Setting Conditions to Achieve Effects for Sustainment Operations

Army sustainment formations are responsible for ensuring freedom of maneuver, extending operational reach, and prolonging endurance for movement and maneuver forces. For ground operations, the ability to accomplish these sustainment tasks often depends on maintaining lines of communication (LOCs) that span hundreds of miles. Maintaining open LOCs is a multifunctional problem set that the staffs of expeditionary sustainment commands (ESCs) and sustainment brigades often struggle to solve. Some of the challenges of keeping LOCs open include interference from civilian populations, host-nation leaders, and adversarial forces as well as restrictive terrain, negative public perceptions, contract disputes, union confrontations, and cyber threats. The Mission Command Training Program’s (MCTP’s) Operations Group Sierra has identified that ESC and sustainment brigade staffs do not leverage all available assets to protect LOCs because they do not participate in their supported unit’s targeting process. Sustainment brigades and ESCs OP ER AT IO NS