Readiness is no longer a function of platforms alone. Discussions at the 2026 Department of War Maintenance Symposium made that clear, showing that true readiness is also constrained by supply chain and sustainment realities, especially the weakest links in a complex, interdependent industrial base that underpins every maintenance action and operational plan.
Across multiple sessions, the symposium framed this challenge through an emerging lens: the Logistics Deterrent Effect. When adversaries see forces that can rapidly repair, replenish, and respond under pressure, they see a force that can fight tonight and recover tomorrow.
Taken together, these conditions signal something more profound at work. Logistics no longer plays a background role in supporting operations; it is a chain of deliberate decisions where a single failure can be as consequential as missing a target.
This is why even a brief slowdown, blind spot, or single point of failure anywhere in the chain can quickly cascade into fleet unavailability, degraded readiness rates, or lost operational tempo. By reframing logistics as a kill chain, and reinforcing every link through data integration, industrial base resilience, and advanced analytics, the DoW can transform sustainment into a decisive source of deterrence with an AI ecosystem for readiness.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
1. Why Does Sustainment Need to Be Reframed
In operational warfighting, a kill chain fails when sensors are not connected to shooters. Sustainment is no different. Readiness now depends on extending that chain—from sensor to shooter to sustainer to supplier —to keep operational demand, maintenance capacity, and supply response aligned.
At the enterprise level, that alignment is realized through the logistics kill chain. It begins with demand forecasting, passes through procurement and production, and ends with mission-capable platforms, parts, and personnel in contested environments. But this chain can be extremely fragile: forecasts that fail to reflect operational tempo misalign supplier production. Long-lead items lag demand signals by months or years. Depot capacity constraints create backlogs that ripple across fleets.
Individually, these are all maintenance problems, but collectively, they are readiness risks. Without end-to-end data visibility across the chain, leaders are often stuck managing outputs rather than shaping outcomes.
2. How to Build Readiness Alongside Industrial Resilience
If the first step is understanding how the logistics kill chain fails, the next is understanding why—particularly within the industrial base that sustains it.
Multiple sessions highlighted how the weakest link in the chain can become when industrial capacity, workforce constraints, or supplier visibility are misaligned with operational demand. Parts manufacturers, organic depots, and commercial maintenance partners are not peripheral to operations—they are integral pieces in the logistics kill chain.
Some suppliers are adopting advanced analytics to help them predict failures and optimize production, while others still operate with limited visibility into downstream demand or upstream constraints. The result is a sustainment enterprise that is only as strong as its least digitized partner. Without early insight into vulnerabilities across the supplier ecosystem, sustainment organizations are pushed into reactive mode—responding to disruptions only after readiness has already been impacted.
These risks exist even in steady-state operations, but they become unavoidable in contested or forward deployed environments. Expeditionary sustainment depends on knowing—not guessing—what parts, skills, and tools will be needed and when. In these scenarios, poor forecasts or supplier delays are not administrative inconveniences; they are liabilities to the entire mission.
3. What Role Does Decision Intelligence Play in Reinforcing the Chain
While the challenges are widely shared, the symposium made clear that Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Space Force logistics data often remain siloed by service, system, or program office. Each service has made progress optimizing its own maintenance and supply chains, yet holistic visibility remains limited.
This fragmentation limits the DoW’s ability to identify systemic risks across the industrial base. Joint operations demand joint logistics understanding; a supplier bottleneck affecting one service today may affect another tomorrow. Without integrated analytics, these risks remain invisible until readiness is already degraded.
Reinforcing the logistics kill chain requires more than incremental improvements—it requires decision intelligence. It requires AI-powered analytics that connect different service forecasts, supplier capacity, depot workloads, and operational demand into a unified readiness picture. This shift requires moving from reactive sustainment to proactive risk management across the chain.
With integrated data, leaders can begin asking better questions:
- Where is the logistics kill chain most fragile?
- Which suppliers represent single points of failure?
- How will a disruption in one region or program propagate across the enterprise?
Answering these questions is essential to sustaining readiness at speed and scale.
Why Does the Shift From Maintenance to Mission Assurance Matter?
This year’s symposium made one point unmistakably clear: sustainment is no longer just about keeping equipment running. It is about supporting missions across the services by reinforcing the links that determine operational success.
Meeting that challenge requires investment not only in platforms and production capacity, but in the industrial base and the intelligence that enables it. When logistics flows are visible, resilient, and adaptive, they send a powerful signal that U.S. forces are ready to sustain the fight tonight, tomorrow, and beyond.
In future conflicts, the side that sustains fastest will shape the outcome. Strengthening the logistics kill chain today ensures readiness remains a strategic advantage, not a hidden vulnerability.
