Conventional logistics may be expressed by the formula CCEM:
Conventional logistics refer to the maintenance problems for an army or regular armed force transported in vehicles with fixed bases and supply lines.
Urban guerrillas, on the other hand, are not a regular army, but fight in small armed groups, and are intentionally fragmented. Guerrillas have neither vehicles nor fixed bases. Their supply lines are precarious and inadequate, and they have no base except perhaps their armory located within a particular house.
While conventional logistics are designed to supply the war needs of the "gorillas" who seek to repress the urban and rural revolution, the aim of urban guerrilla logistics is to sustain operations and tactics which have nothing in common with conventional warfare, but are directed against the military dictatorship and North American domination of the nation.
For the urban guerrilla, who begins with nothing and has no initial support, logistics are expressed by the formula MDAME, which is:
Revolutionary logistics has as one of its principles, mechanization. Simply stated, mechanization for the urban guerrilla is the driver of a vehicle. The driver is as important as the man with the machine gun. Without either, the equipment does not operate, and the automobile like the automatic weapon, becomes useless. Since an experienced driver is not the product of one day's driving experience, his training must begin early, Every good urban guerrilla is an excellent automobile driver. The urban guerrilla expropriates the vehicles that he needs. With the proper resources, the urban guerrilla can expropriate vehicles just as he does other material needs.
Finances, weapons, ammunition, and explosives, as well as automobiles, must be expropriated. The urban guerrilla will rob banks, and expropriate weapons from armories, and steal explosives wherever he can find them.
No operation is undertaken for a single purpose. A robbery, for example, might well include the expropriation of the weapons belonging to the guards.
Expropriation, then, is the first step in the organization of guerrilla logistics, which itself assumes an armed and permanently mobile nature.
The second step involves reinforcing and extending the logistics, primarily by establishing ambushes and traps where we surprise the enemy, capturing his weapons, ammunition, vehicles, and other material.
The most serious logistical problem facing the urban guerrilla once he has captured weapons, ammunition, and explosives is the location of a proper hiding place, as well as establishing the best means of transporting and massing weapons and explosives where needed for any future operation. This must be accomplished in the face of enemy alerts and road blocks.
The urban guerrilla's familiarity with his local streets and city, and such devices as the employment of guides in unfamiliar neighborhoods, are basic to solving the eternal logistics problems facing revolutionary forces.