Defence Logistics, long understood to underpin the fighting
capabilities of Europe's armed forces, is too prone to failure. This
is just one of the conclusions of the latest report by industry expert
Transport Intelligence, contained in European Defence Logistics 2007.
From ensuring the timely delivery of critical supplies to the
front line, or maintaining the performance of hugely complex
electronic weaponry, logistics is playing an increasingly important
role in the remotest of theatres. Service failure, in the case of
defence logistics, results not just in undelivered consignments, but
the death of soldiers.
However the occurrence of large pieces of equipment lying in
hangars and sheds, unused for the want of maintenance, is an
increasing problem for armed forces - and one that can have crippling
effects on their operations. This has been powerfully demonstrated by
the chronic difficulties that the British have in putting a helicopter
fleet in the field in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
So difficult has the task of maintenance become that the major
defence ministries are increasingly outsourcing the problem to the
weapons manufacturers themselves. Programmes such as Eurofighter now
include maintenance logistics as an integral obligation on the weapons
manufacturers.
Increasingly it is they who are responsible for keeping these
machines in the field, not the armed forces. This is a big change, but
according to Thomas Cullen, the report's author, one that has hardly
been noticed, let alone understood, by the outside world.
Cullen goes on to claim that the out-sourcing trend is likely to
characterise European defence strategy for the foreseeable future
bringing benefits to a range of commercial companies including
technologically sophisticated logistics providers. However this
concept is still very much in its nascent stage and as yet untested.
As such, Cullen warns, it is still a 'massive experiment.' Getting it
wrong will severely compromise the capabilities of European armed
forces.
Transport Intelligence's European Defence Logistics 2007 report
explores the evolving logistics structures of major European
ministries of defence and the logistics activities of the major
weapons manufacturers. It explains the thinking behind the outsourcing
developments that characterise logistics activity and provides market
sizing and forecasts. It also provides a critique of the British Armed
forces' logistics strategy in the Iraq War.
