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Recommended reading: As a logistics support that has a great impact on the war, the logistics system of each period has certain differences. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

This has a lot to do with the corresponding battlefield, the corresponding strength of the two sides of the battle, and the difficulty of logistics and transportation.

Later generations believed that in the Franco-Prussian War, no matter how good the organizational system of the German ** team was, we did not necessarily have to come to the conclusion that the form of government was different from that of the German army and navy, and that it should be copied in its entirety.

The main features of the German system are twofold: one is centralized control, and the other is decentralized enforcement.

If we want to ask: Do these characteristics contribute to a certain result under any conditions, or only under certain conditions?

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When a country is going to war, its goal is to exert its combat strength as much as possible to crush the effective resistance of the enemy in order to achieve the country's policy.

To do this, the State, through its central authority, which represents the will of the public, must decide when its policies are met with resistance to the point where the use of force is indispensable;

But the central political authority is usually not chaired by army or navy experts. None of these institutions is considered to be well-versed in both the administration of the State and the use of troops in the army and navy. Therefore, it is only natural that there should be a committee of experts who maintains close contact with the political authorities. Such a commission would be perfectly able to develop a plan that is politically responsive and that would make the most effective use of combat forces based on available resources.

The political authority, on the other hand, exercises centralized and unified control over the use of the entire combat force through its declaration of war, through its establishment of the purpose of the war, and through the decision to armistice taken when it determines that the purpose of the war has been achieved or is not possible.

In other words, strategies are developed and controlled by the government that holds power.

It is self-evident that there is a great benefit to a centralized and unified approach to strategy, but both historically and in the work of government agencies, we have always found instances where practice and theory do not coincide. If that were not the case, there would be no need to discuss it. This is because we have found that sometimes commanders are sent to a certain theater of operations without receiving a clear task, or that the country's strategy is determined by the departments in charge of the army and navy respectively, and this is a manifestation of the decentralization of strategic guidance, and the result is inevitably to make the situation assessment one-sided, narrow-minded, or inadequate.

But the centralization of strategic guidance is only in terms of "control"; The so-called implementation refers to the specific formulation of the details of the use of troops in combat, including the details of using combat to achieve the objectives of war. "Implementation" must be in the hands of experts. Government agencies are responsible for setting tasks, i.e., determining what must be done, while army and navy experts are specifically responsible for implementation, i.e., deciding how to accomplish them.

Thus, the purpose of the war will be achieved through the total outcome of a series of battles. According to Clausewitz, the theory of planning a series of battles as a whole for the purposes of war is strategy. In the series of battles mentioned above, some may be naval battles, some may be land battles, and some may be joint battles involving both land and sea forces. However, since the purpose of war is to be achieved through the combined outcome of all battles, the overall plan must be based on the overall consideration of the forces of the army and navy, and the strategy of combining the army and navy in the most economical way is the best strategic decision. Therefore, the details of the strategy must be determined by a joint committee of army and navy experts.

Centralized control and decentralized implementation are based on the same principle that tasks need to be delegated to the most competent staff. Those who work in the central government are able to look at the overall situation, see the interrelationship between the various parts as a whole, and know what requirements are made for each part. This global view is impossible for any one part of the world. On the other hand, people who work in local areas have a much more detailed and real understanding of the local situation than those who are responsible for the overall situation. Because the specific implementation method always depends on the specific situation on the ground at that time, the local chief officer is also the decision-maker of the specific implementation (task).

The body exercising centralized control and issuing major tactical tasks should be the National Strategy Committee. If the Commission is composed of representatives of government agencies and experts from the combat sector, it will become a comprehensive department that embodies political objectives into the tactical tasks of the army and navy.

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Based on the above views, later generations believed that the above principles were assumed to be theoretically correct, and then they could be tested through practical application:

For example, the two belligerents A and B both have land and navy, and there is an ocean between them, and country B is on the way to invade country A's army and navy.

At this time, the committee of country A, which is centrally exercising strategic guidance, will first judge the situation, compare the strength of the enemy and our forces, analyze the enemy's possible intentions, and make countermeasures that can be taken by the enemy. He also drew conclusions on how to thwart the enemy's attack plan and further adjust the deployment of its own defense forces. The Army and Navy were then given the task of ensuring that the two forces work closely together without overlap or duplication.

After the War Department accepted the tasks of the Army, it assigned them to the major units of the Army. The commanders of these large units are best informed of the situation of their respective units and are best at deciding how to accomplish their tasks within their areas of competence. Of course, these commanders will further assign their tasks to the next level of commanders. When tasks are given from the top down, orders at all levels point out the "what" that must be done, not the "how" that should be done.

Similarly, the Admiralty will receive all the tasks of the Navy and assign them to the fleets to which it belongs, and then the tasks will be subordinated to the subordinate units.

Staff officers who reflect and carry out the intentions of the commander are subordinate to the headquarters of the major units of the Army and the major units of the Navy. When the commander receives an order from his superiors to carry out the task, he conveys it to the chief of staff and informs him of a general plan related to the execution of the task, and the corresponding assistant draws up an order to carry out the plan. The timely issuance of these orders will set in motion the full "machine" of the General Staff to make its various departments (e.g., provisions, equipment. Health, salary, sappers, transport, etc.) can plan according to their own estimates the means necessary for the execution of orders.

These staff members are experts in their departments and are best placed to make appropriate estimates of the tasks assigned to them in the light of the availability of facilities and are therefore the best candidates to carry out the tasks in question, and they should be empowered accordingly. They shall enjoy the greatest freedom of movement under the unified supervision of the Chief of Staff (who is the intermediary between the superior and the subordinate) and under the unified management of the relevant heads of their posts in the Government, in accordance with their statutory powers and to the extent determined by the relevant rules and regulations.

When it comes to the nature of centralized control within tactical units, the military commander must, of course, be supreme and the administrative bodies should be subordinate. The commander has the authority to decide on issues of work disputes within his jurisdiction, to exercise discipline and even to point out that an individual staff officer has decided to use another method if the method proposed for the execution of the order is not in accordance with his intentions. However, commanders usually do not ask staff officers about the specific performance of their tasks, because commanders have to concentrate on the big things. For example, he can't be distracted by signing requisitions, invoices, bills, and so on.

For if he spends his working hours endlessly on approving or denying the above-mentioned specific matters (because in order to approve or deny them reasonably, a well-founded calculation must be made), he will lose the big thing. If he merely draws circles without making calculations, he is bound to listen to the words of the staff officers concerned; such approval is meaningless, and can only delay work and waste manpower. As long as staff officers are doing their jobs well, they should be held accountable. If they are not doing their job, they should be replaced, sent back to school for retraining or removed.

The Government must exercise centralized control over these staff officers by setting up intermediary officials between the staff officers serving the war and the government in power, who are responsible for arranging the budget for legislative consideration, allocating appropriations, gathering intelligence information, transmitting intelligence materials to the various departments, and so on. This means that there must be both a centralized logistics strategy and a decentralized logistics strategy.

In order to unify the plan for the mobilization of the entire combat force, only one strategic committee should be established throughout the country. For each branch of the military, tactics and logistics generally have different professional functions.

However, much of the logistical work is not unique to the army or navy, but is needed by both the army and the navy. In order to save costs and improve efficiency, all work that can be done in a unified manner should be organized on a national basis.

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The experience of commercial industrial production and the war has taught us that a sole production organization can produce a certain number of standard products more economically than a multi-plant production organization, because the standardization of machinery and equipment and manufacturing methods can save costs, as well as management costs. This principle should also be applied to munitions production, that is, the various factories that produce munitions for the combat forces of the whole country should also be merged.

(1) Ordnance: In addition to further reducing costs, the standardization of ordnance materials used by all branches of the armed forces should be carried out within the scope permitted by each branch of the armed forces. Here's why:

1. In order to improve production, products jointly designed by experts of the army and navy should be shared by the two services. From the perspective of actual combat experience, it often happens that one branch of the armed forces has more combat activities than another, and as a result, the former will exclusively enjoy the experience gained from the advances in armaments, and it is from this that new inventions are derived. The arsenal is a tangible clearinghouse through which proposals for improvement can be realized.

If the manufacture of ordnance is divided according to the branch of the service, the factory owned by the service that is used more in combat will progress faster than the factory of the other service. If the manufacture of ordnance is under unified management and leadership, any improvement in ordnance will naturally be considered from the outset and applied to both branches of the armed forces (army and navy).

2. Weapons are universal, and ammunition can also be universalized. The benefits of doing this are huge. This is because when fighting in a certain theater of operations, the troops of one branch of the armed forces may run out of ammunition in one place, while the troops of the other branch of the armed forces are replenished with ammunition, but the operational situation at that time may necessitate the use of units of the same branch of the armed forces that lack ammunition. In the Spanish-U.S. War and the U.S. military in the war against the Philippines, the above problems occurred due to the different light weapons used by the army and navy, and in order to learn a lesson, the U.S. Army and Navy later adopted universal rifles.

3. The generalization of weapons can also give the troops stationed at key points on the shore more room for maneuver to temporarily use naval guns.

(2) Military uniforms and clothing: Many of the clothing items of the two branches of the armed forces are the same (such as boots and shoes, shirts, socks, etc.). Besides, if there is a scientific basis for the uniforms of the two branches of the armed forces when they are determined, then there is no reason for them to wear them differently, and the difference between the two branches of the military can be solved by using different symbols. The clothing worn by both branches of the military should be able to protect against the cold and heat, and the two remaining important points to consider are the nature and appearance of the work.

Army soldiers, like sailors, operate machines, and both services require unique naval and army uniforms. The issue of the appearance of clothing may be a little more important to the Army than to the Navy, but in wartime it is a situation where the enemy's dinghy is close to me and it is not good for people to see clearly. The popular navy uniforms are bell bottoms, flat hats, and open-chest tops, which are not scientific clothing styles and are very inconsistent with modern clothing. Sailors were conspicuously dressed and embarrassed, and were discriminated against in public places on shore. Their clothing was at a disadvantage compared to that of their army soldiers. Therefore, the uniforms and clothing of the army and navy should be uniform, and they should be uniformly produced by a single agency. Uniformly supplied to officers and soldiers to wear.

(iii) Hospitals and health institutions: their functions are identical for both services, which are to promote hygiene, prevent disease and treat the sick and wounded. The most economical way for these tasks, together with the nationwide epidemic prevention and immigration health inspection work managed by military medical officers, is carried out by a single branch of the armed forces, that is, the health and medical corps of the whole army.

It may be included in its terms of reference the organization of continuing education in preparation for the effective performance of the above-mentioned functions, the dispatch of military medical officers according to the needs of the country, the provision of ambulance and medical work, etc. Such a combination is a significant savings, as it can eliminate the old disadvantages of the past when several agencies served several public needs separately. This can be achieved by setting up a hospital in a designated location for the common use of both services;

In order to improve efficiency and save costs, these are the main logistical tasks that can be consolidated in one manner. It seems entirely reasonable that, in order to obtain, classify, and disseminate information useful to the various operational services, a national intelligence service should also be included in the logistics function.

As the outcome of the Bureau's activities is primarily to provide information on strategy and tactics, the closest possible contact should be maintained with those involved in tactical and tactical work. There are many ways to obtain information, from military attachés and intelligence officers in peacetime to espionage and large-scale reconnaissance in wartime. If we are to include intelligence activities in the scope of logistics work, the logistics department will have to take on the responsibility of reconnaissance (which is not inherent in logistics). Of course, a large part of the information received is also valuable to the logistics staff, and it should be systematically made available to the logistics staff, whether or not the intelligence bureau is under the leadership of the logistics department. (To be continued.) )

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