“The line between disorder and order lies in logistics.” – Sun Tzu
The problem began with the fuel pump and escalated over the course of the summer. For a time, a locally rebuilt injector pump kept the vehicle functioning while mechanics waited for new pumps to arrive. But, after months of delay, there was no way to prevent the inevitable, and the engine finally seized during a patrol along the Syrian border. Eight thousand miles from home, the driver leans against the brush guard while the squad leader checks the tow bar one last time. Eight thousand miles from home, where a new fuel pump—or even a new engine—would have been available almost on demand. Just in time, as the logisticians like to say.
But this isn’t home or anything close to it. Before the evening update brief, another piece of critical equipment will be added to the deadline report, and by nightfall the commander will bemoan the decline in combat power. And the UPS man isn’t going to be driving through ambush alley to deliver parts into the Syrian desert. Once again, Johnny can’t fight.
Just in time or Just Too Late
It all seemed so simple. At a time when requirements far outpaced resources, we followed the lead of industry and adopted a distribution-based velocity logistics system founded in time-definite delivery. Rather than maintaining mountains of parts and supplies, we retained only those stocks deemed absolutely necessary and put the delivery burden on the system to provide what we needed, when we needed it, and where it mattered most. We immediately realized increases in responsiveness and productivity and decreases in stockage levels and expenditures. Everyone was pleased with the results.
Then we deployed. And it didn’t quite work as intended. Maybe, because it isn’t so simple after all.
Just-in-time (JIT) was founded on the precepts of velocity management, where velocity supplants the mass of a supply-based system. By design, inventories are fluid, always in motion. The supply chain essentially becomes a dynamic warehouse where inventory is managed by mission requirements rather than historical demand. As a peacetime business model optimized for civilian industry, it achieved remarkable speed, efficiency, and effectiveness.
But, the true test of JIT is how it performs under stress, not how it performs under ideal conditions. JIT struggles once the bullets start to fly. “The trouble with JIT in the defense context, Sandeep Phogat wrote in 2022, “is that military success is subject to too many capricious variables, and the vital delivery can switch from ‘just in time’ to ‘just too late’ in a single instant.” That single instant is a dangerous tipping point. “In that critical moment,” he continued, “the success or failure of great events hang in the balance.”
Israel and the f-35
When the first F-35 Joint Strike Fighter took the air on December 15, 2006, it held the promise of years of development and decades of research. Testing revealed a number of major problems—not unusual for a program of such complexity—including premature cracking, a vulnerability to lightning strikes, and repeated software delays. The program itself came under intense scrutiny for escalating costs and delayed deliveries, at least in part due to an acquisition strategy which called for concurrent development and production, leading to expensive in-stride design changes.
Yet arguably the most problematic aspect of the program was its JIT supply chain, intended to reduce inventories—and overall costs—for what was already a very expensive airframe. Speaking at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space conference last spring, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt—who leads the F-35 program office—raised concerns over the resilience of that supply chain. “When you have that [just-in-time] mentality, a hiccup in the supply chain… becomes your single point of failure.” He continued, “This program was set up to be very efficient… I’m not sure that works always in a contested environment.” Seventeen years after first flight, that problem still haunts the program.
As an early adopter of the F-35 platform, Israel was well aware of the issue when signing a formal letter of agreement to join the System Development and Demonstration effort in 2003. In 2010, Israel insisted on industrial participation, including locally sourced electronic warfare components, in the production of the F-35I Adir. Using this sustainment model, the first Adir—which translates to “Mighty One” in Hebrew—squadron was declared operational in 2017, with a second squadron following in 2020.
Israel’s initiative to create its own sustainment infrastructure has not only allowed it to avoid the supply chain issues common to its American counterparts, the performance of the F-35I excels in comparison to other models. Testifying before the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, Schmidt noted that the Adir’s performance is “absolutely outstanding.” He added: “I think we could learn a lot from them in terms of the quickness with which they’re turning airplanes.”
Israel’s ongoing operations against Hamas have served as a proving ground for overcoming the natural limitations of the JIT system on which the F-35 relies. Schmidt’s office “has surged spare parts and other support capacity to Israel,” working at what Congressman Rob Wittman referred to as “breakneck speed to support” Israel in the wake of the October 7 attacks. In his written statement, Schmidt noted that the conflict has enabled the testing of the F-35’s global sustainment infrastructure, as well as the platform itself: “From operational and technical perspectives, our aircraft and global supply system are proving resilient.”
What the Future Holds
That experience may well serve as a watershed moment for the future of the F-35. The ability to surge sustainment capacity for the Adir parallels the ongoing effort to provide materiel support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. There, the effort has already severely depleted existing ammunition stockpiles while revealing critical shortfalls in the defense industrial base. We’ve gone so long with limited industrial capacity that we may not be able to sustain any major engagement that lasts longer than a week.
So, while we possess the ability to surge capability and capacity on a limited scale for Israel, we still face the same fundamental challenge inherent in a JIT paradigm. Describing a scenario with a carrier task force operating off the coast of Taiwan, Scott “Intake” Kartvedt—the U.S. Navy’s first F-35 squadron commanding officer—remarked, “You can’t logistically operate that way… Lockheed Martin can guarantee its arrival on Okinawa. But now there’s not FedEx, UPS, DHL that’s gonna get it out to the aircraft carrier.” Distance and (just in) time are already diametrically opposed factors in the calculus of logistics; add complexity to that equation and the solution is that much harder to find. As Howard Altman and Tyler Rogoway noted in a recent article, the lessons from Israel are “especially important in preparing for a fight in the Pacific, where the ability to sustain the notoriously support-intensive F-35s in a vast and contested theater will be a major challenge.”
With over 400 F-35 currently in service and hundreds more planned for future procurement, our ability to support at scale is increasingly in question, becoming exponentially more difficult with every new airframe introduced to the inventory. The lessons drawn from Israel’s war with Hamas, as well as our own efforts to spur responsiveness from the defense industrial base in support of Ukraine, will only matter if we learn from them. As history has shown, as much as we embrace lessons learned, we have a known tendency to repeat the same mistakes and relearn the same lessons.
