The history of military logistics goes back to Neolithic times. The most basic requirements of an army are food and water. Early armies were equipped with weapons used for hunting like spears, knives, axes and bows and arrows, and were small due to the practical difficulty of supplying a large number of soldiers. Large armies began to appear in the Iron Age. Animals such as horses, oxen, camels and even elephants were used to carry supplies. Food, water and fodder for the animals could usually be found or purchased in the field. The Roman Empire and Maurya Empire in India built networks of roads, but it was far less expensive to transport by sea than by road. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century there was a shift in Western Europe away from a centrally organised army.
Starting in the late sixteenth century, armies in Europe increased in size, to 100,000 or more in some cases. When operating in enemy territory an army was forced to plunder the local countryside for supplies, which allowed war to be conducted at the enemy's expense. However, with the increase in army sizes, this reliance on pillage and plunder became problematic, as decisions regarding where and when an army could move or fight became based not on strategic objectives but on whether a given area was capable of supporting the soldiers' needs. Sieges in particular were affected by this, both for an army attempting to lay siege to a town and one coming to its relief. Unless a commander was able to arrange a form of regular resupply, a fortress or town with a devastated countryside could become immune to either operation. Napoleon made logistics a major part of his strategy. He dispersed his corps along a broad front to maximise the area from which supplies could be drawn. Each day forage parties brought in supplies. This differed from earlier operations living off the land in the size of the forces involved, and because the primary motivation was the emperor's desire for mobility. Ammunition could not as a rule be obtained locally, but it was still possible to carry sufficient ammunition for an entire campaign.
The nineteenth century saw technological developments that facilitated immense improvements to the storage, handling and transportation of supplies which made it easier to support an army from the rear. Canning simplified storage and distribution of foods, and reduced waste and the incidence of food-related illness. Refrigeration allowed frozen meat and fresh produce to be stored and shipped. Steamships made water transport faster and more reliable. Railways were a more economical form of transport than animal-drawn carts and wagons, although they were limited to tracks, and therefore could not support an advancing army unless its advance was along existing railway lines. At the same time, the advent of industrial warfare in the form of bolt-action rifles, machine guns and quick-firing artillery sent ammunition consumption soaring during the First World War.
In the twentieth century, the advent of motor vehicles powered by internal combustion engines offered an alternative to animal transport for moving supplies forward of the railhead, although many armies still used animals. Air transport provided an alternative to land and sea transport, but with limited tonnage and at high cost. An airlift over "the Hump" helped supply the Chinese war effort during the Second World War, and the 1948 Berlin Airlift was successful in supplying half of the city. With the subsequent development of large jets, aircraft became the preferred method of moving personnel over long distances, although it was still more economical to move cargo by sea and rail. In forward areas, the helicopter was well-suited to moving troops and supplies, especially over rugged terrain. The increasing complexity of weapons and equipment saw the proportion of personnel devoted to logistics rise. The diversity of equipment and consequent large number of spare parts saw attempts at standardisation but the adoption of foreign weapons also meant the adoption of foreign tactics, and giving up the advantages of bespoke systems tailored to a nation's own, often unique, strategic environment.
Definition Military logistics is
Antiquity
The most basic requirements of an army are food and water. Neolithic armies were equipped with weapons used for hunting — spears, knives, axes and bows and arrows. By 1150 BCE the Olmecs of Mesoamerica were producing obsidian weapons that were neither hunting weapons nor agricultural tools. Early armies were small due to the practical difficulty of supplying large numbers of people, and their radius of action was likewise limited to 80 to 90 kilometres or so. A ruler or warlord might use an army to extract tax or tribute, but it required a formidable logistical exercise to employ it. By 700 BCE, Assyria had developed a standing army, with iron replacing bronze in weapons and armour, and cavalry replacing chariots. The Assyrian army may have been able to field as many as 50,000 men, which alone would have required a high degree of logistical acumen, but could operate up to 500 kilometres from its bases. The price of logistical failure could be severe. In 600 CE, the Chinese general Zheng Rentai led a force of 14,000 cavalry through a desert region after consuming all their food supplies, and the troops were forced to eat their horses and then each other. Only 800 men survived the ordeal.
Alexander the Great's father, Philip II of Macedon banned the use of carts on the grounds that they restricted the army's speed and mobility. Alexander continued this practice, with his army relying on horses and mules. He also used camels, many of which were captured along with Darius III's baggage train after the Battle of Issus. Although a cart drawn by a pair of oxen could carry up to , compared with about for pack horses, mules and camels, they could only travel at and be worked for five hours per day, whereas pack horses could travel at and be worked for eight hours per day. Carts were also liable to break down, especially in rough country. Some were necessary, however, for the carriage of heavy siege machinery.
The defences and fortifications of cities improved to the point where siege warfare became a complicated technological task, involving scaling ladders, battering rams, siege towers and tunnelling, and could take months. Supply of a besieging force required the transport or construction of special equipment as well as the provision of food and water. Siege warfare in the Hellenistic period used torsion artillery, which required special ropes. Women's hair was considered the best material for this. For one campaign, Rhodes collected 680 kg of hair. In a single night during the Siege of Rhodes in 305 BCE, 2,300 missiles were fired from torsion artillery.
In the imperial Roman army, each eight-man (squad) had a mule to carry the leather or goatskin tent large enough to accommodate the squad and tools, cooking implements and a handmill to grind grain, as that part of the ration was issued unground. Together with five days' rations, this weighed about , which was easily within the carrying capacity of eight men and a mule. Adding a second mule would allow the to carry an additional 11 to 13 days' rations. The Roman army ration included bread or biscuit, beef and veal, pork and sucking-pig, mutton and lamb, poultry, lentils, cheese, olive oil, wine or vinegar, and salt. This gave them about per day, which was similar to that of Alexander's men. An army of 60,000 required of water for the men and for the animals each day. Each had their own fire to cook their meals, so firewood had to be collected; Julius Caesar regarded a shortage of firewood to be as dangerous as one of water or fodder. The Olmecs used comales to prepare tortillas that could be retoasted and consumed en route, whereas the Maya lacked a good, transportable food, which made long-distance forays difficult.
The Romans constructed a network of roads to permit the rapid movement of wheeled vehicles. A road network was in existence in Italy as early as the third century BCE, and by the time of Diocletian the Roman Empire had of roads. The Roman army had no specialised engineering units, and roads were normally built by local communities, but the army could and did construct roads, especially near the frontiers. Roads were not necessary for the movement of troops, since the soldiers and their pack animals could travel along unimproved dirt tracks, but roads were used by supply trains and a military mail system. The Chinese also built a road network, as did the Maurya Empire in India, the Persians in Asia Minor, and the Moche in South America.
However, it was less expensive to ship a tonne of grain from Egypt to Rome by sea than to move it by road. The Romans preferred to use sea travel when they could, but it was risky as ships could be lost in storms. In his treatise on The Art of Commanding Armies, Polybius recommended that a commander have a thorough knowledge of how far ships could travel by day and night, and the optimal time and seasons for sea travel. Six months' supply of grain for an army of 40,000 would have weighed 6,320 tonnes, and could have been carried in 200 ships. In the second Persian invasion of Greece, Xerxes I was able to move a massive army by sea and provision it through depots stocked with food, water, and fodder. Alexander was supported by a fleet that supplied his army, but his crossing of the Gedrosian desert nearly came to grief because his fleet carrying food and water was delayed by onset of the southwest monsoon.
Middle Ages One of the most significant changes in military organisation in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century was the shift from a centrally organised army to a combination of military forces made up of local troops who often worked within the household during peace time and were provided food and drink from the high officials in the house. The magnates drew upon their own resources for their men, and during Charlemagne's reign and the reign of the Ottonian dynasty in Germany, some heads of house built permanent storages and dwellings to house men or supplies. Feudalism, under which a warrior nobility owed military obligations to their overlords, was a form of distributed military logistics system made necessary by poor communications and inadequate monetisation. In Anglo-Saxon England, King Ine of Wessex established a form of tax in kind known as the feorm, which allowed troops to be supported without cash purchases.
While on campaign, soldiers in the medieval period (the fifth to fifteenth centuries) in Europe were often responsible for supplying themselves, either through foraging, looting (more common during sieges), or purchases from markets along the campaign route. Even so, military commanders often provided their troops with food and supplies. This might be in lieu of wages if they worked within the king's household, but soldiers would be expected to pay for it from their wages if they did not, at cost or even with a profit.
Some early governments, such as the Carolingians in eighth century, required soldiers to supply their own food for three months, but would feed soldiers thereafter for free if the campaign or siege was ongoing. Later, during the Saxon revolt of 1077–1088, Saxon soldiers were required to bring supplies enough for the entire campaign. Some individual feats of logistics were formidable; after a seven-week campaign English archers shot up to half a million arrows during the battle of Crécy in 1346.