Naval Logistics for Naval Officers: Principles, Practice, and Command (Naval Combat Series)

Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics. This is the book that takes that maxim seriously.

Naval Logistics for Naval Officers is a complete, modern course in the discipline that quietly decides every campaign at sea — the fuel, ordnance, food, spare parts, maintenance, money, and movement that turn a collection of ships into a force that can fight and keep fighting.

Written for the serving officer, the staff-college student, and the professional who already knows that sustainment matters, it moves through thirty-one connected chapters from first principles to the hardest problems of contested logistics today: replenishment at sea, the classes of supply, inventory and configuration discipline, the logistics estimate and the sustainment plan, coalition logistics, and the command authority that ties it all together. Real campaigns — from the Pacific floating base and the Falklands to the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis — show why the side that runs out of magazine depth, interceptors, or sea lanes loses, however well it fights.

Three convictions run through every page: that readiness is the only thing logistics produces, that the limiting factor governs what is possible, and that the integrity of the record is the foundation of the whole enterprise.
Clear, rigorous, and built to be used — with illustrative cases, common pitfalls, and review questions in every chapter, plus a full glossary, timeline, answer key, and reading list — this is the professional reference the naval logistician has been missing.

Master the bridge between the national economy and the fight. Master logistics.

Cornelis van Houte, ex-Navy.