Sustainment under strike and sabotage: Contested logistics in the Wider North

Executive summary

• The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) can no longer assume a permissive environment for logistics operations across Europe. Failure to secure supply lines in the event of a conflict risks delays to reinforcement, heavy pre-battle attrition of critical assets, and a potential collapse in frontline combat effectiveness.
• The contested logistics environment can be broken down into four challenges: geographic chokepoints; limited lift capacity; limited militarily useful infrastructure; and limited defences for supply lines.
• Options for bolstering supply line resilience include better leveraging of commercial capacity and expertise, investing more in hardening primary logistics sites and routes and exploring redundancy, establishing dedicated logistics defences, and baking contested logistics assumptions into exercises.