"Good generals study tactics. Great generals study logistics."
-Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
Logistics often win the battle.
This post is not saying this is for everyone, and the numbers are even close to correct for your unit in your AO. Everyone is going to need different amounts of ammo, food, water, ect depending on what they are doing and what your AO is like. This is simply a guide to get all of you thinking and making up your own Logistics depending on your unit, also what you will be doing, and your specific AO.
THIS POST IS VERY LONG AND FULL OF INFORMATION. PLEASE CLICK THE LINK BELOW TO READ ALL OF IT. You may even want to break it up, if you cannot read all of it in one sitting, plus all the links that are given in the article. I know it might take you 10 minutes are more just to read through the post at the link, but please take note of all the important links and references within the post as well. All that reading will take you quite a while, but if you're interested in the topic, you can try to add it to nightly reading, and knock it out in a short time, maybe a few days or a week.
Important link from article:
Special Forces Caching Techniques - TC 31-29A. It is found athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/3036556/Special-Forces-Caching-Techniques-TC-3129ASmall Unit Logistics
I present this model of doing just that for a 16 man light platoon. You have two squads of eight men. You?ve got an elaborate system of supply dumps / base camps. Each site should that will sustain this platoon for 84 days.
One squad is busy conducting missions while another squad stays at base camp. The squad left at base camp is as important as the one doing missions. They are in charge of defending the base from intruders, taking care of the sick and injured, upkeeping the camoflauge of the site, and acting as relief to the unit out doing missions if they are in danger of being overran among many other tasks. After twelve days of operating, the squad in the field, returns to base camp and has two days of recovery. At the end of two weeks the squad that was conducting operations, fills base camp maintence details and the squad that was filling the details is now the one doing operations. In eighty-four days (12 weeks) the two squad rotation should look like this:
WEEK 1 AND 2
1ST Squad: 12 days active, 2 recovery days
2ND Squad: 14 days of BC details..
Weapons Related Logistics
12,000 rifle rounds
300 sidearm rounds
300 sniper rifle rounds
3 large bottles of CLP (military rifle oil and cleaner)
2 packages of 1,000 cloth square patches
4 packages of Q-tips
4 packages of pipe cleaners...
So the placement of supplies in an AO may look like this:
Mission Objective
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. Fifteen Miles
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. . . Cache
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Thirty-five Miles
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Your Base Camp
Here is the link to the entire article. Please go through it and try to read as much as you can:
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2008/11/praxis-small-unit-logistics.html
