The Dawn of Offensive Supply Chains

For many decades now, spanning the careers of even our most senior admirals and generals, the U.S. military has prioritized operations over logistics, but as the recent Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah demonstrates, logistics is operations, and the U.S. military should dedicate more resources to this novel concept we now call offensive logistics. As this concept is being defined in real-time, we use the terms ‘offensive logistics’ and ‘offensive supply chain’ somewhat interchangeably.

We recognize that what we’re calling offensive logistics is not completely new.  Overt attack on supply chains or logistics have been par for the course for quite a while.  In WWII, for example, we conducted offensive actions against Axis logistics to disrupt supply, such as submarine attacks on Japanese oil tankers and strategic bombing against Germany’s ball bearing plants.   

Nowadays, military leaders in the United States generally think of logistics in defensive terms—when they think about logistics at all.  And there is good reason for that, given that adversaries have for years been targeting logistics capability, which they see as an asymmetric advantage for the U.S..  Fortunately, with increased attention to the issue of “contested logistics,” the U.S. military and U.S. industry are dedicating additional resources and thought to achieving supply chain resiliency[ii], both domestically and throughout DoD supply chains.  

When we think of resilient supply chains in the United States, we generally think of securing them against disruptions that inhibit the flow of goods and services to achieve an effect.  While we may be concerned about this type of attack, we certainly know when (or immediately after) the attack takes place.  This is similar to denial-of-service attacks in cyberspace, which are quickly observable.

This new concept, “offensive supply chain” involves controlling and turning the adversary’s supply chain against them, without their immediate knowledge. For example, rather than bombing a tanker, the offensive supply chain contaminates the fuel in the tanker, causing damage to the aircraft receiving it. Rather than bombing a supply ship, the offensive supply chain inserts a virus in the 3D printing files such that the spare parts are faulty. In both cases, the damage is broader and perceived later. It is also more difficult to recognize where the supply chain was compromised, which complicates recovery.

The pager attack required the supply chain to seem un-disrupted.  This is a defining characteristic, and the first key component of offensive supply chains.   There’s an obvious parallel here to Stuxnet (https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-real-story-of-stuxnetdf) and a less-obvious parallel to the ‘Farewell Dossier.’ [iii] But what is novel is that the pager attack was carried out at scale, using a subtle alteration in the supply chain to convert a mundane piece of dual-use communications equipment into a munition.  This suggests that top-level metrics in a supply chain are not sufficient to determine its health, because it might carry a Trojan Horse, and a subtle change can cause the end-product to fail or to be weaponized.  The challenge is to provide sufficient security to prevent this class of attack, but not so much security that the supply chain suffers an ‘own goal’ where security fulfills the objective of the attacker. 

The short answer is a qualified yes.

The pager attack against Hezbollah demonstrates the value in understanding an adversary’s supply chains and highlights the second key component:  applying innovative thought to how they might be interrupted, compromised, or used to gather intelligence. 

Using vectors that are not typically thought of as delivery of ordinance / effects offers attribution challenges similar to those of cyber-attacks while also sowing tremendous uncertainty in the mind of the enemy about the reliability of the affected/compromised supply chain as well as other supply chains. 

But we can’t get too excited about the possible advantages without considering this:  offensive logistics gives the impression of being more precise than other types of attack, when it is in fact, subject to the same uncertainties and failings of all weapons.  Supply chains might be targeted, but not perfectly so.  They are ‘perfectly accurate’ in the same way that conventional bombs are – they hit the ground every time. 

Another reason for the U.S. to devote resources to offensive logistics is that our adversaries no doubt are.  We should look no further than the plethora of articles that have appeared in the last year on China’s Volt Typhoon.  Even if we do not plan to use these types of vectors, the only way to understand our own vulnerability is to vigorously think like the adversary.

We have come to the end of our exposition, and in this first piece have outlined the challenges brought by this novel series of events.  It is either comforting or despairing to realize that the challenges we see in offensive supply chains are in many ways mirror images of the challenges we see with traditional supply chains.  At press time, our best recommendation to both military leaders and the supply chains that support them is to focus on the fundamentals.  This is both in education and practice of managing and creating resilient supply chains.

Rear Admiral Larry Jackson (USN, ret.) is director of the Center for Joint & Strategic Logistics at National Defense University, where he explores the nexus of strategy, logistics, and technology. 

Professor Geraldo Ferrer is the Chair of Naval Supply Chain Management at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he focuses on challenges in contested logistics.

Harrison Schramm is a Senior Lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School and professional statistician who teaches and works at the intersection of data, computing and public policy. 

The opinions and views expressed in this piece are solely the authors’, and do not represent those of the U.S. Navy, Naval Postgraduate School, National Defense University, or the author’s cats.

[i] https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/09/17/a-pager-bomb-attack-causes-disarray-for-hizbullah

[ii] The article “Top 10 Supply Chain Threats and How to Mitigate Them” provides a good overview.  https://www.recordedfuture.com/threat-intelligence-101/risk-assessment-management/supply-chain-threats

[iii] https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/studies-in-intelligence/1996-2/the-farewell-dossier/