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Q What about air transport?
A Commercial airlift is vital. TRANSCOM [the U.S. Transportation Command] is really looking at the
commercial airlift providers. Those smaller charter carriers
are the ones—as long as they are competitive—we need to
keep offering corridors [freight lanes] to in order to keep
them viable in peacetime. They
are a very important part of
the commercial industrial base
that supports the Department
of Defense, and we really can’t
do without them.
QCan you talk a little bit about logistics in Africa?
A Africa is one of my con- cerns. I think that one of
the things that got my attention
right away was that the continent itself is three or four times
the size of the United States.
I think you can fit the United
States and China and several
other countries from Europe
in there as well, so our distribution network, which we are
trying to mature, is enormous. It is beyond proportions a
lot of us can even fathom.
Q What are the implications of such a scale challenge?
A There may be one continental distributor/provider with several regional ones. The real objective is to
connect them, because connectivity across regions on
that continent can be a challenge. Beyond that, we have
to connect the African continent with the entire global
distribution network. We’ve got to get it networked in.
If you look at AFRICOM [U.S. Africa Command], they
are obviously working hard on improving their distribution network with military and commercial components.
There are not a lot of our folks there, and there are all
kinds of security issues and challenges. We all know
about some of the threats there across the continent.
Q So, what’s your plan for Africa?
A The Marine Corps has been using the term “distrib- uted operations” for a long time. The first thing I said
when I saw what we had as a footprint in Africa was “Oh,
my gosh. This is distributed operations!” We could poten-
tially have small groups of very capable soldiers, sailors,
airmen, and Marines spread across this continent from east
to west, all requiring support, supply, access, permissions,
and all those kinds of things. So how do we even begin
supporting that?
Q You asked the question. How do we even begin sup- porting that?
A We have allies in Africa. The French are there, and we have been cooperating with the French mostly with
logistics support in several central African countries for
the last couple of years. We’ve
learned a lot from Afghanistan
and Iraq about what to do with
contingency basing and how to
set up joint or coalition bases
and things like that. One of
the projects we have is to document some of the forms of
basing that we have used over
the recent past—expeditionary
basing, semipermanent basing,
and then the more permanent
base structure. And we have to
continue to develop sustainment concepts for distributed
operations.
Q Can we afford more per- manent base structures in
Africa, like the ones we set up
in Western Europe and on the Pacific Rim?
A My personal opinion is that with few exceptions, the ra of constructing military bases overseas is largely
going out the window. The budget is probably too stressed
to support something like that, so I think more expeditionary, temporary, and austere basing is our future.
Q Switching gears here, what advice do you have for a young professional considering a career in logistics?
A While logisticians aren’t always heralded, one of the quotes that I remember from some of my history read-
ing years ago was from Erwin Rommel, who wrote, “Before
the fighting proper, the battle is fought and decided by the
quartermasters.”
If you want a career in logistics, come to the military,
either as a civilian or by joining one of the services. With
us, you will probably learn more than you ever could any-
where else. You are going to learn about access, visibility,
partnerships, and how logistics is done overseas, and you
are probably going to get overwhelmed by the number of
supply chains we run.
Editor’s note: Because of the range of national security topics
touched on in this interview, the manuscript was submitted
to the Pentagon prior to publication to verify that no sensitive
information was revealed. We would like to acknowledge the
Pentagon’s collaborative approach and delicate touch.
LT. GEN. RUARK IN AUSTRALIA AT THE QUADRENNIAL LOGISTICS
FORUM WITH HIS COUNTERPARTS FROM THE U.K., CANADA, AND
AUSTRALIA. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN
OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF)
