Originally posted by RobertCrandall
Could you tell me a little about modern resupply at the company level.
We used the M60A3s, so I don't know about the fuel consumption of M1s. I do remember, though, that the J series MTO&E did not include nearly enough tankers in the support platoon of each battalion to keep the M1s fed. They beefed the support platoons up prior to the Gulf War. You'd have to check somewhere to find consumption rates for M1s v. M60s. (Rats, I actually did a study on that when the brigade was transitioning into M1s, but it's been awhile, don't you know.)
That being said, you would want to keep your tanks above half full at all times, since you never knew when you might be committed to a long march or extended combat without the opportunity to top off the tanks. Obviously, how often you needed to be topped off would be dictated by how much maneuvering you were doing. With all of the electronics on board (computers, radios, and thermal sights) we would run the engines fairly regularly to keep the batteries charged, but idling didn't use that much fuel. Maneuvering obviously ate it up. I could see where, if you were maneuvering hard, e.g., in a fighting withdrawal or exploiting a breakthrough, you'd almost have to top off once a day, though you could make it two in a pinch (but you'd have no reserves). Sitting in a defensive position, you could go for days, but would probably top off every other day or so. As a side note, tankers cross-attached to infantry units relied on the infantry support platoon. Things may have changed with the introduction of the Bradley, but "in the day" the infantry battalions were hard-pressed to keep the tanks gassed up and, unless the infantry commanders had experience working with tanks, rarely planned properly for the huge increase in fuel required. But that's neither here nor there.
As far as how it was done, there really is no rule. The battalion has a support platoon that is supposed to keep the tanks fed. Since it is a battalion asset, they were pretty flexible. We tended to top off near a destination. In other words, if we were moving to the front or laterally across the front, you would top off near the destination. This would usually be done as part of the road march and at a predetermined point. The lead platoon would establish covering positions in all directions while the rest of the company just drove in. The tankers would line up on the side of the road (under cover like in the woods), and you would top off four tanks at a time. One of the trail platoons would provide security while the first platoon that initially provided security topped off. You could top off the company in probably fifteen or twenty minutes. Night time was obviously better but, provided there was sufficient cover, you could do it any time. I would think the biggest security risk was catching the tanks or the tankers on the open roads traveling to and from the refuel site rather than actually being exposed during refueling. In a road march situation where you had an entire battalion moving through, you'd often use division/support battalion assets to do the refueling.
So that's on a road march. I don't remember ever really practicing topping off in a battle position. Again, there really wasn't a rule. If you weren't expecting combat, you could probably drive the tanker to each vehicle. That's probably impractical, since the tank is probably in some kind of cover that would make it difficult to drive a tanker to - not to mention the tanker might be driving over nasty terrain. I would guess that for your purposes the more likely method would be to pull one tank from each platoon and send them to the tanker. If I were a company commander, I'd tell my platoon leaders where the gas was and have them rotate their tanks in and out as they saw fit. If they were spread out too far, I might move the tanker once or twice. I think you would simply use whatever system worked given the likelihood of contact, time of day, terrain, distance, the difficulty of moving the tanks, or whatever factors might be relevant.
Resupply of ammunition would work the same way. The ammunition - at least main gun ammunition - came in huge crates with each round enclosed in a cardboard "tootsie roll" canister. It was more unwieldy, and you were therefore more likely to either keep the truck still and let the tanks come to it or just dump the ammo at a central point, drive the truck away, and let the tanks pick up the ammo. Restocking main gun rounds always took more time than refueling.
Our battle plans called for the brigade's support battalion to drop caches of ammunition at subsequent battle positions. In other words, when we were in our initial battle position, a cache was supposed to be dropped near, say, our third battle position so that, when we moved to our third battle position, we could restock our ammunition fairly quickly. That's not something that you could really practice, and I was never convinced that it would work. I certainly wasn't convinced that the support battalion would ever get around to doing that in the chaos of the moment. In any event, I always assumed that we'd be pretty hotly pursued and wouldn't have time to have the entire company drive through the cache area. But, if the SB did drop off a cache, each company had some trucks so that, in a pinch, you could do some resupplying, but it would be a field expedient measure.
Since the companies are supplied primarily by the battalion's support platoon, resupply would be fairly flexible. In the heat of battle, though, I could see where each company would want to be resupplied at the first lull, and the support platoon would be overwhelmed. The support platoon would do what it could when it could. Priority would obviously be given to the company with the worst needs. Each company would provide a status report at least once a day. I think these were used as much for battalion ordering from higher up than deciding what to send forward. The battalion was small enough that supplying forward was just as easily done by an XO calling the battalion S4 and screaming about his situation.
Supplies were pushed up to the brigade support battalion. Given the limited capability of the battalion support platoon, I don't think you could push much to it. They would run their tankers back to the support battalion when dry. The support platton also had limited lift capability so that much of the heavy stuff like main gun ammo would probably be delivered to the unit or to a cache by support battalion vehicles. And, whenever possible, you'd refuel in the rear using division/support battalion assets. Since a company has no place to store excess, I guess you'd have to say that company resupply was done on a demand basis, though you would "push" supply to the company at each opportunity to top off tanks and ammo.
At the tactical level, I don't think the supply chain is affected by EW that much. The trucks don't have radios anyway, and coordinating a resupply took enough time that it was probably as efficient to just have the first sergeant drive to battalion to make arrangements. Once a plan was made, the first sergeant could be back at the unit to relay the plan before the resupply trucks rolled, so no time lost. Or, if battalion decided to set up a forward resupply point, it could just have somebody drive to each company and tell them where it was and when they were to use it.
Things might be more problematic at higher levels, though. I know that the support battalion was nothing but a huge antenna farm, and anyone RDFing would quickly find them. An artillery strike would have been pretty effective if they were in range. Though the brigade S4 track was supposed to co-locate with the SB, we always parked several hundred meters away to keep ourselves from getting caught in something aimed for them. But, in general, supply took so much time to coordinate and there were so many staff officers running around on the road all the time living off of coffee that I believe that most resupply stuff could be handled without the use of radios. Radios were needed a lot more for calling for fire or maneuvering units. If the situation was so fast moving that you needed radios to coordinate supply, you probably would have a hard time actually resupplying even if you did actually get the trucks and tanks together. Personal opinion, though.
If there were supply disruptions, I think the pinch would be felt with ammunition before fuel (assuming you're in contact). This may not have been true in the Gulf War where there was much more maneuver than targets. But I think (never having fought the WP in Europe) that some companies could have pissed off most of their ammunition in a day and still have plenty of fuel. Other companies, of course, may not have been seriously engaged and still have plenty of ammo when they start getting concerned about a fuel top off. Assuming that you are not running like hell forward or back over long distances, you should have enough fuel for two days, and you could top off fuel quicker and easier than you could ammunition. In other words, if combat is so intense that you can't resupply, you're more likely to run low on ammo than fuel.
I've always thought that the bigger problems were grand tactical or strategic. Did corps or army have enough assets to keep the divisions and brigades supplied? Were the strategic level depots secure from air attack, special forces, or chemical strikes? Were there enough supplies of critical things like Stingers in theatre? If supplies got to division, I think things would flow pretty well from that point forward. If they didn't, it was probably because of the tactical situation and not a problem with assets or coordination.
Blah, blah, blah.
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