The lifeblood of war: Logistics in armed conflict

Richard Moleofe | Friday November 25, 2016 17:45

Thompson had written this book right after the end of the Falklands War of 1982. In this conflict, he commanded an infantry brigade.

Nonetheless, he has done a sterling work in putting together a book of this magnitude. Magnitude because he has delved deeply into researching about several conflicts and that brought out the essence of his thesis. I have shared my opinion with several officers at BDF on the book and I have always stated that this is a book for every officer to read.

I am glad that some of the officers I shared my insights with on the book have developed interest to go as far as doing their staff college research on logistics. Major Ompatile Modisenyane’s worldview on logistics changed after laying hands on this book. He wrote a very successful research paper on logistics at BDF.

Unfortunately he chose to exit the force earlier than thought because of internal politics of the organisation. At the time of his departure, Major Modisenyane was chief logistics officer for the Ground Forces Command. This is the military’s biggest service branch in terms of numbers. What a talent we lost in this officer.

Coming back to the issue of the author, I found him to be extra-ordinary looking at the fact that he is personally not a logistician, but an infantry man. I neither do have any training background on logistics, but over time I developed so much interest in this subject matter.

I almost went wild after reading this book way back in 1996 from the BDF library. It became a gospel I shared with every officer that cared to listen to anything on the subject matter of logistics. Fresh from reading the book I came into contact with Major General (retired) Sir Lawrence New of the British Army. During the Falklands war he served as the chief intelligence officer for the entire campaign. General New was visiting Botswana in his new portfolio as the world president of the Association of Military Christian Fellowships (AMCF) of which BDF is a member.

Understanding the vastness of the British Army, I threw a dice and asked him if he knew anything about Thompson. He said to me, “that’s my buddy and we fought together in the Falklands.” At that moment I knew I had hit a the “bull.”

General New shared with me exceptional things about General Thompson and the unfortunate part of his private life. The two had been working in so much harmony.

It is interesting that I had picked something from Thomson’s book about how their Falklands campaign was made easy by a clean flow of intelligence information. He had mentioned New but it never occurred to me that it was the same person I was acquainted to.

General New shared a lot of confidential information with me about the war. He was pulled out of another major assignment that most of us would remember. He was in charge of handling information gained from interrogations of IRA operatives. He personally handled Bobby Sense.

This is the fellow that went on hunger strike for 66-days before his death and it was world news.

The Falklands were half a world away from the UK and shipping supplies in that great distance of over 12, 000 kilometres was no child’s play. The British military was tested to its limits in the area of logistics.

Other countries such as the US have conducted campaigns as far as South East Asia but their challenge was different. With the Falklands, the challenge was that the British had no landing ground. Everything was launched from the ships straight into enemy positions.

Logistics is similarly a challenge to BDF. There is no military in the world that has not had challenges in this area. One of the things that I considered to be Lieutenant General Fisher’s legacy was the creation of the three service branches of Ground Forces Command, Air Arm Command and Defence Logistics Command.

The Commanders of the three commands were tasked with providing operational and tactical command of the defence force. The Commander of the Defence Force (CDF) focused on the strategic and operational duties in the command structure. It is a pity that such a workable structure has been erased from BDFs plan as soon as General Fisher reached the exit gate as the Defence Logistics Command was abolished.

With the Defence Logistics Command in place, it was much easy to coordinate all the logistics units. They have gone back to become autonomous and that autonomy kills the spirit of unity of command. With the Defence Logistics Command in place, BDF could take a logistics plan straight from the shelf and adjust it to the challenges of an impending operation. We understand that every operation comes with its set of operational needs and requirements. But with the absence of a logistics command, I still do not grasp how BDF will function in case of hostilities.

Logistics is a very wide topic and I think I will be doing the reader a lot of injustice if I leave them hanging and not bisecting BDFs own logistical capabilities. What units are considered as part of the service support and their difference from those offering operational support. We cannot fully understand this until we bisect the history of BDF and learn how they have pushed their logistics in the past four decades.

It is a very interesting subject and I am persuaded to continue along the same lines next week. This is a critical topic for any military because the army always marches on its stomach.

It is true that for many, logistics has remained a less important topic. The reason why our own military has decided to do away with such an important service branch is because BDF does not place much importance on this topic.