Logistic Support for medical operations

The profound changes the Bundeswehr Joint Medical Service has undergone due to the extension of its task spectrum since the end of the East-West confrontation and its involvement in peacekeeping and peacemaking operations raise the question of how this now independent service is to be provided logistic support. In the past, there was no provision for the deployment of an independent medical service with its own logistic structures. The medical service was integrated into each service and was provided full logistic support by the service concerned. The new challenges facing the Armed Forces in current and future operations in terms of command and control capability, mobility, sustainability and the capability to cooperate in multinational units apply in the same way to the Bundeswehr Joint Medical Service and its logistics. For ongoing stabilization operations, they have meanwhile become reality. As an independent organisational area, the Bundeswehr Joint Medical Service needs functioning logistic structures – both in routine duty and for operations – that fit in with the likewise newly developed Bundeswehr logistics
system in such a way that continuous logistic processes can be developed.