‘Defence Logistics: Enabling and Sustaining Successful Military Operations’ is a new contributed volume by former defence professionals that offers guidance on issues such as suppliers arriving at a basecamp or soldiers leaving a conflict zone. These military and defence operations can now make better use of ‘civilian’ logistics and supply chain practices because this book explains how they can be applied to the defence context.

Available for practitioners, enthusiasts, and students, the publication gives clear examples from the field that apply these practices. Edited by former logistician and Ammunition Technical Officer for the British Army Jeremy C D Smith, it is the definitive guide to understanding and applying logistics in military operations.

Group Captain (Rtd) Chris Markey FCMI FCILT, Chairman of the Defence Forum for the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT), and Deputy Commander Joint Force Logistic Component Operation TELIC I and II (Iraq) 2003, praised the book for its “great academic view of how defence logisticians can get ahead of the game before weapons are deployed, let alone the first shots fired, pulling together many of the underlying principles in an easily digestible format. I wish I could have had the benefit of this compendium before I deployed on TELIC.”

Major General M D Wood CBE, former Director General of the UK Joint Supply Chain and a current Colonel Commandant of the Royal Logistic Corps in the British Army, also acclaimed the guide saying that it shows “why [logistics] has never been more relevant to modern thinking on defence”.

Jeremy C D Smith manages a few modules on the Defence Acquisition Management and the Programme and Project Management MScs at Cranfield University, UK. He also develops and leads several logistics short courses and workshops pitched at strategic and practitioner levels. Before that, he served in the British Army for 25 years as a logistician and Ammunition Technical Officer.