Military logistics was very much in the forefront of the mind of the Western world at the beginning of the 1990s as the United States, the United Kingdom, and its more than two dozen Coalition partners rampaged to victory in the short, blitzkrieg-like war known as Desert Storm, liberating Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. More than in any previous war, the media, taking their cue from the victorious commanding Coalition general, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, focused on the logistic skills of the winning side. Hitherto this was unknown territory for the modern day press.

TV networks aired clips of the Coalition’s combined formidable might that was deployed in Saudi Arabia, an astounding 670,000 men from 28 nations—while newspapers devoted considerable space to the vast numbers of soldiers, vehicles, and tonnages that were successfully moved to support them. After all, during the methodical six-month buildup prior to combat, Operation Desert Shield, the logistics was all there was to write about.

Most importantly, and impressively, the massive logistic preparations leading up to Desert Storm itself worked. Somehow the 150,000 troops of the U.S. VII and XVII Corps, with all their advanced weapons, ammunition, and supplies were able to secretly move 150 miles across the forbidding Arabian desert; in fact, most of their supplies were actually waiting for the troops when they got there! Simultaneously, the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division rampaged 250 miles across Iraq, with ample no hitch and with ample support. How?

Elementary, Schwarzkopf said, “logistics.” Both at his famous press conferences as well as later in his memoirs, Stormin’ Norman called Desert Storm a “logistician’s war,” handing much of the credit for the Coalition’s lightning-swift victory to his chief logistician, or quartermaster general, as he would have been called in a previous era, Lieutenant General Gus Pagonis. Pagonis, Schwarzkopf declared, was an “Einstein who could make anything happen,” and, in the Gulf War, did.

Likewise, media pundits from NBC’s John Chancellor on down also attributed the successful result of the war to logistics.

What was that and what did it have to do with war?

Of course, logistics has everything to do with war. Indeed, as demonstrated below, logistics is war, and the art of supply chain management derives directly from military logistics.

This explains why Lieutenant General William G. Pagonis, the logistical wizard behind the Allied success in Operation Desert Storm, was able to readily adapt so many of the strategies and tactics he developed and used to move mountains for the U.S. Army to his subsequent and current position as senior vice president of supply chain management for Sears, Roebuck. Sears, Roebuck hired him directly from the military in 1991.

Fascinatingly, and revealingly, although the wizard has been working in the civilian sector for over a decade, his chief hero continues to be none other than his Greek ancestor, Alexander the Great, who inspired one of Pagonis’ best-remembered logistical innovations, the mobile firebase. As he confirmed in a recent interview with me, his personal hall of fame also includes such generals as Ulysses Grant and George Patton.

Why? And what do you as a forward-looking, innovative corporate planner or executive have to learn from these past figures? A lot, as you will see.