Preparing for Rapid Deployment: The Future of Defence Logistics

The nature of warfare and how militaries prepare for it – along with their other strategic objectives, which include civil emergencies, assisting in humanitarian disaster relief, and protecting the UK’s energy and food security supply chain – has changed drastically over the last decade.

The drawdown from Afghanistan in 2014 marked a watershed in defence logistics as operations transitioned from being on a war footing to its return to contingency. The focus for military logisticians is now less on moving large volumes of equipment, such as vehicles, artillery, food, and fuel, across thousands of miles from source to base; the focus is now on expeditionary operations, being prepared to rapidly deploy smaller troop numbers and supplies to a wider range of theatres.

Ahead of the Defence Logistics conference in London (23 - 25 February, 2016), Defence IQ spoke to Eric Bownes, the lead for strategy and solutions at Fujitsu Global Defence, about the future of logistics and how the transformation of IT systems will impact the market over the next ten years . Mr Bownes was a military logistician with the South African Air Force and has previously worked on the implementation of the RAF’s logistic information system.

Download the whitepaper by clicking the link above to read the interview in full.

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