Supplying the Sub: Logistics and its Role in Modern Conflict, by GuerrillaLogistician

Reference –  The Dock

By GuerrillaLogistician

@glogistician on X.com

So let me start by saying I rambled in my last podcast. I’m not always sure how to break down a complex topic, much like the podcast on area studies. Either I write an article and then do a podcast, or I sometimes do a podcast and then I’ll write an article. For those of you who can absorb both media formats, you will get more out of this than people like me, who are audio learners. I’m going to try to explain some things about logistics and also address one of my points that is correct and not correct at the same time.

Let me display that elephant first by saying China does have quite a bit of reach logistically, but they don’t have the ability to come to the US and invade coherently through a standup army. China has two primary logistical setups that it is fully capable of using.  First is the modern, stand-up movement of material via vehicles.  Think of the roads through Pakistan from China to the ports in the Indian Ocean.  These are all but in name and are owned by China via the Belt and Road initiative. They are the logistics movement routes for men and material. We could deep dive into Geopolitics with this topic, but I will hold off on that, as strong as this initiative is, China has some weaknesses. This is where the main line movement of supplies can be transported by vehicles, aircraft, and vessels.  This is all standard military logistics people think of today, along the lines of liberty ships, etc.

China also has a more antiquated style of doing this, which mixes modern concepts and time-tested war fighting.  This is the infiltration and capture method. This isn’t something that is dead by any means; it is the infiltration along the American border of military-age men, the acquisition of businesses directly linked to the CCP either by taking them over or creating needed industries in that nation.  An army fights on its stomach, and Smithfield Foods was acquired by WH Group (previously known as Shuanghui International Holdings Limited) in 2013. WH Group is the largest meat producer in China, so it is obvious they would expand.  That said, that expansion means they can order the company to supply people in the US as they see fit if they need to.  China has direct ownership of a lot of farmland as well.  So militarily, China right now can’t fight us in a stand-up fight, either logistically or in naval capabilities, which is the main route to supply a war so far away.  They however don’t have to supply a war on US soil, they need to cripple our infrastructure so the US can’t reach them.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game… pic.twitter.com/VtpgWDegyM

— #LETHIMBOARD (@selfie_monkey) May 16, 2025

With that out of the way, all of the basics of logistics are still the same: I have the item, I must move the item, I must give you the item.  Logistics companies do this for business, logisticians make things highly complicated with fancy graphs and cool buzzwords from college. I will try to break this down in a simple way because it can be boring as hell, and “smart people” want to feel smart so they like to complicate things. The reason I’m going to be discussing logistics here the way I am is for you to understand its formation in reference to not only what you need to think about, but also what your enemy will be doing. As I stated in my podcast, Russia and Ukraine have been fighting more of a logistics war than most people realize. Obviously, there is the force-on-force battle of infantry tanks and aircraft, and all that entails; the reality is that all this falls into logistics issues.

World War One and WWII were almost lost by naval power strangling the allies, and that is why, after WWI, submarines were banned from Germany, even though they obviously didn’t follow that part of the Versailles treaty. From submarines hunting British shipping to coal shortages in Germany, wars are not just fought with weapons, airplanes, and bullets or bladed instruments. It is fought on the survival logistics, which can make or break a war. This also doesn’t have to be a physically violent war that we’re talking about. Logistically, you can go into a deep dive into little details, from fuel expenditures to moving something, to how promises transition hands in politics. For the sake of our discussion, though, I will break it down into the bare bones, no buzzword logistics nonsense I can.

There are three basic positions that any supply or political power can reside in at any one time. Between those points are transitions, and for the purpose of making this simple, we’ll talk about the two transition points that you must have, but there could be several more. The funny thing is that everybody, from city planners and self-defense experts to Amazon, has some form of transition space. You can also break this down into many basic components to form a long logistics train.  Logisticians make this far more complicated than it is, but this is the BASIC bare bones concept for each individual leg of a complex chain.  This is the LEGO block style concept, so when someone says it is more complex, they are correct, but a lot of that complexity comes from people rewriting manuals and sticking a label on it to look important.

Storage spot – Transition point – Cargo Truck transportation – Transition Point – Store

Depot/Resource – Transition Point – Movement – Transition Point – End User

Armed Civilian – Transition Point – Vehicle – Transition Point – Place of Destination

Political Power – Efforts to convince – Movement of power – Efforts to complete – Voting or Dictatorial decree being carried out.

Why I think the Transition Points are the weakest point.

Regardless of what it is you’re transferring, the transition points and movement are always going to be the weakest link in any of these movements of supplies or push for power. I will make an argument here that may not always be correct, but I want you to think about this.  Transition points for the Guerrilla fighter are more important than the movement corridor.  So why do I say that after looking at things like the global War on Terror? Because almost all of the Chechen weapons that were used to fight the Russians actually came from logistical bases themselves. The Chechens would go and trade through the fence with the Russian forces for weapons, ammunition, and other things, and the Russian troops would get money, valuables, drugs, or even prostitutes. The reason that doesn’t totally work with the United States is that we have a higher standard currently, and we were in a foreign nation where poverty was more common than with our troops. That isn’t to say that people have not been bribed in the US military, and that’s always a threat to everything, but I’ll move you even one step further down this chain. Almost all criminal activity of theft isn’t done during transportation, but is done either on the loading or receiving ends of the operation.

So while engagements and ambushes on logistical trains are both necessary for an insurgent to look at, there are so many other, easier, and weaker locations to go after. This is also why the US military ran super bases, and control of a lot of the supplies was not done through local logistical methods. I have a sneaking suspicion that if Ukraine hadn’t gotten the support from the US intelligence agencies and external logistical supply trains, much of the Ukrainian forces would be fighting an insurgency right now. If the world had not supported them, then much of the supplies probably would be coming from the invading Russian force, the same way the Chechens did it. I will even add that most of the Middle East faces the same issue, and I suspect the US and Europe are exceptions to that rule, rather than the standard. So you’re dealing with an invading force, might not be fighting like the wolverines attacking convoys, but instead supplying items to the enemy forces and procuring vital supplies from the enemy without shooting a round.  The times we see the transports being attacked come from secure distribution sites and end points, mixed with an inability to be bribed/coerced.

This is where submarine warfare, South African money/diamond attacks on armored vehicles, and GWOT-style ambushes happen.  I would actually say that if you are fighting with ambushes, you either have a massively superior force, or you aren’t looking for alternatives.  During WWII, Karl Dönitz rightfully knew that the U-Boat campaign would eventually be a losing battle as technology and the US got involved.  He, however, tried desperately to engage in Submarine Warfare even when losses mounted, because he saw little other way to fight the enemy as radar developed, became smaller, and new tactics emerged.  Add that to the Enigma machine being cracked, SIGINT, and HUFF DUFF (HF direction finding), and everything else that was placed against the U-boat in the end.  The same things happened in GWOT.  As bomb makers got bigger, plans got bolder, the US got smarter, and made better technology to counter the threat.  Both events highlight the challenges of defending against transits as forces develop plans, technology, and skills to protect transportation routes.

The Politics

In the United States, our election cycle starts when somebody’s in office. This is where the warfare for the hearts and minds of a lawful election moves to the next point. You’ll notice a spike in support and condemnation, followed by the flow of time. This is the Depot part of politics.  About one to two years before an election, the politician begins the heavy campaigning again.  This is the transition from politician to incumbent before the next transition point, where the political debating and past grievances are exposed, climaxing with something similar to an October surprise.  This transition point is your final thrust before everyone votes, and is the L-shaped political ambush. That is a concise summary of the political cycle we see every four years in the United States for the presidency. This is also where most things are attacked, like the Hunter Biden laptop. This was the Republicans’ L-shaped ambush, and the Dems did a good job of pushing through that ambush. I think they knew something was coming, and that info got leaked because of what happened after.

If you remember that case, 52 “intelligence agents” called the laptop Russian propaganda. It was a strategic move, and it wasn’t the only nail in Trump’s coffin that pushed Biden over the edge, but it was still a political mover and one of the actions to defeat Trump in the political process. We could break down everything in politics to these little core actions, but the details would get monotonous and probably drive most of us to heavy drinking. Lord knows enough of that happens at the G-Camp.  Within the political spectrum, transitioning of power could be anything from ballot harvesting / destruction, or the tried and true profession of going and getting money from one part of a political push to the end user who will use that finances for their means while upholding the request of the provider.  Then, you have a lot of other elections in between at the two-year mark.  Many of these elections involve state and local elections.  These are generally overlooked but have a similar cycle, and many times are more important to your local life then anything on the national stage.  Also 3000 dollars to a local politician is far more of a driving force then 3000 to a presidential campaign.

Everyday Transition Points

Also, I want to look at the armed civilian quickly, which we generally don’t think of until after an event. The armed civilians’ weakest times are always those transition points between the relative safety of a residence or location and the moderate safety of being in a vehicle driving along. While we do see civilians being car jacked on the road in places like South Africa, occasionally in the US, and in South America, this is a high-risk gamble for the attacker. Unless that car is physically stopped and boxed in, the operator can start driving off, and we have seen many videos where would-be attackers get run over. Likewise, mass mobs of protesters stopping people from driving create a transition point in that person’s travel. A transition point is a weak link in your movement from point A to point B. These weak links are either a slowdown or a transfer from one mode of movement to another. More commonly than not, though, we watch people get attacked in garages at slowdowns where they’re pulling into a parking spot or as they’re walking to their vehicle from their house.

Military Transitions

Now, let’s look at the military situation you must address, regardless of the type of battle you are operating in. There will always be a resource location, and the transition of those resources to the war fighter.  Depending on the numbers you want to look at, the era of war, and even the specific tasks of the combatant, there is a ratio of combatant to support element.  Commonly, the ratios of support elements to combatant range from 3 to 1 to almost a ratio of 10 to 1.  During the Global War on Terror, the U.S. military averaged 8 to 1 to support the war fighter in the field.  Your standard platoon of infantry soldiers is a 0 to 1 ratio in its basic 3-5 day FTX.  This doesn’t take into account the Pizza Delivery guy that brings them pizza’s behind the CO’s back. Getting that platoon to be self-sufficient for that long requires a long tail, and major planning. Military logisticians like to call this the tooth-to-tail ratio. For tactical purposes, as long as that platoon is left with all the gear it needs to operate, it should be able to physically fight with maximal flexibility without having its tail or logistical transition for a fixed amount of time.

Unfortunately, as movement progresses and the ready supplies on the platoon diminish either by consuming food, firing rounds, or achieving a strategic victory, resupplies must be accomplished. Luckily for the military, the 8:1 ratio of tail to tooth is being managed by the upper echelon to ensure that the platoon has everything it needs in a timely manner. So, what does this have to do with the partisan or guerrilla fighter in general? Well, just like SWEAT-MC\IR, this is something that you need to pay attention to and look at for vulnerabilities responsibly. During the global war on terror, cops, fobs, and patrol bases grew and diminished over time, but none of this happened overnight. Case in point, the special forces have a generally creative way of logistically resupplying during combat with things like speed balls. Speedballs are nothing more than pre-packed bags that can be thrown out of a helicopter in a relatively small area with much-needed supplies such as medical, ammunition, Weapons, and even water. These prepackaged bundles are protected from long drops to the ground with quick access for the fighter after it has been dragged into a building. These specialized supply drops, which have been around since World War 2, require expertise and skill to build.

The rest of the military is not special forces, though, with no magical speed balls made for them back at base.  Most of the platoon’s logistics are packed up by companies and moved to the platoon by a vehicle. Realistically, the special forces and clandestine operators of the past made this style of drops to diminish the transition from one point in time to another. Likewise, for the Contra or partisan fighter, you will also have your own logistical needs along with the requirements to move things to and from people.  You might cache materials, rely on civilians who are sympathetic to move materials, or get involved with criminal organizations to bring you bullets, medicine, and materials not available or heavily restricted.

Forces expand, and Logistical Demands expand.

Let’s start by looking at the logistical needs of a guerrilla force fighting in a non-permissive environment. Much like the submarines of World War 2, guerrilla fighters need to look at not only procuring equipment organically, but they may have to sustain operations with little or no support. While the platoon of an army or security forces of a despot will have to return to a base and resupply almost daily to weekly, the guerrilla fighting force doesn’t always have that option. They must rely on stockpiles, caches, and ingenuity in combat to facilitate any tail that will support their operations. Generally speaking, in most guerrilla conflicts, the initial actions of the resistors tend to fall under 3 phases.

1^st Phase

The initial phase is the homegrown resistance, which has almost no external support. Even if an outside government agency were involved, its ability to transfer supplies would be massively limited. Case in point, right now, China has protests going on in their country, just like we saw during the Tiananmen Square incident. Most of these protests are organic in nature, and the Chinese government has to suppress them before they grow. Once enough people see a protest and have similar grievances, these groups will populate and propagate throughout the area. Think of this as the United States and the Summer of Love, where an issue in one city created a mass protest that conglomerated multiple different ideologies on the streets.

China can’t afford the optics of that and will disappear people more readily than a democracy because of this once a sufficient number of forces are in play, such as during the troubles between Ireland and the UK, homegrown and limited external supplies tend to support these groups. A similar case would be USAID and the financial backing to multiple organizations with a certain political slant. We also see this in the United States with groups like the Socialist Rifle Association, which never completely dies out but financially and logistically aren’t supported until oppositional parties (Republicans) end up in power. Most likely, some of these organizations, if not all of them, are being funded or propped up by external actors trying to sow the same discord in our country as they fear in theirs.

2^nd Phase

The next phase tends to focus more on guerrilla fights, ambush tactics on supply trains, and engaging in things like taking over buildings or sections of cities. You will likely see this just like we saw it with the Chaz chop zones in towns and protesters’ occupation of academic buildings. This is also why I tend to show the SWEAT-IR and SWEAT-MC concepts so often in my articles.  This is where a lot of the images of Guerrilla forces fighting an uphill battle against overwhelming odds come from.  The small struggles with roving gangs, the burning tires in the streets, the bands of people fighting at night, and the government forces fighting back are all direct indicators that you have moved into the 2^nd phase, and this is also where you see low-key support from foreign powers.  This could be as simple as “donations” or funding from NGOs to specific belligerent groups.  We have seen this from time to time in the US over the decades, and if things are handled properly both politically and socially, this is where insurgencies die or expand. It isn’t always clear when the phases start and end, but there will be a shift from astonishment at these events to a downright normalcy bias filling the community.

https://alm.engr.colostate.edu/cb/doc/51726/content

Side note: Sewer, Water, Electricity, Academics, Trash, Medical, Safety, and Other. SWEAT-MSO assessments have been conducted as part of the Stability and Support to Civil Services operations since 2008. While these are all key societal weaknesses, many guerrilla operations move towards those through things like academic goals and controlling the professors who teach the students what to hate.  While not a direct line of attack, these are the building blocks to get a revolutionary force within a nation.  I would also venture to say that you could also view academia as having a religious connotation. For places like the Middle East, and depending on where you go in the United States, academia holds little precedence over the pastors and churches of that region. As I am not one to change up acronyms to make myself look smarter, I want you to think of academia as covering intellectual authority instead of higher education only. Frankly, with all the acronyms out there, I still think the SWEAT-MC is the most coherent civilization structure that can be attacked.

3^rd Phase

Lastly, if the forces engaged in enough build-up over time, outside supporters will tend to either invest or require favors at the end of the conflict for logistical assets. For instance, both the Korean and Vietnam Wars with the United States started before we were engaged, but as our forces moved in, external communist forces began pouring in supplies and equipment. This is where the protests and mass civil unrest turn into a civil war or major conflict. This is where you see assets being moved to borders and crossing into them, such as the support from Europe into Ukraine. What you didn’t see before the onset of this current conflict was the low-key influence of supply protests coming from other nations. This mainly happens because those overt actions can constitute much political opposition.  Once formal conflict has been widely publicized, it is far easier for people and supplies to be transferred both in overt and covert manners. Operational forces like the Green Berets or just resource distribution like France during the American Revolution are so overt that everyone knows they’re going on while still holding a slight veil of anonymity.

Now that we understand the three logistical environments for an insurgency or color revolution, let’s look at what the guerrilla fighter should be looking at initially.  Your average small gorilla unit will need to consider supplying themselves for at least two to three months of operations. Why two to three months? This falls back on a little bit of standard prepper doctrine and that of submarines. The modern submarine is only restricted in operation by food, ammunition, and repair parts. The weakest of that length is actually the food provided when no one is at war. World War 2 submarines only carried about 20 to 24 torpedoes and a handful of deck shells.  The modern Virginia-class submarines are estimated to carry between 20 and 24 torpedoes, with the Seawolf class being able to take 50 torpedoes. That is a lot of firepower in a small unit; however, just like WWII, modern torpedoes may fail to explode, or countermeasures may preclude their hit on target. In World War 2, the actual sinking of ships required a full spread of 4 shots.  This meant the average submarine could only be expected to sink six ships during its tour. That is all fine and good, but a handful of people aren’t a submarine. Sure, that may be the case, but the reality is guerrilla fighting forces tend to be exactly like a submarine having to pick weak targets in transition.

I talked about political logistics, along with all the other logistics and the transition points, because your target may not have anything to do with beans, bullets, or medical supplies. John Paul Jones took a small ship called the USS Bonhomme Richard, which was Benjamin Franklin’s pen name Poor Richard in French. This ship barely had 18 guns, and John Paul Jones knew his ability to fight one-to-one against the British was almost impossible. Just like submarines in general will not be able to withstand active threats, John Paul Jones went out and did radical things to disrupt the British. One of the key things that sounds absolutely absurd is that John Paul Jones went over to Britain and stole a piece of silver from a rich family. This little token of aggression was not some minor thing. He’d been engaging the British in their homelands, which forced a lot of British ships back home because it looked bad that the US could reach out and touch such a massive and powerful nation. Unlike submarines which can logistically cripple certain nations, John Paul Jones not only couldn’t go out and do battle with the whole British navy. He also had a significant issue with his seamen, who were nearly mutinous and only held in check by the newly formed marines. This forced him to go after soft targets, which were the only clear spots to attack.  This did, however, throw Britain into a panic and diverted lots of forces away from the US.  This was a similar reason why Dönitz kept sending U-boats to be destroyed, which tied up lots of resources to protect convoys.

As of two days ago, Ukraine did a complex drone attack on Russia’s nuclear bomber arm.  Realistically, this didn’t achieve anything logistically for Ukraine, and, as pointed out to me, it was likely a way to undermine peace talks. The attack ultimately did nothing for the front line fighter in Ukraine, but it was a shock to the world (some of us saw this coming, especially after the New Jersey Drone incident).  Just like John Paul Jones, Ukraine decided that its best action was to show the weak underside of Russia, rather than directly hitting a military target.  This is something you should think about, and the possible repercussions as well, such as drawing in other nations to your fight.  What is very rarely talked about is the number of drone attacks that have been going on in the US by individuals who think a drone with a wire will short-circuit major transmission lines.  Luckily, the power generally roasts the smaller wire right off with little effect to the Americans, but this has been going on for years now.  Now ask yourself what a handful of Chinese soldiers with funding could really do to the US infrastructure (SWEAT-MC), and you see the problem, and how old-style army logistic ideas of boats, planes, and Trucks may not be the only problem facing the US.

That said, your targets should be in those transition points stated above. You also may not have the ability to get to the main resource pile, so your next option is to attack the transition points. This could be right outside of a main gate, which is a common tactic of the Taliban to engage a checkpoint during the rotation of forces. That moment when one force is coming off a checkpoint soon, and the slowing of other forces, can be one of the weakest times, with so many combatants ready to engage.  A small force may not destroy such a checkpoint, but it may have the ability to cause havoc and send out quick reaction forces. With that going on, maybe another logistical train will be attacked at the same time, and supplies will be gathered from that to sustain the fighting forces. Regardless of all the bravado and discussion of past history, the two-to-three-month mark seems to be the proper amount of time for most fragile glass cannon-style forces to formulate and find weaknesses in enemy combatants and then exploit them. This seems to be the initial turnaround time for most protests, which turn into actual hostile forces against which one gauges security forces. This is also the average time it takes for an insurgency to go from merely banners to small kinetic events.

Resources

I can’t dive into every detail you need for resources because it’s too dynamic and specific to your environment and manpower capabilities. If you have a small group of four people you are trying to keep alive during inhospitable times, you may be that Contra force that sits at home and tries to protect their family or a few neighbors. If that’s the case, you will not need as many supplies,  and possibly ammunition.  This is also highly dependent on where you are and that is why I stressed the Area Study on the podcast. Maybe your important things will be basic hygiene, water, and food. Likewise, urban dwellers may face an almost impossible task of being in conflict regularly and having to provide food. While the austere combatant and guerrilla forces primarily reside in the hills and mountains of treacherous nature, socialist revolutionaries tend to prefer living within the city and swimming among the sea of people, as they like to say. Both dynamics are highly complex in terms of supply and demand. Not only that, but during periods of political strife, you also have many needs that require assistance from neighboring people. Your ability to supply them, whether with your stockpiles or with ill-gotten gains from ambushes and raids, will help determine how many active and passive supporters exist.

As a guerrilla fighter, you must look at the local population as your resource pool because they will be the ones who either want you to engage in such conflicts or resist you. Sometimes this is very difficult to figure out, so before the conflict, you should be engaging with everyone you can. The local population that supports your activities, even begrudgingly, might mean you can move quickly. If you look back at the troubles in Ireland, many American citizens of Irish descent contributed large sums of money. They went to events that financed NORAID, which in turn supplied the Irish resistance with Armalite AR-15s and other such weapons. Those weapons had to be procured in the US, and the initial transit out was their weak point, where US authorities would grab them up. Usually, when transported via ship and airplane, these weapons and ammunition went unharmed and were then handed over from those vessels through an intermediary to the fighters. The Irish had almost no supplies in the 1st place, and their organic resistance to perceived/real British tyranny created a host of financial benefits for the groups. Without the support of the US, much of that conflict would have been little more than stones being thrown and the British government cracking down and imprisoning the Irish over religious differences.

In the end, you will need to do an Area Study, find resources, meet people, shake hands, invest in LOCAL politicians, and promote sound ideas that move the population to your ideal outcome.  This isn’t an impossible task, but this will require a lot of work on your part, your friends and maybe even your community, regardless of what nation you are in.