Quantum in Defence Logistics and Operational Planning

Military logistics and operational planning are becoming increasingly difficult to manage with conventional planning assumptions alone. Modern defence operations require the allocation of scarce assets across contested, degraded and time-sensitive environments, where mobility, fuel, munitions, maintenance, supply-chain resilience, route selection and mission priorities interact under uncertainty. In this context, quantum technologies should not be assessed as disruptive military instruments in themselves, but as possible computational tools for selected optimisation problems. The relevant issue is whether quantum annealing, quantum-inspired optimisation, high-performance computing and AI-enabled planning can produce measurable value inside existing defence logistics, simulation, wargaming and command-support systems.