A Message From the Deputy Commandant for Installations and Logistics

This is truly an exciting time for our Marine Corps Installations and Logistics Enterprise. Today, we are balancing the demands of a ready force in day-to-day competition with the imperative to support the development of the future force. We recognize that success in a contested environment hinges on the ability of our Marine Corps elements to persist in early phase maneuver across vast, dispersed littoral maneuver space.

Our Commandant continues to identify logistics as the pacing function for the Marine Corps. I will continue to ask all Marines and our civilian teammates, regardless of occupational field, to think critically and offer solutions for how we can reduce demand and mitigate challenges associated with sustaining our force in campaigning and conflict. Logistics is not just a critical requirement; it is a critical vulnerability. With this in mind, we must work quickly to transition thoughts into action and concepts into capabilities to ensure future success.

As we look to the future, we are shifting our mindset from a streamlined supply chain that is vulnerable to threats to a resilient sustainment web that assures mission success. Our homestation installations and advanced bases are integral as force generation, deployment, and sustainment platforms. We are leveraging opportunities to globally position equipment and supplies at or near the point-of-use, accurately forecast and plan sustainment using real-time data, and coordinate logistics support across the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. We are exploring ways to reduce demand on a distribution system across long and vulnerable lines of communication. We are also maturing habitual relationships with partner, allied, joint, and interagency support capabilities and agreements.

Over the past three years, we have focused on expanding global logistics awareness, diversifying distribution, improving sustainment, and making our installations ready for a contested environment. We have cultivated emergent technologies to advance our tactical logistics capabilities, wargamed and exercised with variations of force organizations, and experimented across the FMF and Supporting Establishment. The output of this logistics experimentation has been critical for us to refine our organizations, capabilities, and concepts. For all who have contributed to these efforts—thank you. This is a team effort, and your voices matter!

The articles in this Marine Corps Gazette are representative of the innovation occurring across the Marine Corps Installations and Logistics Enterprise and illustrate the complexity of sustaining our forces in a globally-contested environment. This is no easy feat, but our Marines have proven time and again that they are up to the job as long as we set the conditions for their continued success. We appreciate the opportunity to share these articles with our Gazette readers and invite your thoughts on the challenges ahead. Semper Fidelis!

Semper Fi,

Edward D. Banta
Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps
Deputy Commandant for Installations and Logistics

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