Why logistics are too important to be left to the generals
artillery. Such foul-ups revealed deeper problems. All modern armies use two approaches to logistics, explains Ronald Ti, a military logistician at King’s College London: “pull" logistics, which involve responding flexibly to consumption and demand signals by units in the field, and “push" logistics, in which ammo and material are dispatched based on predetermined rates of use.
Russia relies on the second, says Dr Ti, largely because of a Soviet legacy of top-down command and a lack of modern supply-chain management. That works well if consumption is stable. It rarely is—as the first days of the war in Ukraine showed.
Western armies tend to have high “tooth-to-tail" ratios, with as many as ten support personnel for every combat soldier. Russia has fewer. Like the Soviet Union, it relies on moving fuel by pipeline and other material by rail.
That can be highly efficient: Russia’s army managed to shift and fire a cumulative total of 700,000 tonnes of shells and rockets in the first five months of the war. But it ties the army to railheads and large depots nearby. That has turned out to be a problem.
In the spring of 2022 Russian shellfire was grinding down Ukraine’s army in the eastern Donbas. Russian guns out-pounded Ukrainian batteries by three to one. That changed when Ukraine acquired American HIMARS launchers and European systems capable of firing rockets precisely over 70km.
Suddenly it could hit Russian fuel depots and ammo dumps well behind the front lines. Many had not budged since 2014. The ensuing bonfire of supplies starved Russian guns of ammo.
Read more on livemint.com
