Sense & Respond Logistics:
Business Drivers

S&RL is at once, both old and new. It is old in that it reflects the thinking of Col. Boyd and his OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) loop. It is new in that it reflects the observations of Stephan Haeckel, that business needed new ways to cope with the speed and inherent unpredictability of change.

It has been recognized for some time that the changing military context after the Cold War must be supported with commensurate changes in logistics capabilities. Exactly what will be needed is still to be determined, and in fact, the dynamics of the modern combat may make the inability to predict firm requirements in advance, a prime characteristic of future operations. This would require a logistics capability suited to a world of unpredictable demands. S&RL represents the most viable model to not only meet those requirements; but does so with a technical architecture that is itself as distributed, flexible, adaptive, resilient and collaborative as the Warfighter conducting operations in a net-centric/globally linked environment. In fact S&RL may well be the critical blue force information enabler of those operations.

Some of the drivers of this changing military context, many of which are discussed in the 2008 Joint Operating Environment (JOE), are listed below:

• More connectivity with overlapping resources.

• A Defense Industrial Base with varied responsibilities: domestic or national vs. international, as well as public & private.

• Shrinking defense resources, both forces & budgets.

• Recovery from current operations including Retrograde, Refit/Reset, Re-posture.

• Persistent conflict and irregular operations.

• The need to balance effectiveness vs. efficiency as measured by metrics to the point of effect.

• Need-to-Know vs. Need-to-Share requires collaboration at and between all levels.

• Alignment with DOD Vision(s), including cross-portfolio issues: Adaptive Planning, GiG/NC, BA, C2 and Adaptive Logistics.

• Data collection in context enabling data discovery and intelligent decision support.

• Diminishing human resources, both in number from retirement and depth of experience from replacements.

• Managing information overload with people spending too much time at the least valuable place: data manipulation, data collection, discovery and manipulation at the expense of decision making.

• Changing military context to deal with pressure to be responsive, adaptive, interoperate and accurate.

• Increasing maintenance costs challenging how to manage these efficiently, effectively and proactively.

• Increasing system complexity so there is the need to leverage existing systems with a thin highly functional layer.

• The need to have full logistics integration with interagency partners, coalition partners, Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and local and/or global suppliers.

• The requirement to support more sustained and distributed operations.

• Ability to predict may be reduced, while the need to respond/adapt to changing circumstance is increasing.

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