Military Sustainment Operations

Imagine you are a detailer and you receive notification that a critical mission will go gapped because a Sailor did not submit their Operational Screening. Senior Enlisted Leaders are should know the importance of completing and reporting the results of Operational Screening in a timely matter. This essay will cover a brief background of the Overseas Contingency Operation Support Assignment (OSA), discuss a problem within the program and give recommendations for decreasing delays in Operation Screening reporting and unexpected mission drops.

The objective of this study is to examine how, with the ultimate goal of joint mission being operational effectiveness, that USSOCOM and USTRANSCOM can 'enable' the mission. Also discussed will be the capabilities and limitations of the available service forces, and considering that these forces were not optimized for the assigned mission, explain which additional forces would be requested and why. Also addressed will be the interdependencies among available and requested forces.

Thomas Philpott's article “Military Update: DoD Medical Records Seen as a Hurdle for VA Care” expresses a message that the DoD is so focused on their database and their agenda to the point where they have lost focus on the people who are entitled to their service. The digitized health care system the DoD currently uses is called AHLTA; the IT system has been a “problem for the VA and for veterans because, in fact, it doesn’t allow electronic record transfers outside the military network” (Philpott, 2006). The article is biased in the sense that it places all of the blame of the DoD without any counter-argument as to why the DoD chooses not to expand to a shared system; however, the problem still stems back to the ineffective

The United States military has never been as weak as it is under Barack Obama. In a time where the world is getting more dangerous every day, whether it is the growing threat of ISIS, Russia or North Korea, the current president insists on continuously making cuts to the military. According to an independent panel appointed by the pentagon and congress, “the shrinking U.S. armed forces, which are being downsized to fit that strategy and budget cuts, is a serious strategic misstep on the part of the United States and is inadequate given the future strategic and operational environment.” This essentially means that these cuts are weakening the military so much, that it will be ineffective to deal with global threats.

It seems to me, that a lot of people when thinking of Sustainment in the way that ADRP 4.0 lays it out see the really big picture of it all. So I’ll go back a couple years back in 2009 for a prime example of a small company based out of a small Combat Outpost on the border of Pakistan/Afghanistan benefitting from the support and services of Army Aviation to continue our warfighting function.

“Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt.

I believe that Operation Joint guardian utilized one of the fundamentals of sustainment, Logistics, to provide supply for the joint forces and refugees. The operation also used several principles of sustainment to ensure the success of the operation. The principle of anticipation ensure that the NATO forces took into account the population and would be able to match the appropriate amount of services to what would be required. This also took into account responsiveness. This would ensure that the NATO joint commander would be able to adjust to the unexpected, such as a surplus of refugees or an attack. Designating a Joint force Commander also used the sustainment principle of continuity. This one vision in a joint operation provided the oversight and direction without lines of communication being broken or the ability to create confusion.

According to JP 5-0, a military end state “represents a point in time and/or circumstances beyond which the President does not require the military instrument of national power as the primary means to achieve remaining national objectives.” In the case of Plan GREEN, the military end state is that the Mexican Army has been defeated, US forces have been withdrawn, and a native constabulary is in place to provide security for US citizens and property. According to JP 5-0, an objective is “a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable goal toward which every military operation should be directed” and “describes what must be achieved to reach the end state.” The objectives that contribute to the achievement of the military end state can be found

The United States military is becoming more diverse. This includes its own ranks. Not only is there joint operations within the U.S. military’s own units and branches, but now it is a globalized world. The military must learn to work with other foreign forces and other government agencies. With this leaders must be able to work with all these entities. One way to do this is the use of Mission Command.

Stability and Support Operations (SASO) covers a wide variety of missions performed by the United States military. According to DoD Instruction 3000.05, “Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct with proficiency equivalent to combat operations”.1 The military has evolved from an “either-or” point-of-view, to an all inclusive method of conducting operations.2 Prior to the Vietnam War, “There was no organization in the United States government trained and equipped to perform this mission, and little incentive for existing institutions to adapt to meet the need for such an organization even if that need had been widely recognized.”3 This evolution has

So, how do we go about sustaining the force during a high tempo operation? Over the past 10-15 years of war, the military as a whole had everything it needed at its beckon call, for the

Colin Powell suggests, "Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership" The U.S. Military overseas operations may defend and solve certain problems but, the troops overseas could be in more danger there than in the United States. Overseas military for the United States, use resources that could be used with greater importance in the United States, they deal with different conspiracies, and although the military is a defense department it fights wars that will solve the situation not begin problems.

Army sustainment is based on an integrated process (people, systems, materiel, health services, and other support) indivisibly linking sustainment to operations. The concept focuses on building a combat ready Army, delivering it to the combatant commander (CCDR) as part of the joint force, and sustaining its combat power across the depth of the operational area and with unrelenting endurance (ADRP 4-0, Chap. 1, Intro.) Sustainment maintenance is off-system component repair and/or end item repair and return to the supply system or by exception to the owning unit, performed by national level maintenance providers. National level maintenance providers include the Army

I felt the limitations of depending on the Air Forces for sustainment in Summer of 2014 when my company redeployed from Camp Buehring Kuwait to Bagdad Iraq. The deployment went well, but the we shortly found the limitations of flying heavy with only what we brought with us and were starting to rely on the Air Force to supply us with the sustainment goods. What we found is that the Air Force

Sustainment is defined by the Army as “the provision of logistics, personnel services, and health service support necessary to maintain operations until successful mission completion.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines sustain as “to provide what is needed for (something or someone) to exist, continue, etc.; to give support or relief to.”