Combat strength at the front cannot be considered apart from the support needed to move and sustain it. The logistical tail grows with both the amount of fighting power deployed and the distance between that force and its base. Increasing either variable expands the requirement; increasing both makes support grow faster than the fighting element alone. Sea transport is valuable because ships can carry large volumes of food, matériel, and other sustainment across that distance. This gives a general way to assess force projection beyond the Russian case.
Notable Point · 12:18-13:25
How force size and distance multiply a logistics tail
The teeth-to-tail explanation shows that sustaining more combat power farther from its base requires a disproportionately larger support system.