Logistics quotes

Navy Supply Corps Newsletter, May-June, 2003

"Clearly, logistics is the hard part of fighting a war."

--Lt. Gen. E. T. Cook, USMC, November 1990

"Gentlemen, the officer who doesn't know his communications and supply as well as his tactics is totally useless."

--Gen. George S. Patton, USA

"Bitter experience in war has taught the maxim that the art of war is the art of the logistically feasible."

--ADM Hyman Rickover, USN

"Forget logistics, you lose."

--Lt. Gen., USA, 7th Corps Commander, Desert Storm

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."

--Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980

"I am tempted to make a slightly exaggerated statement: that logistics is all of war-making, except shooting the guns, releasing the bombs, and firing the torpedoes."

--ADM Lynde D. McCormick, USN

"Because of my wartime experience, I am insistent on the point that logistics know-how must be maintained, that logistic is second to nothing in importance in warfare, that logistic training must be widespread and thorough ..."

--VADM Robert B. Carney, USN

* The logistics quotations found in the Highlight section of this issue of the Newsletter were compiled by:

LCDR Jonathan B. Haynes Logistics Readiness Officer Commander. Logistics Group Western Pacific

&

David A. Schrady Distinguished Professor of Operations Research Naval Postgraduate School

"Logistic considerations belong not only in the highest echelons of military planning during the process of preparation for war and for specific wartime operations, but may well become the controlling element with relation to timing and successful operation."

--VADM Oscar C. Badger, USN

"I don't know what the hell this 'logistics' is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it."

--Fleet ADM E. J. King: To a staff officer. (1942)

" ... in its relationship to strategy, logistics assumes the character of a dynamic force, without which the strategic conception is simply a paper plan."

--CDR C. Theo Vogelsang, USN

"Logistics is the stuff that if you don't have enough of, the war will not be won as soon as."

--General Nathaniel Green, Quartermaster, American Revolutionary Army

"Strategy and tactics provide the scheme for the conduct of military operations, logistics the means therefore."

--Lt. Col. George C. Thorpe, USMC

"Only a commander who understand logistics can push the military machine to the limits without risking total breakdown."

--Maj. Gen. Julian Thompson, Royal Marines

"There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war."

--Carl von Clausevitz

"In modern time it is a poorly qualified strategist or naval commander who is not equipped by training and experience to evaluate logistic factors or to superintend logistic operations."

--Duncan S. Ballantine, 1947

"The war has been variously termed a war of production and a war of machines. Whatever else it is, so far as the United States is concerned, it is a war of logistics."

--Fleet ADM Ernest J. King, in a 1946 report to the Secretary of the Navy

"A sound logistics plan is the foundation upon which a war operation should be based. If the necessary minimum of logistics support cannot be given to the combatant forces involved, the operation may fail, or at best be only partially successful."

--ADM Raymond A. Spruance

"The line between disorder and order lies in logistics ..."

--Sun Tzu

"Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics."

--Tom Peters-Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell, Fast Company, March 2001

"Logistics sets the campaign's operational limits."

--Joint Pub 1: Joint Warfare of the Armed Forces of the United States

"Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point."

--Jomini: Precis de l' Art de la Guerre. (1838)

"He conquers who endures."

--Aulus Persius Flaccus, 34-62A.D.

"Behind every great leader there was an even greater logistician."

--M. Cox

"Logistics ... as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work."

--Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration, 1912

"The essence of flexibility is in the mind of the commander; the substance of flexibility is in logistics."

--RADM Henry Eccles, U.S. Navy

"Logistics must be simple--everyone thinks they're an expert."

--Anonymous

"My logisticians are a humorless lot ... they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay."

--Alexander