{"id":60459,"date":"2019-05-08T13:34:56","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T13:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/05\/08\/the-us-militarys-logistical-train-is-slowly-snaking-toward-china\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T10:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T10:04:28","slug":"the-us-militarys-logistical-train-is-slowly-snaking-toward-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2019\/05\/08\/the-us-militarys-logistical-train-is-slowly-snaking-toward-china\/","title":{"rendered":"The US military\u2019s logistical train is slowly snaking toward China"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A failed Venezuela coup<\/a>, Iranian missiles<\/a> and Russian hybrid warfare<\/a> make for interesting side stories, but the center of military policy is increasingly gravitating toward U.S. Indo-Pacific Command<\/a>, according to U.S. government officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anything, the challenge is how to quicken the pace because the logistical tail of warfare<\/a> takes time to put in place and because the Pacific theater is one of the most difficult environments for moving supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf there\u2019s a challenge, it\u2019s moving enough focus and enough direction from everything else we\u2019re doing towards the Pacific,” said Joel Szabat, the assistant secretary for international affairs within the Department of Transportation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Szabat, whose department deals with U.S. military logistics in wartime, said the center of gravity has shifted so much toward the Asia-Pacific region that even a major crisis on par with 9\/11 won\u2019t derail the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see, in the near term at least, things that would have us pull back,\u201d Szabat said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he warned that new lines of effort must be implemented if that shift is to be sustainable during a war with the region\u2019s biggest player \u2014 China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The baggage train challenge<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department of Transportation is the coordinating arm for civilian airlift and sealift capacity in peacetime and wartime. But the sealift fleet is old and in need of recapitalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The size of the fleet is also too small to support the long logistical train required in a Pacific-based conflict, and the ships that do exist are poorly positioned across the operating area and would lack armed escorts in the event of a conflict, according to Szabat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor small or moderate-scale warfare exercises, it\u2019s adequate,” Szabat said. \u201cFor the maximum deployment that our military is built for … it is not adequate to move and sustain. We don\u2019t have the mariners. We don\u2019t have the U.S. flagged Merchant Marine that we need for that purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Marine Corps represents a large component of the military force that would need to be delivered in the event of a war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are 40,000 Marines at any one time that are moving around the world, and 23,000 of those are west of the international date line, so they\u2019re in the Pacific,\u201d said Gayle Von Eckartsberg, policy director at Headquarters Marine Corps\u2019 Pacific Division. \u201cAnd then you have your Marines in Hawaii, and that brings that number to over 30,000. And the rest are distributed across other places in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t