ogistics is the “Achilles heel” of any military operation. Without adequate logistics, military operations eventually lose momentum and fail to break the adversary's will to fight. For this reason integrated logistic support provides a capability that is essential to every military organisation. Military organisations must replenish combat consumables, maintain and repair damaged systems and provide medical support in order to sustain military operations. However, logistical support can be misapplied and fail to get to the right place at the right time. Entire stocks of supplies might be available, but cannot be transported to where they are needed because logistical transport vehicles have insufficient communications to rapidly alter their deliveries as the operational situation changes. Military vehicles might perform well against the enemy but are too difficult to repair by local maintenance crews. Emergency medical equipment might stabilise combat wounded on the battlefield but are incompatible with airlift and ambulance vehicles needed for transport to field hospitals. Solving the system integration problem is complex and requires a holistic understanding of the military organisation and how it fights and sustains operations.

Military organisations are complex entities that consist of doctrine and force structure, networks, platforms and systems and people. Doctrine and force structure are defined by the organisation's order of battle and business processes. The network is defined by the organisation's communications and information exchange capability. Systems are defined by the organisation's sensors, command and control and lethality capability and the platforms that support them. People are defined by the organisation's leadership, culture and decision-making ability. A military organisation is also biased by its culture and experience when determining acceptable and unacceptable solutions. For instance, some military organisations prefer to rely on voice and minimal wireless communications because it is stealthier and it forces its people to visualise information in their mind, independent of technological devices. Other organisations prefer robust non-voice digital communications because it is easily shared and it improves overall situational awareness. One is not necessarily better than the other. Military success still relies on training and the skill of the people using the systems.

Figure 1 provides a holistic view of a military organisation and its four major areas: Operations, Networks, Systems and People. As with real military organisations People are in the centre and connect operations with networks and systems. This view is intended to reduce complexity and allow additional insight into the problem. Operations, Networks and Systems can have their own structure or architecture, but they are also dependent on each other. Operations provide the purpose and manner in which military organisations conduct operations. Networks and Systems provide People with the toolset to conduct the operations. Integrated logistics can also be described in terms of Operations, Network, Systems and People.

With the popularity of common, modular and open system and network architectures, the holistic view can be further simplified. These architectures are more flexible and facilitate the use of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) and Modified Off the Shelf

(MOTS) products that can be used in a “plug and play” manner through common interfaces.
Figure 2 shows the holistic view when common, modular and open architectures are used.