James M. Berry, MA

In December 2014, I was on a C-130 flying into northern Iraq. I was trained and equipped for combat, but my mission was not to fight ISIS directly. Instead, the mission of our three-man team was to build a logistics plan for the coalition forces fighting the Islamic State in Iraqi Kurdistan. The U.S. Army had deployed American troops into Iraq weeks earlier, following the invasion of ISIS in 2014. These initial forces were combat-heavy, mostly comprised of U.S. Army Special Forces teams sent to assist Peshmerga fighters. The U.S. forces were quickly joined by teams from other allied nations. Together with the Kurds, and with a few U.S. led “strike cells” that coordinated air support, the Coalition stopped ISIS in northern Iraq.  I played a small part in the operation, but felt that we had been successful in transforming the site into a logistics hub. In seven months, we had built three dining facilities, an ammunition storage depot, a fuel distribution center, and a post office. As our location improved, more allies arrived and joined in the fight. Our site achieved a balance between its combat element and its support capability during a modern war.

This relationship between combat and support personnel is referred to as the “tooth-to-tail ratio.” John J. McGrath defined the ratio as “the number of troops in a military organization employed in combat duties versus the number functioning in noncombat roles.” McGrath’s study, along with other recent scholarship, illustrates how the Army’s essential need for logistics support has grown into a tail that is too large, too expensive, and too inefficient. As an active-duty Army Logistics officer with ten years of experience, I have witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. I know how essential battlefield support is to American warfighters. At the same time, I have experienced the enormous waste and inefficiency of the current system of Army logistics in action.

Trends in the Tooth-to-Tail Ratio Since World War I

McGrath analyzes the trends of combat and support personnel in the Army from WWI to 2007 and presents some interesting findings. Since 1945, the “tail” portion of the Army had steadily grown larger while the “tooth” portion has decreased as a percentage of the entire force. For example, in the 1945 European Theater of Operations (ETO), 39% of the Army consisted of combat troops. McGrath compares this to the 2005 Army in Iraq, a force with only 28% combat troops. The logistics and support percentage had not only grown larger but had become almost 75% of the boots on the ground.

These types of comparisons spark debates, and cause Americans to wonder if the growth in the Army’s logistics tail is related to the skyrocketing expense of the Department of Defense or to the military’s failure to win decisive victories in the last three prolonged conflicts: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam. If 39% were needed to defeat Germany, could a higher percentage of combat troops in Iraq have defeated the insurgency? McGrath highlights another element to the growth in logistics, the increase in military civilians and contractors. He explains that since the Gulf War, there has been a “great expansion” in the use of contractors, mostly “employed in logistical or life support functions.” This was certainly the case in my own experience. Although I encountered a few armed security contractors in Iraq, most were hired to cook, clean, and maintain equipment.

McGrath’s study of the “tooth-to-tail” ratio revealed that since WWI, the U.S. Army had won complete victories when the Army contained more combat troops as a percentage of the overall manpower. This was the case in WWI (28%), WWII (19%), and the Gulf War of 1991 (17%). The Army struggled to win in wars with less combat power; Korea (7.5%), Vietnam (7.2%), and Iraq (11%). This could be a coincidence. The Allied victories in both world wars and in Kuwait resulted from several factors other than the composition of the U.S. Army. I am not suggesting that the “tooth-to-tail” ratio is the only reason the U.S. Army won some wars and failed to win others. However, I am suggesting that McGrath and others have presented research that should be considered as part of the larger discussion of Army logistics and American military history. These studies also illustrate how the American “tail” began to grow so large and what can be done to correct it.

McGrath argues that the turning point in the U.S. Army’s “tooth-to-tail” ratio was during the modernization and mechanization of the world wars. As the Army adopted the use of tanks, airplanes, and machine guns, it was forced to rethink how it supported combat forces. This is the heart of my graduate research – how the U.S. Army adapted its logistics operations from pre-modern warfare to the mechanized warfare of the twentieth century. For example, supporting a soldier during the Civil War required planning for forage, ammunition, water, and rations. In the second World War, supporting a tank required almost a dozen trucks carrying fuel, munitions, and spare parts. As weapon systems became more modern and more complex, the demands on logisticians increased in proportion. McGrath explained how the M1 Abrams tank consumes three times as much fuel as its predecessor, the M60 Patton. The upgrade gave the Army more teeth, but also more tail.

Problems Caused by the Logistics Tail

A 2014 study by Jacques S. Gansler and William Lucyshyn explained the urgency of the problem. The DoD’s enormous budget is straining the U.S. government’s resources and drawing the attention of fiscally conservative politicians. As of 2014, only 17% of the DoD was classified as performing combat roles. Gansler and Lucyshyn went on to argue that structural problems within the DoD are the main cause for concern, for both the inefficiency of Army logistics and the unsustainable costs of the American military. Their research details the difference in how the private sector managed to limit its “tooth-to-tail” ratio while the DoD’s steadily increased.

Gansler and Lucyshyn found five problems with way the DoD manages its logistics tail. These include “brass /creep,” the tendency for the military to employ more general officers and senior leaders than necessary in proportion to the number of combat troops. This results in more bureaucrats in the DoD than warfighting soldiers. The study also highlights the Army’s inefficiency with supply chain management, its inefficient uses of its personnel, and its duplication and redundancy. The conclusion is that without the force of competition, which compels private industry to reduce logistics waste, the military suffers from a lack of oversight, expertise, and accountability. The growth of the U.S. Army’s logistics tail is a result of modernization, but the unsustainable growth and expense is not necessary.

Possible Solutions

There are realistic ways to trim the size of the U.S. Army’s logistics tail while maintaining its military dominance. Gansler and Lucyshyn’s study offers four concrete suggestions. These include methods learned from private-sector organizations that would increase accountability and incentivize efficiency. It also suggests separating essential functions from non-essential, so that the military can outsource logistics when appropriate and use its manpower to focus on essential logistics tasks only. The third recommendation targets inefficiency and redundancy. The final suggestion involves the use of modern logistics practices and technology to improve the performance of the Army’s support personnel and practices.

With over two million employees, the U.S. Department of Defense is the largest employer in the world. However, when Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, the United States had fewer than 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, roughly .001% of its DoD personnel. It had over 18,000 contractors in Afghanistan, most of whom worked in logistics. My experience in Iraq demonstrated that although warfighting “teeth” need support, it is important to deploy the appropriate resources for each situation. Recent experience and scholarly research suggest that the U.S. Army wins when it deploys the maximum number of warfighting combat soldiers with the minimum logistics tail. Supply and support operations are essential to combat operations, but must remain deployable, expeditionary, and appropriately scaled in ratio to the number of combat troops. The trend in modern U.S. Army history has been for the logistics tail to grow increasingly larger, more complex, and more expensive, but this growth in support has not always contributed to battlefield victory.

James is a PhD student at the University of Southern Mississippi focusing on US Army history, specifically Army logistics between the Spanish American War and the First World War. He is working under the direction of Dr. Andrew Wiest.  His previous graduate research focused on the military history of South Carolina. His MA thesis was entitled “The Surrender of Charleston in 1780” and examined the American defense during the siege of Charleston and effect of the surrender on the outcome of the American War for Independence. He is a native of South Carolina and an active duty U.S. Army logistics officer with previous assignments in Fort Stewart, Fort Lee, Germany, Kuwait, and Iraq. Following his graduate coursework at Southern Miss, James will serve as an academic instructor in the History Department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.