Advancing Combat Support to Sustain Agile Combat Employment Concepts

The focus on efficiency in combatant command combat operations has driven peacetime logistics and sustainment processes to be more centralized in the U.S. Air Force and, in some cases, at the U.S. Department of Defense level. In some instances, the centralization placed decision authorities associated with the allocation and reallocation of resources outside the control of warfighting commands. Additionally, the move toward efficiency has created a lean supply chain that relies on assured transportation to rapidly deliver resources where needed based on demand signals from end-users. Capable adversaries, however, can disrupt the supply chain by degrading communications and limiting access to forward locations. As Pacific Air Forces (PACAF) pursues evolving operational concepts of employment designed to improve operational resiliency, questions about the fragility of the combat support (CS) enterprise persist. In light of these questions, Headquarters PACAF asked RAND Project AIR FORCE to take a holistic view of the CS enterprise, including base, theater, and global resources, and explore different concepts that could be integrated in theater sustainment plans to support operations. In this report, the authors decompose the CS enterprise from decision authority and resource characteristic perspectives and propose a framework that PACAF can use to consider the necessary elements of the CS enterprise for operating in a hybrid push-pull system as a means to mitigate uncertainty and adversary actions that challenge logistics support. The report also presents the cost of various resource buffer strategies for spare parts.