This is the third and final part of a presentation given at the Australian – New Zealand Defence Logistics Conference during June 2023. The theme of the conference was ‘supply-chain resilience’. National Defence: Defence Strategic Review, the Australian Government response to the ‘independently conducted’ Defence Strategic Review (DSR) was released to the public on 24 April 2023, and an Australian defence ‘community’ primarily interested on its recommendations for the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) capability mix. The review, and statement which followed, portends sweeping changes to the Def ..read more

By David Beaumont. This is the second part of a presentation given at the Australian – New Zealand Defence Logistics Conference during June 2023. This conference convened to discuss supply chain resilience at a time of strategic competition. Part one can be found here. Supply chains move and flex where demand exists. It is the role of the military logistician to govern the network of this lifeblood, for it determines how a force deploys, moves, and changes its scale and scope of tasks. Supply chains are the manifestation of the projection of military power with permanence; supply chains d ..read more

This is the first part of a presentation given at the Australian – New Zealand Defence Logistics Conference during June 2023. This conference convened to discuss supply chain resilience at a time of strategic competition. By David Beaumont. There is little doubt that the topics of logistics and supply-chain resilience court conversations beyond that of military logistics communities. COVID-19 pandemic-related supply-chain disruptions brought the topic of global logistics and supply chains to the fore, with the consequences of scarcity affecting individuals at a personal level. The pandemic rev ..read more

By Sally Williamson The US has enjoyed a strategic logistics advantage in most locations where it has sought to project and sustain military power because it has been able to coalesce host nation, commercial and transnational organisations to provide services, supplies, materiel, and infrastructure where, and when it does not have the capacity to be self-sufficient.[i] The divestment of military logistic capabilities in favour of commercial options began in earnest after the Vietnam War, and can be attributed to three simultaneous and related factors: the rise of globalism and privatisation, t ..read more

By David Beaumont National Defence: Defence Strategic Review was released to the public on 24 April 2023, to a defence ‘community’ only too eager to scrutinise the document for its consequences on the ADF’s capability mix. The paper, of course, covers a swathe of topics and concepts. It describes the reasons that a change to Defence’s pattern of business is necessary while doing, as reviews must do, extolling that Australia’s circumstances have changed. Unfortunately, and because there is only so much material that can be covered in a single document, National Defence’s readers might be left u ..read more

As the ADF awaits the release of the 2023 Defence Strategic Review, change management has become a topic du jour. This article was posted some time ago, but the lessons contained within are pertinent now. Logistics In War By David Beaumont. In late 2017 I published a post of anecdotes, observations and lessons given by senior officers contacted through the course of academic research. These insights were given by logisticians, but not always, and pointed at many of the issues transforming Defence logistics over a period of nearly thirty years. The conversations continued throughout 2018 ..read more

A submission to the 2022 Defence Strategic Review. By David Beaumont It is increasingly recognised that substantial adaptions to the preparedness of Defence, and Australia writ large, need to be made. Over the last decade important decisions made, and policy statements issued, commensurate to the changing nature of threats to Australia’s strategic interests. Organisations have been redesigned, inter-Departmental capabilities restructured, and capability investments made to enable national responses to potentially existential security challenges. The ability to operate in emerging domains such ..read more

By David Beaumont. This article concludes the discussion started here. Things will go wrong in competition, conflict, and full-scale war. Winning will be about resilience, recovery and response as much as it is about being prepared for well-informed, but sadly speculative, conflict scenarios that planners may have contemplated in advanced. ‘Adaptiveness’ will be a necessity at the outset of a conflict, but the idea should not be a compensator for self-induced, lazy, policies and procedures designed to suit a more convenient peacetime routine. Well trained and adaptable people involved in natio ..read more

‘In war, mistakes are normal; errors are usual, information is seldom complete, often accurate, and frequently misleading. Success is won, not by personnel and materiel in prime condition, but by the debris of an organisation worn by the strain of campaign and shaken by the shock of battle. The objective is attained, in war, under conditions which often impose extreme disadvantages. It is in the light of these facts that the commander expects to shape his course during the supervision of the planned action.’[1]                ..read more

By Robbin Llaird. This article was recently published at http://www.defense.info and has been reproduced here with permission. It is based upon an interview which followed a recent Williams Foundation Seminar on Next Generation Autonomous Systems. The two articles discussing ‘Sustaining machines’ can be found here and here. At the recent Williams Foundation Conference on Next Generation Autonomous Systems, Col. Beaumont, Director of the Australian Army Research Centre, focused on the intersection between logistics and support innovation and automation and autonomous systems. He expanded upon h ..read more