Introduction
The term contested logistics implies that the U.S. military and its partners grew accus-
tomed to uncontested logistics during the post-9/11 period of armed conict. Contested lo-
gistics is, in fact, nothing new. Rather, it is the standard state of logistics in large-scale armed
conict between industrialized states; the notion that logistics might not be contested is
yet another negative impact of the post-9/11 wars on military think-
ing. To be sure, General William Sherman’s evisceration of supply
lines across the South during the U.S. Civil War is an example of
continental-level contested logistics. On a global scale, the German
military used unrestricted submarine warfare, and other methods,
during World War I against the United States and its allies to disrupt
strategic logistics.
1
Further, during World War II, the battle for con-
trol of the Atlantic Ocean—in which personnel and military equip-
ment deployed to North Africa and Europe—played a critical part in
contested logistics. Further, the contest between the Allies and the
Axis for control of the Mediterranean Sea was an important issue
for the ultimate Allied victory in North Africa, Italy and the war as a
whole.
2
Richmond Hammond notes that:
Fundamentally, control of the Mediterranean was vital to both opposing coalitions
as an essential route of transit in a global war. For the Allies, it was a vital artery be-
tween east and west, allowing a relatively quick and ecient method of transferring
men and materiel between the various theaters of war. For the Axis powers, wrest-
ing control of the Mediterranean from the Allies, or even merely contesting it . . .
the result of Axis victory in the Mediterranean would be to greatly curtail one of the
Allies’ greatest strengths: their global mobility.
3
It is important to understand that contested logistics is not a new wrinkle of modern war-
fare, but a problem that planners, strategists and industry have wrestled with throughout the
depth and breadth of armed conict. The only signicant dierence today from the time in
which German U-boats prowled the Atlantic Ocean, for instance, are the technologies avail-
able to detect the movements of logistics, and correspondingly, the technology available
to strike a state’s logistics network from extended range. Further, success in the American
South, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea should provide the starting point from which
to identify the problem that the contemporary concept of contested logistics is attempting to
solve. The problem itself—how to conduct logistics over large distances in an environment
in which an enemy combatant is actively attempting to deny that endeavor—has both tech-
nological solutions and non-technical solutions.
This article does not seek to provide answers to contested logistics, but rather to pro-
vide information that spurs like-minded individuals to think about the problem holistically.
Contested Logistics
A Primer
LANDPOWER ESSAY NO. 24-1
FEBRUARY 2024
by LTC Amos C. Fox, USA
The concept of contested
logistics presents Army forces
with three discrete challenges:
a) the threat; b) the environ
-
ment; and c) oneself. Those
three categories have to be
addressed in consideration of
one another to make operations
in contested logistics a reality.
1
