Black hawk down lessons learned pertaining to the Army's 5 logistics Essay

Black hawk down lessons learned pertaining to the Army's 5 logistics characteristics - Essay Example Indeed, the true meaning of disciple among the military is that the military is well structured with programs and regulations. For instance the military has manuals and policies that regulate all that they do from the barracks to the offices to operations. One outstanding policy that regulates the military’s operations is what is known as logistics. Logistics in the literary world may be said to be the availability of resources but in the military, â€Å"logistics is the process of planning and executing force sustainment in support of military operations† (Global Security Organization, 2001). This essay looks at an influential component of logistics known as logistics characteristics. The paper shall review what constitutes logistics characteristics, the importance of logistics characteristics and lessons learned from the Army’s five logistics characteristics in relation to specific military and global events such as the famous Black Hawk Down. Components of Log istics Characteristics and how they relate to the FM 100-5 The Field Manual, commonly referred to as the FM is an important component of military operation in determining basic how-to’s. ... 2-0). This means that once the military is out there to keep peace, they mandate involves an entire complicated process of getting procedures achieved and thus operating within certain means and environment. During most of these operations, resources are not always in abundance for the day-to-day activities of the military. However this is no excuse for operations not to take place. In the event of scarcity of resource, the army’s logistics characteristics come to play with the philosophy that â€Å"scarce resources require logistics operations to be efficient, not wasteful† (Global Security Organization, 2011). When resources are well handled, logistics operations become both effective and efficient and the fundamentals of operation as stated in the FM 100-5 become achieved. Logistics characteristics are well organized into five components, which are briefly discussed below. Anticipation The FM 100-5 notes that the responsibility of ensuring successful use of logistics depends on the corps logisticians. Once the corps logistician is said to be pursue anticipation, it is expected that the corps logistician becomes highly proactive rather than reactive. Just as the logistics characteristics mentions anticipation as the need for the logistician to see ahead into the future, the FM 100-5 talks about intelligence gathering, stating that officers and leaders â€Å"gather intelligence to gain advance warning and anticipate likely enemy courses of action† (p. 2-6). A proactive logistician should be in the position of seeing into the future in the management of logistics. Without such a characteristic, the logistician is going likely to fail the entire team in the sense that they