Urban Combat Service Support Operations: The Shoulders of Atlas

📖 The Scoop

The inevitability of U.S. Armed Forces future involvement in urban contingencies worldwide demands that those responsible for arming, manning, sustaining, and otherwise supporting these operations prepare for the challenges inherent in such undertakings. This report provides an overview of these tasks and ways in which the U.S. Army combat service support (CSS) community can prepare itself to meet them. The authors conclude that CSS operations, like other ground force undertakings, need not undergo fundamental changes simply because the environment is urban. CSS personnel approaching urban tasks will be better served by employing tried-and-true doctrine while anticipating and adapting to environmental conditions; recognizing that command and control requirements within CSS functional areas and between CSS, combat support, and combat elements should be uniform; and maintaining the flexibility essential to overcoming the extraordinary challenges inherent in urban undertakings. In the course of this study, the authors conducted literature reviews and interviews, and they drew on extensive prior research. The findings fall into two broad categories: (1) functional-area specific, applying exclusively to arming, manning, sustaining, moving, fixing, force protection, and selected other areas; and (2) those with broader application. Under the latter, the limited availability of many CSS assets will encourage their central management. Commanders will have to consider weighting front-line assets with low-density assets or keeping them centralized for dispatch as needed. CSS resources will require the same command, control, and communications assets as do other units. Additionally, CSS drivers and others throughout the area of operations are a potentially vital and underused source of intelligence. A bibliography of 12 books, 34 articles, 44 reports, 19 interviews, and 42 briefings and e-mails is included. (7 figures).

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