Pacific Lifeline: Contested Logistics and US Military Power

In this War Lab episode, hosts confront the immense challenge of contested logistics in the Indo‑Pacific—where simply resupplying forces becomes a high‑stakes combat operation. They begin by unpacking the “tyranny of distance”: the vast Pacific Ocean, time‑consuming transit, and vulnerable, under‑developed island infrastructure all conspire to stretch U.S. supply lines to their breaking point .

Building on Cold War concepts of the first and second island chains, the discussion shows how China’s land reclamation and Anti‑Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy have weaponized geography itself. By fielding long‑range missiles (like the DF‑26 “Guam killer”), a rapidly expanding navy and air force, robust ISR networks, and sophisticated cyber attacks, the People’s Liberation Army can threaten every ship, plane, and port on which U.S. sustainment depends .

Through unclassified war‑game projections, the episode illustrates the staggering attrition expected in a high‑end conflict—hundreds of ships and aircraft lost in just weeks, rivaling the most intense phases of Vietnam and World War II. Such losses demand a logistics system capable of unprecedented replacement rates for fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and medical supplies .

To mitigate these risks, the U.S. is experimenting with new operational concepts:

• Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO): dispersing combat power across more, smaller ships to complicate enemy targeting—but this comes with a fuel‑intensive, manpower‑strained logistics tail.

• Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO): placing mobile missile units on remote islands to force China to attack multiple small targets, yet each base requires dozens of tons of daily supplies, testing resupply endurance.

Both approaches expose critical shortfalls in fuel capacity, missile stocks, maintenance ships, and mariner availability—issues exacerbated by a shrinking Army watercraft fleet and a strained Military Sealift Command whose mariner retention crisis risks grounding essential vessels .

Beyond operational fixes, three broad logistical strategies emerge:

1. “More is More”—massive wartime production and shipment to overwhelm attrition, a brute‑force model akin to WWII, but politically and industrially untenable today.

2. “Efficient to Be Effective”—real‑time optimization of scarce assets, requiring flawless data flows and decision‑making under fire, a luxury in contested seas.

3. “Forecast and Push”—proactively prepositioning supplies via predictive analytics and AI, balanced by innovative demand‑reduction measures (local power generation, water extraction) to shrink the logistical footprint.

Crucially, the episode argues that no single nation can sustain this burden alone. Deepened multilateral logistics pacts—like the new U.S.–Australia–Japan trilateral agreement—aim to share fuel, ammunition, repairs, medical care, and resupply across allies’ ports, depots, and shipyards .

Finally, cutting‑edge technologies—unmanned cargo drones, additive manufacturing (field‑deployed 3D printers), advanced data integration, and resilient “supply webs”—offer hope for more agile, distributed sustainment. But realizing these gains demands massive investment in infrastructure, industrial capacity, legal frameworks, and, above all, a cultural shift that elevates logistics to the decisive “pacing function” of future warfare .

This episode delivers a sobering revelation: in any great‑power war, logistics isn’t mere support—it is the linchpin of deterrence, the battlefield where victory or defeat will be decided.