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Updated: June 12, 2025
Logistics, of course, does provide what strategy wants, in so far as it can; but in order that satisfactory results may be obtained, the fullest co-operation between strategy and logistics is essential; and to this end frequent conferences are required between the officers representing both.
The art of war, as generally considered, consists of five purely military branches, viz.: Strategy, Grand Tactics, Logistics, Engineering, and Tactics. A sixth and essential branch, hitherto unrecognized, might be termed Diplomacy in its relation to War.
This reasoning shows that to carry out the plans of strategy, logistics would have to provide plans and means to execute those plans, whereby our existing fleet, plus all the additions which strategy demanded, would be waiting at whatever points on the ocean strategy might indicate, before the coming enemy would reach those points.
To carry out this plan, strategy must make a sufficiently grave estimate of the situation; and logistics must make calculations to supply the most difficult demands that the estimate of the situation indicates as reasonable, and then arrange the means to provide what the calculations show.
For instance, the march of Napoleon by the Saint-Bernard to fall upon the communications of Mélas, those made in 1805 by Donauwerth to cut off Mack, and in 1806 by Gera to turn the Prussians, the march of Suwaroff from Turin to the Trebbia to meet Macdonald, that of the Russian army on Taroutin, then upon Krasnoi, were decisive operations, not because of their relation to Logistics, but on account of their strategic relations.
The work of preparing all that part of the naval machine which in time of peace is separate from the active fleet is purely one of logistics; it is that part of the preparation which calculates what ways and means are needed, and then supplies those ways and means.
The art of war, independently of its political and moral relations, consists of five principal parts, viz.: Strategy, Grand Tactics, Logistics, Tactics of the different arms, and the Art of the Engineer. We will treat of the first three branches, and begin by defining them.
The army camped together, marching by lines or by wings; and, as there were two cavalry wings and two infantry wings, if the march was by wings four columns were thus formed. This method simplified logistics very much, since it was only necessary to give such orders as the following: "The army will move in such direction, by lines or by wings, by the right or by the left."
In the earlier editions of this work I followed the example of other military writers, and called by the name of logistics the details of staff duties, which are the subject of regulations for field-service and of special instructions relating to the corps of quartermasters. This was the result of prejudices consecrated by time. Logistics was then quite limited.
Of the strategic value to the staff of the practical solutions of this class of problems by the fleet, there can be little question; and the records made if kept up to date, would give data in future wars for future staffs, of what the whole fleet, and parts of it acting with the fleet, can reasonably be expected to accomplish, especially from the standpoint of logistics.
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