According to ADP 4-0 sustainment is the provision of logistics, personnel services, and health service support necessary to maintain operations until successful mission completion. Providing these services to the driving force after beginning operations does not cover all the aspects involved though. Sustainment begins long before H-Hour and continues through the successful redeployment of our forces and transferring control back to the host nation.

Sustainment preparation begins with analyzing the operational environment’s infrastructure, physical environment and resources that could either help or hinder the friendly forces supporting and sustaining the operation. We then begin to preposition stock and work through force projection, setting support priorities where we think the main effort is going to require the most provisions. When opening operations in a theater, the preparation effort has already established the means to receive troops and supplies, stage them, and move forward into the theater. As we seize terrain, it is important that we set up areas for use as a base camp, which will extend our forces reach. We continue to execute …show more content…
What I find interesting about sustainment is the last sequence, where we leave an operation and handover control back to the host nation. We crossed the berm in 2003 on our way into Iraq and never looked back to wonder or worry, if our supplies would follow as we took ground. What we did not do is analyze the remaining threat, as our country put pressure on the state department to bring our troops home. We handed over the baton and made a rapid exit, but the ready and willing Iraqi government, military and police forces were not so ready and willing. This allowed ISIS to become what it is today and why we find ourselves sending troops back over sooner than we ever