US Army relies on Pacific allies, exercises to sustain supply lines

WASHINGTON ― U.S. Army commanders overseeing forces in the Indo-Pacific outlined on Monday their work with allies and partners in the region to sustain the supply lines that allow the service to maintain forces throughout the broad, diffuse area.

“This mesh network of friends, partners and allies helps us to accomplish the things that the Army needs to have done,” Lt. Gen. Xavier Brunson, who commands the Army’s I Corps, said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference. “One of those things is we’ve got to build interior lines.”

Brunson oversees Operation Pathways, which focuses on collaborating with regional partners like Japan, South Korea and Australia to expand and sustain the U.S. Army’s role in the Pacific through a series of military exercises. He noted I Corps spends eight to 10 months of the year in the Pacific campaigning — a term that describes the ongoing rotation of forces throughout the region to maintain readiness in the event of a conflict.

The Biden administration in recent years has focused on bolstering U.S. force posture throughout the Pacific with the aim of deterring China via a series of exercises and basing agreements with countries such as the Philippines.

“I would say Operation Pathways this year was unique from a logistics perspective,” said Maj. Gen. Jered Helwig, the head of the Army’s 8th Theater Sustainment Command, based out of Hawaii.

“When you take all of those exercise[s] and look at it holistically from a logistics and sustainment perspective, then your sustainment as a warfighting function, your logistics as a warfighting function, is able to actualize and pull on all those threads that are required to really get after the learning objectives,” Helwig added.

The two-star noted that keeping Army equipment in places like Australia allows the force to maintain a presence in the Pacific. The country would serve as a useful starting point if a conflict were to erupt in the region.

“As logisticians, we need to be successful and to understand the theater and to really set conditions for those joint interior lines,” Helwig said, “and build out that architecture that we know that, if we don’t rehearse in competition, will be very difficult to execute in crisis.”

The multilateral military cooperation also extends to other readiness areas, such as blood sharing.

“We’ve got a range, a range of things that we’re doing with blood, from research and development with blood products, to blood sharing agreements with our partners,” said Maj. Gen. Paula Lodi, the head of the Army’s 18th Medical Command.

Bryant Harris is the Congress reporter for Defense News. He has covered U.S. foreign policy, national security, international affairs and politics in Washington since 2014. He has also written for Foreign Policy, Al-Monitor, Al Jazeera English and IPS News.

华盛顿——周一，负责监督印太地区部队的美国陆军指挥官概述了他们与该地区盟友和伙伴合作，以维持补给线的工作，使陆军能够在广阔分散的地区维持部队。

“这种由朋友、伙伴和盟友组成的网络帮助我们完成陆军需要完成的任务，”陆军第一军军长泽维尔·布伦森中将在美国陆军协会年会上说。“其中一项任务就是构筑内线防线。”

布伦森负责“路径行动”，该行动旨在通过一系列军事演习，与日本、韩国和澳大利亚等区域伙伴合作，扩大并巩固美国陆军在太平洋地区的作用。他指出，第一军每年有八到十个月的时间在太平洋地区执行作战任务——“作战任务”一词指的是在整个地区持续轮换部署部队，以保持战备状态，应对可能发生的冲突。

近年来，拜登政府一直致力于加强美国在整个太平洋地区的军事部署，旨在通过一系列演习和与菲律宾等国的军事基地协议来威慑中国。

“我认为今年的‘路径行动’从后勤角度来看是独一无二的，”驻扎在夏威夷的陆军第8战区保障司令部司令杰里德·赫尔维格少将说道。

“当你把所有这些演习都从后勤和保障的角度整体地看待时，你的保障作为一项作战职能，你的后勤作为一项作战职能，就能够真正实现并牵动所有必要的线索，从而真正实现学习目标，”赫尔维格补充道。

这位少将指出，在澳大利亚等地保留陆军装备，能够使美军在太平洋地区保持存在。如果该地区爆发冲突，澳大利亚将是一个有用的出发点。

“作为后勤人员，我们需要取得成功，了解战场情况，真正为联合内线创造条件，”赫尔维格说，“并构建出我们知道的架构，如果我们不在竞争中进行演练，那么在危机中执行起来将会非常困难。”

多边军事合作还扩展到其他战备领域，例如血液共享。

“我们在血液方面有很多用途，从血液制品的研究和开发，到与合作伙伴的血液共享协议，”陆军第18医疗司令部司令保拉·洛迪少将说。

布莱恩特·哈里斯是《防务新闻》的国会记者。自2014年以来，他一直在华盛顿报道美国外交政策、国家安全、国际事务和政治。他还曾为《外交政策》、《Al-Monitor》、《半岛电视台英语频道》和IPS新闻撰稿。