Sustaining The Personnel Component of Combat Power During Large-Scale Combat Operations
W
ith the publication of Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations, in 2017, the Army acknowledges that the current operational environment presents significantly more dangerous threats in terms of capability and magnitude than those faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. These rising threats, along with the evolution of the current operational environment, have caused the Army to shift its focus away from counterinsurgency operations (COIN) to an approach that is multi-domain and large-scale combat operations (LSCO) centric. Following the publication of FM 3-0, the Army published a revision of Army Regulation 600-8-111, Army Mobilization, Manning, and Wartime Replacement Operations.
32 |
July-September 2021
|
By Lt. Col. Derrick Lucarelli
One of the updates within this revision was the Army Enterprise’s wartime replacement roles and responsibilities and how wartime replacements would be sourced—with either unit replacements or non-unit related personnel (NRP) (formally known as individual replacements). Similarly, utilizing FM 3-0 as its basis, the sustainment enterprise updated its cornerstone doctrine with the revision of FM 4-0, Sustainment Operations, which annotates how the sustainment enterprise supports LSCO. LSCO are intense, lethal, and brutal and may produce casualty rates at a scope and scale the Army has not encountered since the Korean or Vietnam Wars. This rise in anticipated casualty rates and the increased demand for NRP replacement operations capacity provides an emerging problem
Army Sustainment
set for the sustainment enterprise that challenges its ability to “enable freedom of action, create strategic and operational reach, and provide the joint force with prolonged endurance” Field Manual 4-0, Sustainment Operations, that is necessary for mission success in LSCO. Specifically, its ability to support NRP replacement operations to maintain combat power. FM 4-0 identifies sustainment commands as responsible for reception, staging, onward-movement, and integration (RSOI) as directed by the Army service component command (ASCC). RSOI is an essential task that facilitates the flow of NRP replacements into a theater. Normally “the theater sustainment command (TSC) will be assigned that responsibility and subordinate units of the TSC from an expeditionary
