapted to change. The convergence of contested environments, technological disruption, and doctrinal change is altering sustainment in ways that break from past practice. The system is no longer defined by efficiency and predictability. It is defined by resilience, adaptability, and endurance under attack. The sustainment warfighter profession must recognize this a revolution, not an evolution. It must prepare leaders, design organizations, and train formations for a future in which sustainment is contested, dynamic, and decisive. The sustainment profession must adapt quickly enough to remain relevant in the wars to come.
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LTC Xeon Simpson is currently a student at the National War College, Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., He previously served as the commander of 15th Brigade Support Battalion and as assistant executive officer for the commanding general of U.S. Army Materiel Command. He was commissioned as a lieutenant of Quartermaster branch detailed to Armor. He has a Master of Arts degree in higher education administration from Louisville University.
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This article was published in the summer 2026 edition of Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin.
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