In today’s climate of reform, the need for a streamlining of the organic support of the armed forces is undeniable. Room for progress in the centralisation of services and administration is largely unexploited. All the more reason to assess these complex matters with intelligence and prudence, without losing sight of the operational character of the support currently provided by these services. Particularly in the area of supplies, which touches on issues that affect the very idea of command, the independence of the military commander and the freedom of manoeuvre of his forces must be considered.
The Support Services: the Modernity and Relevance of a Model of Military Organisation
It has been the custom since time immemorial to contrast services and combat forces when considering possible savings in military organisations. Frequently, this results in forgetting that the support services were only created, and subsequently developed, to meet the demands imposed on them by the functioning of the forces in peace and war.
They have no other justification and, in an ideal dialectic (which is never attained) no conflict should exist between these two vital components of permanent armies. Forty-six soothing years of more-or-less peace and humanitarian action should not allow the permanent support provided by the support services to the operational component (in the restrictive sense habitually employed) to be forgotten.
The support services, as specialist military organisations subordinated to the command structure, have long constituted the most coherent response to the requirements of operational effectiveness and, more widely, of performance. The current weaknesses identified—which essentially result from insufficient centralisation relative to the reductions in the size of the forces and probably from some outdated corporatist thinking—must not lead to ‘throwing out the baby with the bath water’, as the saying has it.
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