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Comment by evrydayhustling | Hacker News Reader

An army officer once gave me an amazing rundown of the ways deployed units have to recreate so many layers of infrastructure we take for granted. Military units really have to carry a whole version of their civilization with them, and how long they can maintain it determines their effectiveness (which is why most of military history is about logistics improvements creating newly dominant forces).

The challenges have a lot in common with space travel - not surprising that 3D printing has spurred so much imagination on both sides.

Side note: there's a quote in the article where Gen. Walters is envying what young engineers can do with this stuff. That's one of my favorite signals for tech that's not hype -- when it makes successful pros wish they were born a little later.

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The US Military is a logistics organization that happens to fight wars.

Many years ago, I worked with a gentleman who was a reservist with the air national guard.

For one of their weekend sorties, they had an entire platoon parachute out, and one of the other transport aircraft dropped equipment for creating a runway. At the end of the weekend, they flew back to land and pick everyone and the equipment used to build said runway, and then flew back to the base.

Truly a work of logistical and infrastructure art.

Wow, what was the runway material?

Tangent: I've long wondered when we'd see invention of drop-in roads - transportable segments of self-leveling roadways, robust enough for heavy use & a substantial lifespan yet easily disconnected & replaced (unlike current stubbornly permanent structures). In that context, I'm interested to the answer to your question.

These do exist. They are used all the time for land-based oil rigs. Search for oilfield temporary roads.

Probably Marston mat or one of its successors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marston_Mat

Don't know the specifics of the GP's story, but nowadays, it's mostly aluminum sheeting boards that lock together which are painted with a non-slip paint. It's actually quite impressive, seamless joins, etc.

The old Martson matting worked, but were FOD hazards as well since sand and rocks would often come up through the joins. You definitely don't forget landing on one though, really wakes you up as the aircraft shakes itself like crazy on roll-out.

I believe they simply graded earth using a grader. Hauling in their own gravel or other material would've been cost prohibitive.

Are you sure they built a runway? Sounds more like a FARP for helicopters.

Pretty much all US combat aircraft are tarmac bound due to low mounted engine inlets, with the exception of a couple transports and the A-10.

I was pretty sure my coworker said it was a runway (they used C-130s out of Peoria IL and based on the description it sounded like they were doing STOL exercises) but I’ll message him on LinkedIn to double check.

A C-130 would be a natural for such an exercise, it's in the ANG inventory and is fully capable of landing and taking off on such improvised runways. I imagine your recollection is accurate.

We did that a time or two, jumped out of the same aircraft that later picked us up. Battalion sized operation because that's the smallest jumps we would do.

We didn't have to build a runway or anything like that, they just landed the C-130s on the dirt runway we "tookdown".

--edit--

Now that I think about it that's when we were doing a lot of training on taking down small runways for the War on Drugs -- between the Panama Invasion and Gulf War I. The mission was to jump in, cause a world of hurt to the cartel and then get picked up and fly home.

Yes.

During the American Revolutionary War where the Americans moved the artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston over the winter of 1775-6 (still an era where the military response to winter was to hunker down somewhere and wait for spring before doing anything), and then proceeded to install them on heights overlooking the harbor overnight.

In WWII, the US managed the astounding feat of supplying the majority of the logistics on what was effectively three separate fronts (North Africa and later the Western Front via the semi-interdicted Atlantic, the Eastern Front via the Northwest Staging Route and Siberia, and the Pacific Theater, including mainland China via the Hump). It was the experience of The Hump that led the military to try relieving Berlin by air, which almost everyone thought impossible at the time but instead turned out to be a smashing success.

Note that in this era, if a farmer wanted to move west in search of cheaper/richer farmland, you would do it in the winter. Without paved roads, loading all of your stuff into a cart and driving it in the summer would mean you could get stuck in the mud. It was a far better option to load a sled in the winter.

The King's troops, growing up in a climate where snow doesn't (well, in 2018. I don't know about 1756) really stick to the ground, probably indeed would not have expected this.

It's my recollection people heading west to Oregon and beyond would aim for making it to Independence Rock, WY before independence day in the summer to avoid having to attempt traversing the Rockies in winter.

In the era in question westward movement was towards and over the Adirondacks. Formidable obstacle for ox-drawn sleds, but nothing like the Rockies...

Broadly correct, though I think you mean the Berkshires, not the Adirondacks. Albany -> Rochester is not mountainous, which is why the erie canal went that route.

Specifically, the Mohawk Valley. Still 600+ locks, but tenable in 1825.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohawk_Valley

A frost fair was held on the Thames that very winter of 1776 [1], so I imagine the British were familiar with hard winters.

The problem was more that the professionals couldn't predict the actions of highly motivated amateurs.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs

Oh interesting. I assume some combination of climate change (including the Little Ice Age?) and a greater urban heat island have made the difference. People in my office (in London) had some amusing reactions to snow that would not have closed school where I grew up (near Albany, NY).

FWIW those levels of snow wouldn't have closed schools in the UK 20 years ago either.

Primary Schools in particular are very risk averse now.

There's an old joke about American military doctrine:

The Soviets: "One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."

The Nazis: "The reason that the American army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos and the American army practices chaos on a daily basis."

America: "If we don't know what we are doing, the enemy certainly can't anticipate our future actions!"

Is that really the reason? If you are heading west because you want to farm, wouldn't it be better to leave in winter and arrive in time for planting season than leave in summer and wait 9 months to plant?

Indeed. One could also argue that fighting wars is primarily a logistics problem that sometimes involves using weapons.

I'm trying to think of a logistics company that doesn't fight wars. Maybe USPS or Fedex?

UPS could easily pivot; they have a ton of ex-military in their ranks. Only now do I understand why!

Walmart

FedEx was started by a marine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith

Waffle House

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-waffle-house-is-clos...

Formula 1 teams ? Moving all that equipment around the world, a lot of times on tight deadlines must not be easy.

Amazon.

Sears, a few decades ago.

McDonalds

Coca-cola

>"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics." - Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980

>"I am tempted to make a slightly exaggerated statement: that logistics is all of war-making, except shooting the guns, releasing the bombs, and firing the torpedoes." - ADM Lynde D. McCormick, USN

The US military, and especially the USMC, is able to mount operations almost anywhere on the planet on reasonably short notice. Very few other countries have the capability to field a sizable force far from home. Most can't operate far from their permanent bases. Even the UK has trouble - they've downsized so much.

That's what makes the US military so expensive. On the other hand, the US does so much of this that everybody knows the US can do it. The USMC tries for a high tooth-to-tail ratio, which is great for short wars, and not so good for really long ones. (Wars seem to be either week long or decade long now. Not much in between.)

China is working on getting more capability in force projection, but it's slow going. The USSR had a reasonable capability, which ran down after the breakup of the USSR. Russia is trying to build it back up.

There was fascinating BBC documentary covering the Napoleonic wars and how the British had organic logistics where as the French had to split up to forage.

And to this day British vehicles have a variant of a Crimean war piece of kit to heat water / food - which is/was an object of envy of US forces

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