JANUARY 30, 2024 – The Army’s eight principles of sustainment are fundamental guidelines that serve as the foundation for maintaining and supporting military operations. These principles are crucial for ensuring that the Army remains agile, adaptable, and capable of sustaining its forces in diverse and challenging environments.
The eight principles of sustainment: integration, anticipation, responsiveness, simplicity, economy, survivability, continuity, and improvisation are essential to maintaining combat power, enabling strategic and operational reach, and providing Army forces with endurance. Sustainment noncommissioned officers must consider these principles throughout the operations process to achieve successful support of full spectrum operations.
Senior sustainment NCOs must continue to train, educate, and gain knowledge to become multifunctional logistics NCOs who have master’s degree in Warfighting and a minor in sustainment operations.
Sustainment warfighters must ensure that the force is equipped and sustained to fight and support large-scale combat operations through installation and materiel readiness. Utilizing these principles, sustainers, as warfighters, aid the force by utilizing Army supply chains and industrial artisans to communicate, coordinate and collaborate logistics.
According to ADP 4-0, integration is defined as coordinating and synchronizing sustainment efforts with other elements of the Army’s operations. By integrating sustainment into the overall operational plan, the Army ensures that logistical support is aligned with mission objectives and contributes to mission success.
To ensure the sustainment community is integrating and synchronizing efforts, nominative command sergeants major and sergeants major collaborate sustainment initiatives and efforts across the Army Chief of Staff’s four focus area leading to a prepared forced that is ready to support worldwide operations.
Integration is the most important principle. Anticipation forecasts future sustainment requirements based on an understanding of the operational environment. Senior sustainment NCOs who proactively anticipate the needs of the force allow the Army to pre-position resources and respond rapidly to changing conditions, enhancing overall operational effectiveness.
Each sustainment leader must use responsiveness to react quickly to changes in the operational environment or unforeseen events. As we continue deliver combat ready formations, sustainers must keep pace with every modernization effort to ensure a strategic advantage over adversaries. By being responsive and enhancing combat formations, the sustainer ensures that the Army can adapt to dynamic situations, providing timely support to sustain the force and address emerging challenges.
Through simplicity, leaders emphasize the importance of avoiding unnecessary complexity in sustainable processes and procedures. Simplicity allows senior sustainment NCOs to streamline logistics and support operations –- enhancing efficiency, reducing the risk of errors, and facilitating a more agile and effective sustainment system.
As the economy continues to develop, synchronize, and distribute Army materiel, sustainer must understand that economy efficiently uses resources to achieve sustainment objectives. Maximizing resource efficiency ensures that the Army can sustain its forces economically and allocate resources effectively to support ongoing operations.
The efficiency of sustainment operations and streamlined processes by sustainment NCOs directly correlates to success in combat and correlates to continuous transformation. As sustainers evolve and new technological advances are adapted, sustainers continue to shape the fight by ensuring the warfighters can capitalize on the Army’s modernization efforts and priorities.
Through flexibility, sustainers utilize the ability to adapt sustainment efforts to changing conditions or unexpected challenges. A flexible multifunctional sustainment NCO and system enables the Army to adjust its logistical support quickly, ensuring adaptability in the face of evolving operational requirements.
Once flexibility is achieved, leaders must utilize attainability to emphasize the need to set realistic and achievable sustainment goals. By establishing attainable objectives, sustainment efforts are aligned with available resources and capabilities, thus preventing overambitious planning. Sustainment NCOs must use personal and professional experience to remain flexible and agile to enable sustainment operations.
To maintain support operations for an extended duration, sustainability is crucial for prolonged operations, allowing the Army to sustain its forces over time without compromising effectiveness.
Through continuous professional development and utilizing these principles, sustainment Soldiers must seek advanced education opportunities and broadening assignments to hone their skillset. Additionally, Soldiers should pursue opportunities to strengthen the profession and expanded certifications in professional military education, and NCO development to enable sustainment operations.
As we prepare multifunctional logistics NCOs for large-scale combat operations, they must deliberately coordinate and synchronize sustainment across all levels of war, by ensuring the operational requirements are met. A trained, educated, and certified multifunctional NCO provides organizations with a confident and knowledgeable professional that understands and utilizes the eight principles of sustainment to conduct daily operations.
The eight principles collectively guide the Army in developing and executing sustainment plans, ultimately contributing to the overall success of military operations. However, sustainment NCOs must continue building a resilient and adaptive sustainment system that can meet the challenges of modern warfare.
Although the principles are not a checklist, they serve as a guide for senior sustainment planners and leaders to incorporate the commander’s intent for sustainment throughout the operations process.
Story by Sgt. Maj. Shelia Fourman
U.S. Army Materiel Command