Putting logistics first in the capability hierarchy

The requirement hierarchy separates essentials, necessaries, and desirable capabilities. Logistics should not sit in a separate adjustable category beneath the visible combat systems. Logistics and infrastructure are essentials because every ship, aircraft, weapon, and formation depends on them before it can generate useful force. The size of the support network may expand with the force, but its existence is not optional. Nuclear weapons show how national position changes the rest of the hierarchy: among nuclear peers they may form an essential deterrent ceiling and discourage chemical or biological escalation. They do not prevent every conventional clash, so the framework still has to fund usable conventional forces below that ceiling.