A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

Stretching your supply lines over great distance creates obvious problems. Like how to you transport? How do keep the convoys secure? Will it get to where it going. this can be tasking on your unit. Thats why being initially supplied and then living of the supplies of the enemy is best. If you must supply yourself, detailed planning, command and control of the resupply is critical.

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A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

Take Away ...

An army expends equipment and provisions upon operational activity. The cost of using the army, however, will additionally include the transactional cost of supplying it. The greater the transactional cost, the less efficient the logistical calculus of using the army in operations. Proportional to both the distance in space and to the length and intensity of time spent at that distance, the transactional cost may eat heavily into expenditures that otherwise would be made elsewhere in the nation. Thus may a nation be impoverished.

And thus also lies the significance of not only the logistics of armed conflict and occupation, but also the civilian-military balance in the allocation of resources (especially the 'strategic' ones). To create such fundamentally strategic dilemmas in the mind of the enemy's leadership must be an object of strategic planning. One must also plan to create the means for avoiding the impoverishment of the nation. These must be created and exploited. They must be planned for from the earliest possible moment.

And, if the nation is impoverished, those of whom it is constituted shall suffer. In a democratic state, that means us.

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A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

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A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

Distance puts a strain on military forces and the civilian population. The strain can be in finances, supplies and emotions.

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Victory is yours, if you alter battlefield conditions too quickly for your enemy to observe, orient, decide and act.

John Boyd

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A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

Constant maintenance of a secure supply route during conflict is costly, both in manpower, and timewise. AND on top of that, it's expensive! It is much better to simply feed off the enemy, than to transport an obscene amount from your homeland whilst maintaining, guarding, overseeing, and patrolling a supply line.

Twenty bushels from home = one bushel from the enemy, no?

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Invincibility is a matter of defense - vulnerability is a matter of attack.

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A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

The costs of fueling, guarding, protecting from rot or other deterioration, and pure lift-and-lugging don't just increase over distance. They double, then double again, then double again. The cost of delivered provisions probably needs to be graphed on log paper. Remember the story of the inventor of chess, who asked for two grains of rice for the first square on the board, four for the second square, and so on, until the final price was so high the inventor was beheaded to save the kingdom from economic anhiliation.

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It Costs to Spend

When supplies have to be transported from here to a distant place, it's not only the supplies themselves that are being expended but also the cost of moving them. The costs of fuel and labor that are needed to transport supplies have to be factored into the total cost of the supplies used by the army (as compared to what they would cost if they were being consumed at the site of production). The fact that the nation's resources are being diverted to the army already creates a strain. Diverting those resources over a distance increases that strain and, like all costs if one is not careful, can cripple the nation.

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I am not convinced that this applies to modern wars. Sure, transporting supplies to Iraq or Afghanistan may be expensive. However, it's not like we can ship them to somewhere closer and sitll be effective, and I don't believe we can get out of there any quicker than we're trying to...

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This passage reinforces the last by pointing out the economic consequences back home of NOT cannibalizing the enemy's resources when you can. It's not just the cost of the provisions themselves, as Saro has pointed out, but the costs of transport as well. Keeping in mind, too, that supply trains become more vulnerable to attack or breakdown the longer they are, the more resources have to be expended on convoy security and backup measures. All this constitutes a significant drain on the civilian sector.

While the development of long-range air transport has somewhat ameliorated the problem of supply over large distances--whether for military purposes or for humanitarian aid--it remains a major expense that adds up over time. Thus, even though advanced technologies can serve to soften the blow, the general truth of Master Sun's observation still holds.

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Uzume

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A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

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Re: 02.012 A nation can be impoverished by the army when it...

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Originally posted by sonshi
A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

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Re: 02.012 A nation can be impoverished by the army when it...

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Originally posted by sonshi
A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

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Re: 02.012 A nation can be impoverished by the army when it...

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Originally posted by sonshi
A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

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The purpose of life is a life of purpose

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Re: 02.012 A nation can be impoverished by the army when it...

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Originally posted by sonshi
A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

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Re: 02.012 A nation can be impoverished by the army when it...

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Originally posted by sonshi
A nation can be impoverished by the army when it has to supply the army at great distances. When provisions are transported at a great distances, the citizens will be impoverished.

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