Notes to the New Administration Week
By Joseph Mroszczyk
The new administration must urgently focus its efforts on strengthening the U.S. military’s combat credibility in the Western Pacific through investments in capabilities that enable at-sea and distributed logistics. To deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from aggression against Taiwan, the U.S. military must demonstrate it can effectively sustain combat at great distances and across a distributed force.
Many have documented the various shortcomings of the U.S. Navy and the entire Joint Force when it comes to the ability to effectively sustain combat forces in a long-duration, high-end fight in the Western Pacific. The Department of Defense wrote as part of its Pacific Deterrence Initiative fiscal year 2024 budget request that “Current theater logistics posture and capability to sustain the force are inadequate to support operations specifically in a contested environment.” Writing in Joint Force Quarterly in November 2024, Lieutenant Colonel Zachary S. Hughes argued “logistics will be the key determinant of success in any U.S.-China conflict,” but that the Joint Force must urgently address logistics gaps to avoid becoming a “paper tiger.” Former Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said in 2023 that, “Without question, logistics rises to the top in terms of priorities.”
While there are myriad problems to address, from ashore infrastructure to the defense supply chain to inventory of munitions to numbers of surface connectors, the new administration must focus its efforts on providing warfighters the best chance of staying in the fight. One important way to do this is to continue funding the development of a vertical launch system (VLS) reload-at-sea capability—known as Transferrable Reload At-Sea Method (TRAM)— which would allow naval combatants to remain in-theater and close to the fight while reloading instead of having to pull back and return to a port to reload, a process that can take days if not weeks. While fighting Houthi rebels from the Red Sea recently, U.S. Navy combatants have had to withdraw from the fight for weeks in order to reload. This may not be viable in a fight with the PRC in the Pacific.
The Navy demonstrated this TRAM capability for the first time in October 2024 and Secretary Del Toro noted the Navy is on track to begin fielding it in two to three years. That may be too late. More needs to be done to get this capability to the fleet at speed and adopted at scale on a shorter timeline.
Other capabilities like expeditionary battle damage repair, expeditionary medical capabilities, and containerized consolidated cargo replenishment at sea (CONSOL) kits would similarly enable the type of distributed sustainment required in the Pacific theater with a distributed Joint Force. The Navy plays an important role in this sustainment effort given the vast maritime terrain in this theater, so it must lead the effort in re-thinking the model of sustainment and developing the concepts and solutions required to sustain the warfighter. Enhancing the ability to sustain a war with the PRC in the Pacific may offer the best chance at deterring war altogether.
Joseph Mroszczyk is an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College. He is also an officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve where he has mobilized in support of Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa in Djibouti. He has previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security, for the U.S. Army Human Terrain System program in Iraq, and as the senior manager for intelligence at Global Rescue, an international risk and crisis management company.
The views expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the official views, policies, or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense or its components, to include the Department of the Navy or the U.S. Naval War College.
Featured Image: Central Command Area of Responsibility (Apr. 20, 2003) The Military Sealift Command, fleet oiler USNS Kanawha (T-AO 196) refueling probe pulls away from the guided missile destroyer USS Mitscher (DDG 57) concluding part of an underway replenishment. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Journalist Alan J. Baribeau)