{"id":11758,"date":"2026-05-25T00:07:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T00:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/the-military-says-its-ready-to-fight-tonight-in-the-pacific-can-it-sustain-that-fight\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T00:07:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T00:07:58","slug":"the-military-says-its-ready-to-fight-tonight-in-the-pacific-can-it-sustain-that-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/the-military-says-its-ready-to-fight-tonight-in-the-pacific-can-it-sustain-that-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"The military says it\u2019s ready to \u2018fight tonight\u2019 in the Pacific. Can it sustain that fight?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WAIKIKI, Hawaii\u2014<\/strong>Having the \u201cright stuff at the right place at the right time\u201d in the Pacific theater is \u201ca little bit of a maths problem,\u201d says U.S. Indo-Pacific Command\u2019s strategy director for logistics and engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cHawaii is 3,000 miles from the West Coast. Guam is 5,000 miles from Hawaii, and the first island chain\u201d\u2014which includes Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines\u2014\u201cis 1,500 miles from Guam,\u201d Brig. Gen. Jim Bliss of the New Zealand Army said this month during the Indo-Pacific Security Forum.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201ca vast ocean,\u201d with \u201cvery, very little in the way of logistics nodes on land forward available to be used,\u201d Bliss said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If troops and materiel aren\u2019t \u201cforward when the fighting starts,\u201d it will be difficult to get them there in time, he said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a problem that preoccupied many U.S. military leaders in the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHere in the Indo-Pacific, a robust domestic base is a hollow shell if we cannot project that power across the tyranny of distance,\u201d said Gen. Xavier Brunson, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, during a keynote speech at AUSA\u2019s Land Forces Pacific conference. \u201cWe cannot win if our supply lines are 5,000 miles long.\u201dThe U.S. Army\u2019s \u201cdelivers foundational sustainment capabilities to the entire joint force. And I\u2019m fervent in my belief that nobody knows or senses or feels viscerally the scale of sustainment than our nation\u2019s Army,\u201d Indo-Pacific commander leader Adm. Samuel Paparo said at LANPAC.<\/p>\n

Maj. Gen. Gavin Gardner, commander of the Army\u2019s 8th Theater Sustainment Command, reiterated that point later in the conference. Pre-positioning equipment forward, with partners like the Defense Logistics Agency and Army Materiel Command, and building what the Army calls joint interior lines, \u201cquite frankly, demonstrates our ability to overcome that 7,000-mile distance\u201d from the continental United States to \u201cwhere we think we need to operate.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Noting that he\u2019d \u201crather get a root canal\u201d than have to import things into Australia, Gardner said the Army has been prepositioning equipment there on a significant scale.<\/p>\n

Still, he said, the issue is not just \u201cstorage and distribution,\u201d it\u2019s also about the ability to repair things when they break\u2014without sending them back to the continental United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want to\u201d send it back, Gardner said. \u201cWe want to repair it forward. We want to repair it forward now, in what I call \u2018competition\u2019\u201d so it\u2019s ready when a conflict or crisis emerges.<\/p>\n

In the past, he said, the unit had to send a broken Army watercraft to the U.S. West Coast. But because of expanded contracts, \u201cnow, I can fix it in South Korea. I could fix it in Japan. I could fix it in the Philippines. I could fix it in Australia. I could fix it in Singapore.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat may sound like a small thing, but you know, that towing of a ship\u2014two years in a row\u2014all the way back from Australia\u2014two years in a row\u2014it takes a long time. That\u2019s a 30-day sail in order to get it back,\u201d he said, referring to the annual Talisman Sabre exercise.<\/p>\n

Such a delay is untenable, USFK\u2019s Brunson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot shuttle broken equipment across an ocean for repair while an adversary evolves on our doorstep,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

On the Korean peninsula, Brunson said, \u201cwe\u2019re already fixing forward and improving the concept.\u201d Korean dry docks have \u201csuccessfully overhauled\u201d three U.S. ships, with two more in the queue. And by \u201cleveraging special repair authority and weaponizing advanced manufacturing, we\u2019re transforming our theater blueprint into a permanent deterrent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Resilience \u201cis no longer a support function, but has to be a warfighting function,\u201d said Marine Maj. Gen. George Rowell, INDOPACOM\u2019s director of strategic planning and policy. \u201cIt means sustaining combat power, command and control, and logistics, and being able to take hits in a degraded environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way forward, Rowell said, is to \u201csupercharge our defense industrial base,\u201d and \u201cinnovate with non-traditional primes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cChina possesses over 50 percent of the global commercial shipbuilding capacity, while the U.S. has about 0.1 percent, making it imperative that we accelerate capacity through both established and emerging industrial partners.\u201d<\/p>\n

A day after Rowell\u2019s keynote at the Indo-Pacific Security Forum, Paparo told the audience at LANPAC that Allied forces won World War II \u201cbecause industry built combat power at scale, a scale that the Axis powers could never match. And American sustainment delivered, from the factory floor to the fighting positions across the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Paparo said, \u201cwe set the theater,\u201d by posturing forces and pre-positioning sustainment, and creating \u201ca network of distribution centers\u201d throughout the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n

But, he said, \u201cwe\u2019ve got to be smart about how and where you\u2019re pre-positioning ammunition stocks, because in this 21st-century warfare environment, you must [protect] those things that can\u2019t be moved, and you must always be moving the things that you can.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marine Maj. Gen. Matthew Mowery, deputy commander of Marine Corps Forces Pacific, said the Marines set a goal of being able to sustain their own forces for 45 days within the first island chain. But he can\u2019t build up an \u201ciron mountain\u201d of equipment and supplies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And ultimately, Mowery said, \u201cIf we think that\u2026if and when deterrence fails, and a crisis goes to conflict, we think we\u2019re going to have 45 days to bring in, you know, all of our equipment sets and bring those forces in\u2014we have not been kidding ourselves, but we would be kidding ourselves. If you don\u2019t have those forces here when the shooting starts, you\u2019d better plan to live without them.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maj. Gen. Ash Collingburn, commander of the Australian army\u2019s 1st Division, echoed Mowery later that week.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it\u2019s not forward when the fighting starts, then it\u2019s really hard to get\u201d needed supplies and people forward, he said. \u201cI see sustainment as the key challenge in the theater\u2014across time, across distance, across contested lines of communication. If we want to campaign at the edge, we need to be able to sustain.\u201d\n\n<\/svg><\/p>\n<\/div>\n