INFORMAZIONI SU QUESTO EPISODIO
In this podcast, Bruce Busler and Ryan Samuelson argue that the United States must prepare for “the fight to get to the fight,” focusing on deploying and maintaining military forces from a contested homeland amid near-peer threats.
Keywords: USTRANSCOM, Transportation Command, contested homeland, conflict, Joint Deployment and Distribution Enterprise
Stephanie Crider (Host)
You are listening to Decisive Point. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College or any other agency of the US government.
I’m talking remotely with Mr. Bruce Busler and Mr. Ryan Samuelson today.
Busler is the former director of the Joint Distribution Process Analysis Center, or JDPAC, and the US Army’s Transportation Engineering Agency, or TEA. He’s the author of “Deploying and Supplying the Joint Force from a Contested Homeland,” which was published in the Spring 2025 issue of Parameters.
Samuelson is the current director of JDPAC and TEA, USTRANSCOM (US Transportation Command), at Scott Air Force Base, Illinois.
Let’s start at the beginning. What do JDPAC and TEA do?
Ryan Samuelson
Sure. Well, Stephanie and Mr. Busler, thank you very much.
You know, JDPAC is . . . it’s the analysis center for the combatant command. It’s the analysis center that allows us to fulfill our Unified Command Plan responsibilities. And so, we bring engineering and analytical work together both with JDPAC and the Transportation Engineering Agency, which TEA is focused on improving the employability and sustainment of the Joint Force by providing the Department [of War] expert engineering analysis, policy guidance, and additional analysis.
And so, when you take an engineering center from the combatant command and the analysis center and combine that with the Transportation Engineering Agency, what you have is a fusion of the ability to look at engineering solutions and then also to look at how we are moving from predictive to prescriptive analytics to ensure that the Joint Force can deploy and sustain itself.
Host
Mr. Busler, I’m really interested in how you came to write this article, but also why it matters for the Parameters [and] Decisive Point audience.
Bruce Busler
About two years ago, I had the chance to speak at a conference that was hosted by the [US] Army War College that involved many of the service and Joint players that were addressing homeland defense topics and the ability to project power from the homeland. And, as an outgrowth of that conference, I was asked to write a journal article, which I was happy to do, because I really wanted to help people understand what is it that TRANSCOM and JDPAC and TEA were doing on behalf of the Joint Force to be able to operate from a contested homeland.
And, that was really becoming a point of awareness of the fact that we’re [no longer] going to operate with impunity. It’s just an administrative activity to get the Joint Force to the airfields and seaports and get them into the fight. And so, what I wanted to do was kind of capture my thoughts and then help people see the great work that was being done at TRANSCOM on behalf of the broader community to ensure we could prosecute this mission.
In the article, I kind of distill my thoughts into three key areas. First of all, how we understand and minimize the impact of high-consequence events, versus all the potential points of disruption, so that we can continue to operate when we are going to be disrupted—and it’s not if, but when, we’re going to be disrupted—and then, also, how that works with all of the providers we have.
So, the first point was minimizing the impact of high-probability / high-consequence events. The second one was maximize how this thing called the Joint Deployment Distribution Enterprise can continue to operate with all of our providers. And, we have to maintain not only the primary capabilities but have resilient approaches for how we can use alternate ways of conducting our mission in finding other paths [that] allow us to continue to move the force forward.
And lastly, I wanted to talk about optimizing those relationships we have to have with our commercial providers and with our federal, state, and local partners to be able to do this mission. We’re heavily reliant upon commercial providers and our interagency partners to do this kind of mission. So, how do we optimize and build relationships today that will sustain us when it really counts?
And so, those were the key themes I wanted to build in the article and help draw people’s attention to what we’re doing today and then point out some thoughts that maybe [help people understand that], you know, it’s not a panacea. What are we doing to maybe address some areas that are continuing to be a risk to us?
So, that’s kind of what I wanted to do to help people quickly see the essence of what that look[s] like. And so, one of the things I mentioned before, which maybe Ryan can help expound upon, is [introduce] this idea of what is a Joint Deployment and Distribution Enterprise?
And, Ryan, maybe I’m going to give it back to you, but can you talk a little bit about how, you know, our commercial partners and our federal, state, and local, interagency partners are so critical for TRANSCOM to conduct this mission with their component commands to do this hard work we just described?
Samuelson
Sure. Thank you, Mr. Busler.
You know, Stephanie, one of the things I wanted to cover about the article, too, before I get into what really the Joint Deployment and Distribution [Enterprise] is, [that] it had key critical themes. And so, why am I here today? I’ll tell you why I’m here today. It’s because this article still is immensely relevant today, and it is driving an awful lot of what US Transportation Command is doing.
It was a paradigm shift, right? It’s [the transition] from uncontested to contested nature of our deployment and distribution activities. It’s about engineering. The article was about engineered resiliency—how we’re doing strategic analysis and the programs we do that [with] to engineer resiliency into our ability. It’s about commercial partnerships. It’s about network redundancy and resiliency, which is in itself protection of the ability to project the forces. It’s about Reserve components and their criticality to it. And ultimately, [it’s] about mission assurance through distributed ops. And so, we find it very relevant today. And in fact, the entire JDDE (Joint Deployment Distribution Enterprise) has likely read the article because it drives an awful lot of what we talk about.
So, what is the JDDE? You know, really, it’s a global network of interdependent systems of systems. It’s a blend of military, commercial, and government partnerships. If you think on the military side, it involves combatant commands, Defense Logistics Agency, Defense Health Agency, [and] the Joint Forces. On the commercial side, our transportation providers are hugely critical. They are a key backbone of this ability to deploy globally. And then [it includes] our government partners from state and local partnerships with the Department of Transportation through the Maritime Administration, [and] our Highway and Rail departments, as well.
The JDDE also can include multinational partners if we are partnered with them on moving something for the Joint Force. It includes our allies and partners. And so, the way I look at it, the JDDE really is—it’s the equipment, it’s the people, the procedures, the information, the organizations, the training, [and] the facilities. All of that is required for the mobility enterprise to generate and sustain the mass at velocity across tactical and strategic distances. And that’s the key [to] this partnership.
Busler
And so, one of the things, you know, that I was going to kind of follow up on is [that] once you understand those entities that have to work together . . . one of the very first things I did in the article was talk about what are the potential ways they’re going to be disrupted? You know, one of the things that TRANSCOM focused on—you know, probably 15 years ago, and has grown over time—is the ability to look at the impact of cyber operations that will impact our ability to operate.
And that’s a relatively new area for us, but that isn’t the only way that we could potentially be disrupted. You know, I mentioned, you know, early on, that back even in World War II, we had attacks on the homeland. They just weren’t of high impact. You know, the Japanese floated balloons over the Northwest. They actually shelled—with a submarine. The Germans actually had espionage and other activities on the East Coast. But the thing was, they were relatively minor in their impact and really had no deep consequence to how we could operate.
That’s not the same today. We’re seeing that, especially in the cyber domain, which is probably the area that will be the most likely and have the, probably, most pervasive impact [on our] ability to operate.
But I think you’re seeing, out of the examples that we’re looking at in Ukraine, for example, the ability to look at drones [and] other things will happen. And so, then it becomes how do you think about operating when those conditions now are going to be imposed upon us? So, that became, you know, kind of a concern. And one of the other areas that I think people are aware of, is that, you know, within the cyber domain, it’s not just the technical means of disrupting us, there will be information operations that will try to disrupt our commercial providers from supporting us, from having, you know, the American people...
