Revisiting Rommel's nightmare over supply lines

DESERT warfare was described by Erwin Rommel, the Second World War German commander, as a "logistician’s nightmare". Sixty years on, leaders of the hi-tech forces in the Gulf face even greater strategic challenges.

The rapid advance of United States troops towards Baghdad has left behind a 300-mile supply line winding south to the food, fuel and water depots in Kuwait. Protecting convoys of "beans, bullets and black oil" for the troops at advanced positions south of Baghdad has become a critical element in the campaign.

Iraq’s information minister, Mohamed Said al-Sahaf, immediately identified the snaking supply convoys as the weakest link in the invasion force and said his country’s troops would "cut up the boa constrictor".

Within 24 hours, the first US casualties of the war were shown on al-Jazeera television - members of a supply convoy ambushed at An Nasiriyah after straying from a main road.

British forces fighting around Basra, about 20 miles from the Kuwaiti border, have not encountered too many logistical problems but journalists embedded with advanced US positions further north tell a different story.

Some units have reported having to cut back their rations to one meal a day as they wait for supplies to reach them. The US Army 3rd Infantry Division claimed to be running low on food, fuel and water, and the 101st Airborne Division was short of AA batteries, vital for night vision equipment, radios and global positioning systems.

The logistical operation in the Gulf is immense and the 120,000 US combat troops rely on a hidden army of 50,000 military personnel making sure they are adequately supplied. It is estimated that at least 5,000 fighting troops with Apache helicopter gunships will be needed just to defend the supply lines.

For US forces, supplies are organised by Combat Service Support, which is operating about 10,000 five-tonne trucks in the Gulf. The fleets of helicopters, tanks and aircraft in the region consume an estimated 15 million gallons of fuel each day during combat operations, roughly the amount of fuel used daily in Florida.

For the 90,000 troops now inside Iraq, the logistical teams must deliver 400,000 gallons of water a day, and there are 48 million MREs (meals ready to eat) stockpiled for consumption in the warehouses of Kuwait.

All supplies are delivered on convoys of 20 to 30 trucks that can stretch along the road for more than a mile - every day of the war, there are more than 20 of these convoys on the move. The ten-tonne Heavy Expanded Military Tactical Truck can carry 11 tonnes of cargo and pull a further 11 tonnes on a trailer.

The journey from Kuwait to the frontline should take about 18 hours but, because of the fighting and jams on the roads, it now takes about 24 hours to deliver supplies.

Small supply depots, which are heavily guarded by razor wire and up to 200 troops, have been set up every 50 miles along the 300-mile route and they include forward helicopter re-fuelling stations. Larger supply depots have been set up at captured air bases, including one at Tallil, just outside An Nasiriyah.

Major General Dennis Jackson, the director of logistics at US Central Command, said: "We try to think of everything, and then we think about what’s the thing we haven’t thought about."

Lorry drivers are among the most vulnerable of all troops in the theatre of operations. During the 1991 Gulf war, more than half of US deaths were supply troops, mostly as the result of accidents.

Delivering fuel is the greatest challenge, with the 3rd Infantry burning up to 750,000 gallons of diesel daily as it advances toward Baghdad. A single M1 Abrams tank consumes two gallons for every mile it travels.

Tankers, with up to 7,500 gallons of fuel on board, are the vehicles most vulnerable to enemy attack and require constant protection.

To try to combat this, a 100-mile fuel pipeline has been laid in Kuwait to reach the Iraqi border, and fuel stations are being set up further north inside Iraq.

William Pagonis, a retired major-general who was in charge of the logistical operation to supply 500,000 troops during the first Gulf war, never saw his supply lines attacked by the retreating Iraqi army.

But he said that, this time around, logistics have come to the fore. "For most tactical battles lost in world history, you will find logistics were the key to success and failure," he said. "Hitler lost the logistical war before the combat war."

At US Central Command in Qatar, General Tommy Franks has played down talk of a logistical crisis. He admitted that distribution problems meant "some soldiers may not get their fair share on a given day" but insisted: "We have sufficient stocks, sufficient food, water and ammo."