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Building and Maintaining Army Readiness and Combat Power
he release of Field Manual (FM) 4-0 Sustainment represents the doctrinal transformation supporting the modular force. It is the Army's keystone document for sustainment in support of full spectrum operations and serves as the basis from which other sustainment doctrine is developed. This new edition of FM 4-0 discusses the warfighting function of sustainment introduced in FM 3-0 Operations. Sustainment is defined as the provision of logistics (the science of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of forces), personnel services (human resource support, religious support, financial management, legal support and band support) and health service support (all support and services performed and arranged by the Army Medical Department to promote, improve, conserve, or restore the mental and physical well-being of personnel in the Army) necessary to maintain forces until mission accomplishment. FM 4-0 describes how sustainment builds and maintains combat power, supports strategic and operational reach, and ensures that Army forces have the readiness and endurance for sustained land operations.
FM 4-0 is a departure from the previous edition, Combat Service Support. The Army removed the terms combat arms, combat support, and combat service support from its lexicon with the publication of FM 3-0 in 2008. Included under the sustainment warfighting function is support to internment /resettlement and detainee operations. Explosive ordnance disposal, although under a sustainment proponent, is executed as a function of protection.
FM 4-0 introduces the eight principles of sustainment that guide commanders in the operations process - in planning, preparing, executing and assessing sustainment operations. The eight principles are: integration, anticipation, responsiveness, simplicity, economy, survivability, continuity and improvisation. Integration is considered to be the critical principle because it joins and synchronizes all of the elements of sustainment (tasks, functions, systems, processes and organizations) with operations, ensuring unity of purpose and effort.
Maintaining Army Readiness
FM 4-0 highlights the generating force's contributions toward maintaining Army readiness and building combat power. Army generating-force organizations (formerly known as the institutional Army) provide the essential requirements to Army forces in preparation for full spectrum operations; their primary mission is to build and sustain operating-force capabilities for employment by joint force commanders. Generating forces maintain the Army's readiness by staffing highly skilled and trained soldiers...