A Fantasy into the Future

Written by Joe Grosson

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What will the future logistician of the future look like and do?

The year is 2041. Major Jim Richards is taking over his watch in the joint global logistics center (JGLS) located over 100 feet below the first floor in the Pentagon. Richards joined the Army later than most of his class and never thought he would be part of the military. He was an international business major and then enrolled in a master’s program at the University of North Carolina in military logistics engineering. Within months he was hooked, and here he is in this JGLC, the “center.” In fact, he is addicted to an incredible, infinite source of knowledge with the ability to control universal processes that provide the United States with absolute control of the logistics OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act—a notional logistics OODA Loop. John Boyd).

Physically the center is not much of a facility. But from an information technology perspective it is the center of the universe. The small, hemispherical room is painted pink with very dim lighting to create a soothing environment. The color of the walls could be black as far as Richards is concerned as he is about to start a fourhour watch wearing the latest in virtual reality apparatus (VRA). He will be at the center of a spherical 360-degree display in vivid color and will control functions with a visual cursor that is selectively driven by a brain wave interface algorithm. He will obtain and synthesize information from ubiquitous sensors with the ability to ask any question and have the system respond immediately with recommended solutions to the most complex questions. He has but one objective and that is to ensure the warfighters and nation builders who depend upon him will succeed with absolute certainty.

Although he could be halfway around the world from a military action, or a moon’s distance away for that matter, Richards is effectively there. His VRA communicates sensor feeds in such a way that not only does he see the situation, Richards can feel the temperature, humidity, sound and communicate with “people in the action” as if he were physically there. He can see where every class of supply is located and know how fast it will take to transport from a (dynamic) supply chain storage location and can predict exactly what will be required not only from every U.S. DoD location and coalition partner, but adversaries as well. Just as Stonewall Jackson raided federal depots in the Civil War, when convenient to do so such action is a viable alternative even in 2041.

So, how is this accomplished? In 2041 everything is an active transmitter. People have pulse rates, temperatures and chemical properties that are emitted; just like everything has an aural signature, temperature, fundamental frequency of vibration and chemical/nuclear spectra. Digital information has its analogies to these physical properties. In this year satellite sensors enabled with processing power that were not conceived in 2010 have the ability to make everything, whether a particle of material or an information packet comprising ones and zeros, into a transmitting device. The center is part of a complex network comprising ultra-super computers operating at 25.0 pedaflops, something unpredicted in 2009 when DOE labs were touting their Roadrunner and Jaguar computer complexes. This command, control, logistics, communications, surveillance and reconnaissance network launches intelligent agents, operating with intelligent algorithms and swarming techniques, collecting relevant sensor feeds, sorting through the knowledge and providing Richards with not only the operating picture but the recommended solutions with uncanny precision and optimization.

Richards often thinks back to when there was an Army quartermaster charged with the responsibility for supply and transportation. He learned at UNC that this position was created by the Continental Congress in 1775 and for all intents and purposes, was the first TRANSCOM. Well, TRANSCOM and the Defense Logistics Agency are now gone. There now is no need to manage the defense supply chain and deployment/distribution process with human beings. Yes, the warfighters need food, water, ammunition and consumables, but now it is Richards’ job to instigate actions electronically that perform such functions using the global (perhaps intergalactic) supply chain and transportation system. Even depot repair has almost gone away as self-diagnosing and repairing combat systems come close to 100 percent availability. Coupled with distance support directly to the original equipment manufacturer, near perfect reliability is expected.

Now, back to reality and the current day. What will the military logistician of the future look like, and what will technology bring that alters how logisticians do their jobs? How will organizations change, and how do we motivate young men and women to enter the profession (assuming there even is a defined profession)? How does academia and the defense industry provide vision and leadership, and who within DoD will have the passion and power to recognize the need to transform now? By transform I mean to stop looking at how logistics was done over the past 4,000 years and recognize that the fantasy above is more fact than fiction.

The military departments spend well over $100 billion per year in logistics, employ over 600,000 people who deal with operation, support and sustainment and probably over 1 million other people in industry, worldwide, engaged in all facets of logistics and sustainment. Throughout modern history, the equivalence theorem “national strategy, military tactics and logistics” has recognized the mutual inclusiveness necessary for a nation’s security. Yet, DoD only invests about 1 percent of its R&D budget in logistics. Industry investments in their own independent R&D programs are in the same ball park. Where is the equivalence?

There are a few things we can do now to prepare for the future:

• Engage the National Academy of Engineering/National Academy of Science to evaluate emerging and future technologies that should be exploited by DoD and the services to enable a breakthrough concept for future logistics. This evaluation should include all DoD investments, academia and especially DOE laboratory advancements in both IT technology and modeling/ simulation.

• Continue business strategies that make sense in terms of motivating R&D logistics investment. There is no doubt that performance-based product life cycle support strategies save money and incentivize industry to invest in their quest for new and novel ways to increase reliability and reduce total life cycle cost.

• DoD, working with other government agencies, academia and industry, develop the military logistics profession such that it is defined, understood, recognized, accredited and properly compensated. The National Defense Industrial Association issued a report in 2008 that conceptually offered a way forward. Further, OSD (AT&L), under Jim Hall, published the DoD Logistics Human Capital Strategy in 2008 that describes an executable concept.

• Build logistics design and outcomes into the system engineering process and as binary determinants during milestone reviews for all acquisition programs.

• Pulverize the stovepipes. For example, rather than develop the Logistics Data Management System for the Future Combat System, and the Autonomic Logistics Information System for the Joint Strike Fighter, and literally hundreds of similar logistics IT architectures, develop one basic architecture with several tailored variants and stop wasting investment dollars through unnecessary replication of effort. Hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted today because we don’t rationalize these decisions. There must be a flaw in our acquisition review processes.

• But most importantly, there needs to be an undersecretary of defense for logistics (not AT&L, just logistics). This person must manage the entire (big “L”) set of career fields, ensure at least 10 percent of the defense R&D budget is invested in logistics and sustainment systems and technologies, drive logical implementation of business strategies and leverage the nation’s technology whether from DoD, DOE, industry or academic labs. We need two types of big “L’s”:

• The total spectra of career fields involved in logistics (engineering, supply chain, finance, business, transportation, maintenance, etc.)

• Leadership

If we don’t dramatically change the way we collectively think, the logistician of the future will look like the logistician of the past. Anything we can envision we can make happen. Now we need that vision and the will. ♦
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Joe Grosson is a senior faculty member at the Institute for Defense & Business at the University of North Carolina, where he conducts classes in the logistician of the future and logistics business strategies. He is a registered professional engineer; patent holder and author of a number of technical publications; held executive level positions in industry; and in 2008 retired from Lockheed Martin as corporate director of logistics.