Duston Mullen has served among countless smart minds throughout his years in the U.S. Marine Corps and Army National Guard. But the individuals he’s been among as part of a military fellowship program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are some of the most “advanced minds” he has ever come across.
Mullen is one of three Military Fellows with more than 80 years of collective military experience who are partaking in a 12-month program overseen by the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics (CTL), as part of a partnership with the U.S. military that dates back to 2006. Each year three military logistics officers are selected to participate in the MIT Supply Chain Management master’s program.
This year’s cohorts include Mullen, now of the South Dakota Army National Guard, along with Lukas Toth from the Army Reserve and Charles Greene from the Active Army. They routinely interact with 40-80 MIT students often aged between 28-30—individuals described by Mullen as “very inquisitive” but mostly lacking any military background.
“MIT teaches you to solve problems where there’s no perfect information, there’s no clean answers, no time to wait,” Mullen told Military.com. “And they expect that. It’s basic. They expect us to contribute.
“So far, for me, interacting with the students at the master’s program that we’re currently in—they are by far some of the most advanced minds I have ever had the opportunity and privilege to engage with. They are extremely, extremely analytical.”
Unique Opportunity
Mullen joined the Marines in 1992 as an active-duty service member and left the service in 2000. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks he attempted to reenlist but was above the age threshold to return.
Instead, he was accepted into the National Guard, received his commission and became an ordinance officer before later being promoted to lieutenant colonel. That was how he had the chance to become affiliated with MIT.
“They are by far some of the most advanced minds I have ever had the opportunity and privilege to engage with.”
He explained that annually, there’s an application process for lieutenant colonels and colonels to apply for the Army War College; however, each state is only allocated so many quotas to attend and it’s competitive.
“They rack and stack us and select the best for the fellowships and to attend the resident war college,” Mullen said. “And fortunately for me, I already had a master’s degree and that’s one of the criteria to be eligible for a fellowship.”
Initially, he was selected for the resident war college at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. But when his master’s education became known, he became a viable candidate at CTL.
Experienced Leadership
Chris Caplice has his own military background.
Caplice, executive director of CTL, graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and then was in the Army for five years as an Army Corps of Engineer Officer. He exited after five years, got his master’s degree at the University of Texas, Austin, and later went to MIT to get his Ph.D.
Post-graduation he did software for 10 years in freight transportation before coming back to MIT in 2003 and eventually kickstarting the CTL program.
“We’re a 50-year-old center that works with shippers, carriers, brokers, manufacturers and retailers, helping them improve their supply chain, coming up with new ideas and driving it into practice,” Caplice told Military.com. “We have grad programs, we have executive education, we have research projects, and we have corporate outreach.
“As executive director, my job is mainly to make sure the center runs. It’s about a $25- $30 million annual revenue center, [has] about 120 researchers, staff, admin, all that, and about 8,200 graduate students a year.”
The program kickstarted when Caplice was approached in 2006 by an official from U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) who realized the Armed Forces needed to upskill some of their more senior leaders in the logistics arena.
Since then, three colonels have been coming through the MIT halls: one from active duty, one from the reserves, and one from the National Guard.
Mullen meets with Caplice weekly, where they “have a lot of great conversations” on transportation and logistics. Mullen said Caplice’s military background is “key” to the rapport and the program’s success.
“[Caplice] has no problem having legitimate conversation based on fact,” Mullen said. “If it’s an assumption, he really pushes you to get the factual answer with cited sources. And if you can’t find a factual source or a cited source, that’s where he expects you to jump in and conduct that research and become very analytical, look at variances, look at anything that could possibly or potentially impact that that’s that missing research.”
The results have been proven over the years, led by Caplice’s leadership.
“Chris is constantly a great mentor,” added Mullen. “He is an individual that I would work with in a moment’s notice. He has got to be one of the foremost minds of transportation and logistics I have ever come across.”
Logistics in a Changing World
The military world has dramatically altered over the last few years, notably due to the acceleration of technology and the myriad capabilities on and off the battlefield.
Caplice said that while supply chain management represents a broader spectrum in terms of manufacturing and distribution, logistics generally deals with the physical movement of goods, services and people.
“You’ve got an information flow, you’ve got a physical flow, and then you’ve got a financial flow,” Caplice said, adding that military-based logistics is all about getting the right material from source to fighters, wherever they are in the world and where they need it.
That translates to physically moving products, storing them, knowing where to stockpile them and how, understanding how and where to move them. Containers are an example, he said, that changed military logistics in the 20th century and became integral during the Vietnam and Gulf wars.
“Logistics really started in the military,” he said. “You can trace it back to Roman times, if not earlier.”
Mullen, who plans to return home to South Dakota and use his gained knowledge to have conversations with state leadership, acknowledges the sea change in military strategy and says MIT through such programming “is uniquely positioned to connect the military logistics with the American industrial base.
“That’s the area that I find that we’re currently, I wouldn’t say lacking, but this is an area that probably needs a little more focus,” he said. “And what is meant by that is that in the past, we’ve had so many people that have been intertwined in the military. And today we don’t have that like we used to.
“Our next war, battle, conflict, whatever you want to call it, is going to be won and lost by our defense industrial base, meaning, the factories, the rail yards, the distribution nodes. And that’s what I’m kind of learning here at MIT is how that all intercorrelates and how we can mobilize our military at scale with the industrial base that we have available to us.”
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