This publication is the eighth in the series The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War. The publication focuses on the sealift and logistic operations during the war and includes a number of photographs as well as sidebars detailing specific people and ships involved in the logistic operations. This historical pictorial reference would be of interest to students, historians, members of the military, specifically the Navy, and military leaders, veterans, Vietnam War veterans, and the U.S. merchant marines.

Considers legislation to require private shipping lines use for overseas transport of certain DOD commodities and personnel.

At the request of the Chief of Naval Operations, the National Research Council (NRC) conducted a study to determine the technological requirements, operational changes, and combat service support structure necessary to land and support forces ashore under the newly evolving Navy and Marine Corps doctrine. The Committee on Naval Expeditionary Logistics, operating under the auspices of the NRC's Naval Studies Board, was appointed to (1) evaluate the packaging, sealift, and distribution network and identify critical nodes and operations that affect timely insertion of fuels, ammunition, water, medical supplies, food, vehicles, and maintenance parts and tool blocks; (2) determine specific changes required to relieve these critical nodes and support forces ashore, from assault through follow-on echelonment; and (3) present implementable changes to existing support systems, and suggest the development of innovative new systems and technologies to land and sustain dispersed units from the shoreline to 200 miles inland. In the course of its study, the committee soon learned that development of OMFTS is not yet at a stage to allow, directly, detailed answers to many of these questions. As a result, the committee addressed the questions in terms of the major logistics functions of force deployment, force sustainment, and force medical support, and the fundamental logistics issues related to each of these functions.

Considers legislation to require armed services to use privately-owned merchant marine vessels to transport cargo and civilian personnel before using ships operated by Military Sea Transport Service.