It’s an uncomfortable truth that we can’t know precisely what the next war will look like. But it is equally true that defense planners, military practitioners, and strategists have a professional obligation to do their best to forecast the character of a future conflict in order to guide the way we prepare for it. The place to start is with what we know to be true and the evidence-backed assumptions we have the most confidence in. We can be all but certain, for instance, that a conflict in the Indo-Pacific region would be characterized by contested logistics.
Unfortunately, in the ongoing public discussion on contested logistics in the Indo-Pacific region, two topics have gotten far less attention than they warrant. First, despite the Indo-Pacific being one of the most heavily urbanized regions in the world,, with most of these urban spaces situated in the littoral zone, fewer commentaries focus on the problem presented by combat operations in the most likely ultimate battleground, that of Indo-Pacific urban littoral battlespaces. Second, even fewer commentaries emphasize the necessity for JLOTS (joint logistics over-the shore) operations—in short, a way to “enter a land area from sea despite insufficient port infrastructure”—in sustaining an Indo-Pacific fight. This is puzzling, especially when operational planners employing a worst-case-scenario paradigm must assume that a conveniently located port is either degraded or totally nonfunctional, in which case JLOTS operations are effectively the only viable sustainment alternative. Perhaps part of the problem is that most—but by no means all—commentators perceive operations in the Indo-Pacific region primarily as a maritime and air domain fight.
In recent years, despite the Pentagon’s public acknowledgement that China is the United States’ pacing threat, US defense publications have featured little commentary recognizing contested multidomain logistics, JLOTS, and urban littorals as critical elements of Indo-Pacific logistics—with a few important but rare exceptions. The same is true in my country, where despite the 2023 Defence Strategic Review specifically directing the Australian Army to focus on amphibious operations in the littoral environment to the archipelagic north of Australia, there has also been a lack of commentary that considers all three relevant elements, particularly urban littorals—though also with notable exceptions.
If we’re serious about being ready to fight in the Indo-Pacific, then we need a conceptual framework to understand contested logistics in that region. And it is imperative that it accounts for such a conflict’s multidomain character, emphasizes the importance of JLOTS, and acknowledges the challenges of operating in the region’s urban littoral environments. Taken together, these three elements form what I have conceived as the contested logistics triad, which should take its place as the conceptual framework we currently lack.
I have yet to see these key elements represented in this way elsewhere in either Australian or US operational commentaries. My intention is for nonspecialist US and Australian readers—those without professional logistics experience—to be able to grasp the true dimensions of the problem of multidomain Indo-Pacific sustainment at a glance by understanding this contested logistics triad. Effective sustainment in the Indo-Pacific area of operations must consider all three elements, particularly the two that have received less attention to date: JLOTS and the demands of complex urban littoral battlespaces. The latter element extends to logistics all of the demands, challenges and requirements that urban littoral combat operations entail. The Indo-Pacific urban littoral is the malevolent presence waiting for US and allied forces at the end of the long, contested logistics supply line and past the JLOTS operation in a deadly littoral zone—a truly nasty ending to a long series of sustainment challenges these forces will face.
Multidomain Contested Logistics
The first element in the contested logistics triad is multidomain logistics itself. This describes logistics being contested across the five operational domains of land, maritime, air, space, and cyberspace. Much has been written in recent years on conducting logistics operations in these domains and the challenges to those operations. Too often these perspectives are siloed, however, often reflecting service bias and single-domain emphasis. Thus, articles written by army officers will focus, quite reasonably, on the land domain, while another on logistics by a naval officer will often display a corresponding maritime domain emphasis. The presence of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) and its much vaunted (but thus far unproven) antiaccess, area-denial zone has become a recurring theme when discussing contested maritime Indo-Pacific logistics. To discuss each domain element in contested logistics is outside the scope of this article. However, no appreciation of contested logistics is complete without considering all domains—whether cross-domain kinetic fires, cyber threats to key sustainment software, or disruption of space-based positioning, navigation, and timing systems. Nor can asymmetric action be ignored, like the prospect of potential phase-zero actions by up to two thousand Chinese distant-water fishing vessels, or by vessels of the Peoples’ Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM), both of which are not readily identifiable as potential combatants.
Joint Logistics Over The Shore
Multidomain contested logistics is only the first substantial issue facing American, Australian, and allied force elements deploying by sea into the archipelagic zone of the first island chain. Once any force has reached its ultimate land destination the critical issue of sustainment from sea to shore then arises. This leads to the second element of the contested logistics triad: the JLOTS requirement.
Prudent military planners need to plan according to worst-case and not best-case scenarios. In the context of Indo-Pacific, it must therefore be assumed that viable port facilities will be degraded or nonexistent. Given this operational assumption, it follows that the only effective alternative for seaward replenishment of land operations must be provided through JLOTS sustainment operations. The US Department of Defense publicly defines these as “operations in which Navy and Army logistics over-the-shore forces conduct logistics over-the-shore operations together under a joint force commander. Logistics over-the-shore operations, in turn, are defined as “the loading and unloading of ships without the benefit of deep draft-capable, fixed port facilities; or as a means of moving forces closer to tactical assembly areas.”
Unfortunately, the current state of US JLOTS is not optimal, with a recent report from the DoD Office of the Inspector General on the conduct of JLOTS in Gaza humanitarian operation making for disturbing reading. This report highlighted a number of critical deficiencies, including the nonavailability of secure communications between US Navy and US Army JLOTS elements, structural incompatibility of platforms (with respective single-service pier assets at significantly different heights, resulting in substantial pier section damage), and even the failure by operational planners to factor in critical (and fundamental) amphibious planning parameters such as tide times and sea states. The other critical issue of JLOTS is the relative vulnerability of the logistics structures to adversary action, with both pier structures and sea-to-shore connectors generally unarmored and unarmed. In a future Indo-Pacific fight, JLOTS will very likely be required , considering the operational planning assumption that the existence and ongoing viability of a convenient port cannot be guaranteed. Given its current state in the US military, JLOTS represents a distinct critical vulnerability.
Urban Littoral Battlespaces: The Nasty Ending
To reiterate, not only is the Indo-Pacific one of the most heavily urbanized regions in the world, but the majority of these urban spaces are located within the littoral zone. Urban combat imposes a number of specific constraints on operational planners. Urban operations are conducted in a highly challenging battlespace, but also require specific demands in terms of everything from resourcing and force ratios to logistics. The attritive nature of urban warfare further adds to the logistics burden. Urban littoral combat has been described by Australian operational commentators as the “worst of both worlds,” combining the challenges of urban and amphibious operations. In an Indo-Pacific conflict scenario, it is conceivable that Chinese forces would secure a major Indo-Pacific urban littoral center well before the arrival of theatre US or allied forces and then reinforce and fortify it against any counteroffensive. The capital of Taiwan is a prime example of such an urban littoral battlespace. This scenario would be totally consistent with the established Chinese military philosophy of “active defense.” Any fight occurring ultimately in an urban littoral battlespace is truly a potentially nasty ending, especially if the full spectrum of threats are directed toward US and allied logistics lines of communications. If JLOTS will be required, it will be carried out in a highly targeted, littoral battlespace. Moreover, the volume of supply needs to be robust enough to support attritive, drawn-out urban operations. This will be especially true if, as Professor Anthony King has described, a series of grueling micro-sieges with greatly increased logistics demands and operational duration is anticipated.
Why the Triad Matters
Not all the elements of the contested logistics triad may be present at every stage of every future Indo-Pacific operation. It may well be, say, that in a future scenario a functioning port will be available. Or it could be that the ultimate assault will be in a nonurban setting more reminiscent of the sands of Iwo Jima than the gates of an Indo-Pacific Stalingrad. Nevertheless, military planners must assume worst-case scenarios. The contested logistics triad and its elements extend its effects throughout the Indo-Pacific battlespace and before its risks can be mitigated, they must first be recognized. A major issue in understanding the challenges of Indo-Pacific sustainment is in understanding a complex logistics problem.
Although each element of the triad is often individually discussed, we need a conceptual framework that links the three, depicts their effects in relation to one another, and, in particular, highlights the need to conduct JLOTS in support of high-intensity, protracted, urban littoral combat operations. By representing multidomain contested logistics together with JLOTS and urban littoral battlespaces as the contested logistics triad, we have a construct that may be more easily recognized by operational planners, not just logisticians. Recognition must precede planning: We must first recognize something before we can plan for it.
Further, the logistics challenges at play in the Indo-Pacific are more than the sum of the challenges related to each of the three elements. The contested logistics triad should be recognized as a discrete entity with elements that compound each other. Even if we were comfortable with multidomain contested logistics, even if we were good at JLOTS, and even if we were prepared for the intense combat required in complex urban littoral spaces, that isn’t enough. There is an interactive and amplifying relationship between the challenges associated with each element and we cannot meet the challenge if we, collectively—across services and among allies—lack a holistic approach.
For two decades, our expeditionary operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were sustained by a logistics enterprise that was essentially uncontested. Cargo sent by ship wasn’t at risk of being sunk to the bottom of the ocean and was certainly not at risk of any cyber interdiction. Supplies sent by air flew over enemy forces with little means of shooting down aircraft. Even on the comparatively dangerous roads, where supply convoys could be ambushed or targeted by roadside bombs, successful enemy attacks were infrequent enough that the cumulative effect did little to dent combat forces’ time-tested assumption that there would always be plenty of whatever was needed to sustain their operations.
We became accustomed over a generation to dining facilities that never ran out of energy drinks and protein shakes. Creature comforts became the norm. Maneuver units need to prepare for a future where supplies of water are more important than WiFi connections to call home, where supply chain interdictions could mean dwindling ammunition stocks and equipment sidelined by an inability to deliver spare parts. The contested logistics triad, in reflecting three elements that will challenge our ability to sustain forces and operations and acknowledging their compounding effects, is an important mechanism for operational planners and tactical commanders to think about the operational realities they will face.
In closing, consider the following situation. It is 2027. Taipei has fallen. People’s Liberation Army troops are in occupation and have had weeks to prepare an urban defense at multiple levels, at sea, in the air, on land and in the underground. A cyberattack has severely impaired all cabotage on both US coasts, resulting in commercial shipping being disrupted for weeks. A series of mysterious, unattributable accidents have closed the Port of Houston with its long sea lanes and severely reduced flow from the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in southern California and, across the country, the Port of New York and New Jersey. In addition, major Chinese commercial shipping firms like COSCO have been struck by widespread delays that, for reasons unknown, have only affected shipments to and from the United States. Supermarket shelves in America are starting to empty rapidly and US public opinion is turning against any action to reverse the status quo in Taiwan. A recent UN resolution, backed by virtually every African and South American country, has strongly supported China’s reestablishment of sovereignty Taiwan. Given all these events, US military planners are now confronted with planning a long maritime move, the need for a highly risky JLOTS operation well within China’s antiaccess, area-denial zone (since Taiwan’s major ports have been essentially destroyed by the Chinese), and the prospect of an intense urban littoral fight at the destination.
This is the contested logistics triad at its worst. Acknowledging and preparing for it, then, becomes a matter of deterrence. And if deterrence breaks down, it will prove essential to sustain the fight that follows.
Colonel Ronald Ti is a logistician currently in the Australian Army Reserve but currently works in professional military education within the European Union. His PhD in military logistics was awarded in March 2025 by King’s College London and researched resilience at the tactical level in NATO military logistics units during NATO Article V, large-scale combat operations.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense, nor that of the Australian Army or the Australian Department of Defence.
Image credit: Capt. Jared McCully, US Army