Resupply is the toughest challenge linked to Distributed Ops
By MATT HILBURN, Associate Editor
The experiment in Afghanistan last spring with Distribution Operations (DO) provided a textbook example of how the latest communications gear could seamlessly link distributed squads to other units, command elements and air assets.
But the deployment of 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines to take part in a large tactical operation in Afghanistan also demonstrated that distributed Marines still need to be fed and resupplied. Without the umbilical of a standard logistics train, resupply remains the largest operational barrier to be overcome before DO, as fully conceptualized, becomes a reality.
“You can train and you can equip initially, but if you can’t keep that up [through resupply], there won’t be that opportunity to get in the enemy’s loop because [the Marine] won’t have the beans and the bullets,” said Col. J. Kevin Dodge of the Office of Naval Research’s Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism Science and Technology department. “This is the hard part.”
The experimental DO platoon brought the challenge of resupply to the fore, said Master Sgt. Jack Sheaffer of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab, who deployed with the 1/3 Platoon. [See story on page 44.]
“In some of our earlier operations, we tried to pack as much as possible, and we found that we could pack about a three-day supply of batteries, water and chow. Over and above that, we’d need to have resupply,” he said.
During some phases of the platoon’s deployment, Sheaffer said it was difficult to use helicopters for resupply because of constraints on their usage, and, at times, the unit was sustained overland, which required dispatching people to climb down mountainsides to carry supplies up. He added that during Operation Mountain Lion, helicopters were used more frequently, but still required a central drop point. And that meant sending Marines off to collect the goods and carry them back to the distributed elements.
Often, he said, they’d hire locals to help out, which presented problems, including whether they were indeed friendly or might report a unit’s location to an enemy force.
“Afghanistan is about as hard as it gets for resupply,” he said.
Steep mountains and rugged, undeveloped terrain, such as that in Afghanistan, certainly present a challenge for resupply and for medical evacuations. And a DO unit with increased responsibilities will have little time and limited manpower to deal with transport to and from a central resupply point.
“We don’t want guys running up and down the roads at night,” said Vince Goulding, the director of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab’s Sea Viking Division, which manages the DO experiments. “We also don’t want to impede their [operations] tempo. The last thing we want to do is make them stop while they are enjoying success so they can send guys back.”
The service is looking at several possibilities for delivering supplies directly to distributed units. Goulding said the default choice is to move all supplies by helicopter, but noted other solutions are needed because “there just aren’t enough helicopters to support and do the other things the commander wants to do.”
Several means of resupply are being investigated, including the Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS), which is basically a parafoil that can be guided to a selected drop zone utilizing a Global Positioning System device.
“Typically they carry a big load, a couple of thousand pounds, and they drop it to a relatively large unit. Lt. Gen. [James] Mattis used them in Iraq,” Goulding said.
But DO units need several smaller drops of perhaps 200 pounds each. Nick Linkowitz, head of Logistics Vision Team at Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps’ Installation and Logistics Department, said the service is experimenting with something called JPADS Extra Light, which also goes by the name Sherpa, in Iraq.
The Marine Corps is also looking into other technologies. Some are as rudimentary as a very robust cardboard box that can carry several hundred pounds of resupply for a fire team or squad in extremis and be thrown out of the back of a helicopter.
The service would ultimately like to relieve the DO unit of the responsibility of keeping track of the supplies it needs. For example, when fuel starts to run low, an automated transmission from the unit would be sent to a central resupply depot or a sea base, where the needed supplies will be extracted and prepared for delivery.
The first steps toward alleviating this burden will take place in an upcoming DO experiment, during which a DO-trained platoon from 1/5 Marines will deploy with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit for an exercise in the Philippines. While the DO unit itself will not be the subject of the logistics experiment, the Warfighting Lab is going to utilize sensors on the Expeditionary Unit’s vehicles to measure fuel consumption rates and battery charges.
The goal, said Linkowitz, is to transmit that information from the Philippines to ships at the sea base and further on to Okinawa, where the units are based to try to build the fundamental stages of autonomic logistics. This means basically being able to monitor and predict when resupply will be needed and have those materials ready to deliver when the units need them.
Linkowitz said this type of sensing could be taken much further. Logistics managers could measure battery levels in radios, ammo expenditure and individual Marines’ hydration levels, calorie intake and basic vital signs.
If the logistics system was more responsive, Goulding said, it would prevent “paranoia-based” planning. Preparing for a mission of several days, some Marines load up on food, water and batteries to the point that they are overburdened.
The service is assessing ways for distributed Marines to be more self-sustaining, easing somewhat the need for resupply. One idea is to pack three meals worth of highly nutritious food into a package no larger than a football. Water presents even more of a challenge, but the Corps is considering providing DO Marines with water purification systems, and perhaps developing a device that could be hooked up to a vehicle’s exhaust system to generate water.
However, according to Sheaffer, there were times when water purification systems alone will not do.
“There’s no water on the top of a mountain,” he said. “So we had to go down to the base of the mountain to fill up. It was such an effort to get down and back up again that the water we filtered was used up on the trip.”
Getting an injured Marine out of a distributed situation presents an equally daunting challenge.
A platoon typically has one corpsman. When squads disperse they can potentially be far away from the platoon doctor. Goulding said some ideas are to provide combat lifesaver training to more Marines and equip them with cameras and other communications gear that would allow them to “talk” to medical staff located on the sea base, who could then provide enough real-time assistance for a wounded Marine to be stabilized for the trip back.
Goulding said the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is working on a kind of hibernation bag into which a wounded Marine could be inserted. The bag would slow down all bodily functions, potentially buying time for the Marine to get more advanced medical care.
DO, and the resupply of DO units, will have ripple effects throughout the Marine Corps, Goulding said.
For example, DO will also precipitate increased training for combat service support Marines, because as distributed units present a more dangerous, less lucrative target for would-be bad guys, combat service support forces could find themselves at the receiving end of an attack.
Goulding would like to see a Small Unit Enhancement Training given to these Marines to “make convoys more of a combat operation so that these Marines are trained to be more aggressive if they get into a situation.”
He said the platoon-level experiments have allowed the Marine Corps to get the baseline right in terms of training and communications gear, but that future experiments will tackle bigger issues such as sustainment.
“Sustaining these guys is the thing that keeps me up at night,” he said.
