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1
Introduction
OVERVIEW
The ability of the United States Air Force (USAF) to keep its aircraft operating
at an acceptable operational tempo, in wartime in and peacetime, has been vital
to the Air Force since its inception. This is a much larger issue for the Air Force
today, having effectively been at war for 20 years, with its legacy aircraft becoming
increasingly more expensive to operate and maintain and with military budgets
certain to further decrease. The enormously complex Air Force weapon system
sustainment enterprise is currently constrained on many sides by laws, policies,
regulations and procedures, relationships, and organizational issues emanating
from Congress, the Department of Defense (DoD), and the Air Force itself. The
difficulty of functioning in the midst of this complexity is compounded as the
operational demands of weapon system sustainment and its growing cost collide
with the realities of shrinking budgets in the years ahead. The Under Secretary of
Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics recently stated, “[M]ost of the
money in the budget is spent on sustaining weapon systems that were procured
in the past rather than on acquisition programs per se.”1 In May 2010, the DoD
introduced the Defense Efficiencies Initiative, which seeks to “increase efficiencies,
1 Ashton Carter, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. “Penta -
gon Efficiency Initiatives.” Remarks given at the Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, April 20,
2011. Available at http://www.heritage.org/Events/2011/04/Pentagon-Efficiency?query=Pentagon+
Efficiency+Initiatives:+Are+They+Enough+to+Stave+Off+More+Defense+Cuts?. Accessed May 2,
2011.
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reduce overhead costs, and eliminate redundant functions in order to improve the
effectiveness of the DoD enterprise. This effort is focused on reprioritizing how
DoD can use resources to more effectively support and sustain the force [emphasis
added].”2 As the overall Air Force budget decreases, funding for weapon system
sustainment competes with funding for modernizing the Air Force. Against the
back-drop of these stark realities, the Air Force requested the National Research
Council (NRC) of the National Academies, under the auspices of the Air Force
Studies Board, to conduct an in-depth assessment of current and future Air Force
weapon system sustainment initiatives and recommend future courses of action
for consideration by the Air Force.
COMMITTEE FORMATION AND TERMS OF REFERENCE
The National Academies approved the terms of reference (TOR) for the study
in September 2009 (see Box 1-1), and this 15-month study was funded by the Air
Force in July 2010. Committee members were selected for their backgrounds in
academia, industry, and government. Two additional committee members with
background and experience in weapon system software and Air Force financial
management were added to the committee after the requirements and breadth of
tasks were better understood.
STUDY APPROACH
Six full committee meetings of 2 to 3 days each were held approximately ev-
ery month starting in October 2010. These full committee meetings were held at
facilities operated by the National Academies and at Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base. In addition, subgroups of the full committee visited the three Air Force Air
Logistics Centers (ALCs), the Navy Fleet Readiness Center Southwest, and the Air
Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
The committee extensively relied on briefings by Air Force management teams
in the acquisition and logistics functional disciplines on aircraft sustainment from
the conceptual exploration of technology, to weapon system initial concepts, to
weapon system fielding, to the sustainment phase, and eventually to system retire-
ment. The committee conducted interviews and discussions with senior leaders,
technical specialists, and managers, including those focused on (1) development of
new capabilities; (2) acquisition activities for fielding new capabilities and systems;
and (3) support of fielded systems including supply chain management, engineer-
ing, technical management, and overhaul and repair of current fleets. To assist its
2 Department of Defense (DoD). 2010. Defense Efficiencies Initiative. Available at http://www.
defense.gov/home/features/2010/0810_effinit/. Accessed April 21, 2011.
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BOX 1-1
Terms of Reference
The NRC will
1. Assess current sustainment investments, infrastructure and processes for adequacy in sus -
taining aging legacy systems and their support equipment.
2. Determine if any modifications in policy are required, and, if so, identify them and make
recommendations for changes in Air Force regulations, policies, and strategies to accomplish
the sustainment goals of the Air Force.
3. Determine if any modifications in technology efforts are required, and, if so, identify them and
make recommendations regarding the technology efforts that should be pursued, because
they could make positive impacts on the sustainment of the current and future systems and
equipment of the Air Force.
4. Determine if the Air Logistics Centers have the necessary resources (funding, manpower,
skill sets, and technologies) and are equipped and organized to sustain legacy systems and
equipment and the Air Force of tomorrow.
5. Identify and make recommendations regarding incorporating sustainability into future aircraft
designs.1
1 Many of the presenters to the committee agreed that a budget “train wreck” with respect to sustainment
costs is looming. The TOR did not require the committee to undertake business case analyses related to the report
recommendations. However, such analyses are worthy of future consideration by the Air Force because they would
provide insight on whether implementation of the recommendations would result in overall long-term reductions
in sustainment costs.
evaluation of Air Force sustainment activities, the committee also met with past
and present naval aircraft support personnel, the Defense Logistics Agency, and
industry experts associated with both military support and commercial aviation
fleet management.
From the beginning of the study, the committee sought to understand what was
meant in the terms of reference by the term “sustainment” and the phrase “sustain-
ment goals of the Air Force.” The committee also recognized the need to understand
the “as is” conditions of sustainment support; comprehend the environments that
the Air Force sustainment enterprise has faced in the past, faces now, and is likely
to face in the future; and determine the Air Force’s planning for future sustain-
ment activities. In the DoD or the Joint Staff, sustainment with respect to weapon
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systems is not precisely defined. However, joint doctrine refers to “sustainment”
planning for operations.
DEFINING SUSTAINMENT
Weapon System Sustainment in the Context of the Military Mission
The Joint Doctrine, Joint Force Employment, Planning for Joint Operations,
J-7 Operational Plans and Interoperability Directorate defines “sustainment,” in
terms of “sustainment planning,” as follows:3
Sustainment planning is directed toward providing and maintaining levels of personnel,
materiel, and consumables required to sustain the planned levels of combat activity for
the estimated duration and at the desired level of intensity. It is the responsibility of the
combatant commanders in close coordination with the Services and defense agencies. (p. 5)
The Defense Acquisition University (DAU) significantly expands the definition
of sustainment as follows:
the supportability of fielded systems and their subsequent life cycle product support—from
initial procurement to supply chain management (including maintenance) to reutilization
and disposal. It includes sustainment functions such as initial provisioning, cataloging,
inventory management and warehousing, and depot and field level maintenance. Sustain-
ment begins when any portion of the production quantity has been fielded for operational
use. Sustainment includes assessment, execution and oversight of performance based
logistics initiatives, including management of performance agreements with force and
support providers; oversight of implementation of support systems integration strategies;
application of diagnostics, prognostics, and other condition based maintenance techniques;
coordination of logistics information technology and other enterprise integration efforts;
implementation of logistics footprint reduction strategies; coordination of mission area
integration; identification of technology insertion opportunities; identification of opera-
tions and support cost reduction opportunities and monitoring of key support metrics. 4
DAU’s definition of sustainment is broad in scope and nearly all encompass-
ing. To best align the scope of the study, the committee examined other defini-
tions that focus solely on the weapon system—for example, the Weapon System
Acquisition Reform Product Support Analysis (2009), where the preferred term
that most closely aligns with weapon system sustainment in the context of this
study is “product support.”
3 Available at http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jrm/plans.pdf. Accessed April 22, 2011.
4 Available at https://acc.dau.mil/CommunityBrowser.aspx?id=18073. Accessed May 1, 2011.
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Weapon System Sustainment Defined for This Study
For this report, the committee adopts the following definition of weapon sys-
tem or aircraft sustainment from the 2009 DoD report:5
System sustainment is the package of support functions required to maintain the readiness
and operational capability of weapon systems, subsystems, software, and support systems.
It encompasses materiel management, distribution, technical data management, mainte-
nance, training, cataloging, configuration management, engineering support, repair parts
management, failure reporting and analysis, and reliability growth.
Past, Present, and Future Environments for Weapon System Sustainment
The committee hopes that this report is timely for the Air Force in light of the
current environment of an uncertain world, more than 20 years of high-tempo
operations, expanding global demands on the Air Force, and a high demand for
continuous surveillance over current theaters of operations. Additionally, the Air
Force as well as the entire DoD is under intense budgetary pressures, with rap-
idly escalating costs associated with weapon system sustainment due, in part, to
significantly aging fleets and smaller numbers of newer fleets with features and
capabilities that increase support costs. Simultaneously, there is a constant need to
recapitalize the Air Force’s aged fleet and to introduce new technology to provide
the required level of deterrence and warfighting capability.
Military Operations
Since its formation 63 years ago, the Air Force has experienced variations in its
aircraft readiness. Nevertheless, the Air Force has always made it a priority to keep
its aircraft operating at acceptable rates of mission accomplishment and to be ready
for any mission the nation’s leaders direct. The Air Force has been on a wartime-
like footing for the past 20 years, and its aircraft systems are aging and becoming
increasingly more expensive to operate and maintain. The committee received no
evidence to indicate that the demand for Air Force resources and the associated
operational tempo will diminish in the near term. Additionally, the fleet mix has
changed over the past 10 to 15 years from fleets that were typically “hardware
oriented” with limited amounts of software to platforms entering the inventory
5 DoD. 2009. DoD Weapon System Acquisition Reform Product Support Assessment. Novem -
ber. Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and
Logistics. Available at https://dap.dau.mil/career/log/blogs/archive/2010/01/28/implementation-of-
dod-weapon-system-acquisition-reform-product-support-assessment-psa-recommendations.aspx.
Accessed November 22, 2010.
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today that are dependent on software for up to 80 percent of their functionality,
with attendant upkeep costs.6
As many aircraft in the current fleet are extended beyond their planned lives,
they are modified to extend their lives, resolve existing capability shortfalls, or im-
prove hardware and software support situations. Yet, a newly modified platform,
although achieving new levels of performance to meet military demands, is often
still an aged platform. The committee saw evidence of updated aircraft systems
experiencing aging issues in numerous presentations and at visits to the ALCs.
For example, a newly modified C-5M aircraft needed depot maintenance actions
to repair aircraft subsystem structure cracking that led to fuel leaks only months
after the modifications were completed. Although modified aircraft are needed and
are performing superbly, the basic airframe will require careful attention for the
remainder of its useful life.
WEAPON SYSTEM SUSTAINMENT GOALS OF THE AIR FORCE
Even after much research and discussion, the committee was unable to identify
the officially sanctioned sustainment goals for the Air Force. It was often stated
during the course of the study that aircraft availability is the measure of merit.
However, widely varying oral definitions for aircraft availability were provided.
The committee closely examined Air Force Instruction 21-101 and Technical Or-
der 00-20-2 and observed charts that show aircraft availability for various weapon
systems.7 The Air Force’s sustainment goals are discussed in detail in Chapter 2 of
this report.
Governance: Laws, Policies, Strategies, and Regulations
The enormously complex Air Force sustainment enterprise is currently con-
strained on many sides by laws, policies, regulations and procedures, and rela-
tionships emanating from the Congress, DoD, regulatory agencies such as the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection
Agency, labor agreements, and the Air Force itself. In fact, during the course of the
study, seldom was there a discussion that did not raise governance issues. These
governances have been instituted to promote various standardized practices, facili-
tate the development of sustainment practices, and accommodate special interest
6 Jack Ferguson. Crouching dragon, hidden software: Software in DOD weapon systems. 2001 IEEE
Software 18(4):105-107.
7 Lt Col Jeff Meserve, Chief, Congressionals, Studies and Analysis Branch, Directorate of Main -
tenance, DCS/Logistics, Installations and Mission Support. USAF Maintenance Metrics: Looking
Forward with Aircraft Availability. Available at http://www.sae.org/events/dod/presentations/2007
LtColJeffMeserve.pdf. Accessed April 29, 2011.
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needs. Collectively they create a labyrinth of issues that detract from managing
sustainment as a balanced enterprise with strong emphases on effectiveness for
the warfighter and high efficiency for the taxpayer. In fact, a report commissioned
by the National Defense Authorization Act of 2009 frequently points out that the
governances are many, application is often not adhered to, and the results make
sustainment measurements difficult.8 There appears to be broad support among
the Air Force acquisition and sustainment communities for a comprehensive and
extensive review of these various governances. AFI 63-1019 is an example of an
excellent directive after which such a review could be fashioned. Also, as noted by
the sustainment community, the Air Force has not delegated to a single office or
command the authority to integrate both early acquisition direction on system
sustainment practices as well as to control sustainment in the years of execution.
Relationships
Sustainment activities require significant coordination and communication
across a myriad of functions and organizations. Sustainment is currently largely
facilitated by interpersonal relationships rather than clear lines of authority. Al-
though many sustainment activities and processes produce desired operational
outcomes, many issues require great effort to just “make it happen.”10 A classic
example is the supply chain fragmentation that occurred when the base realign-
ment and closing (BRAC) actions of the 1990s, and particularly 2005, moved the
procurement of components and parts to the Defense Logistics Agency. A signifi-
cant portion of this review addresses the effects that past early-system configuration
and programmatic decisions have had on operational sustainability policies and
looks into process directives that would be helpful in facilitating a more effective
means of putting process controls into practice.
Budget
The difficulty of managing and functioning in the midst of this complexity
is compounded as the operational demands of sustainment and its growing cost
collide with the realities of shrinking budgets. As the overall Air Force budget gets
8 Logistics Management Institute (LMI). 2009. Future Capability of DoD Maintenance Depots:
Interim Report. LG901M1. December. Mclean, Virginia: LMI. Available at http://armedservices.
house.gov/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=be97f304-3d15-4e96-bc24-689f8cb6c633. Accessed Febru-
ary 20, 2011.
9 USAF. 2009. Acquisition and Sustainment Life Cycle Management. AFI 63-101. April 17. Available
at http://www.e-publishing.af.mil/shared/media/epubs/AFI 63-101.pdf. Accessed December 14, 2010.
10 A discussion of sustainment organizational authority and an example of the coordination efforts
required is found in Chapter 4 and depicted in Figure 4-1.
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smaller in real terms, funding for sustainment increasingly competes with funding
to modernize the Air Force and maintain a strong and dedicated team. As discussed
in Chapter 3, the real demands created by aging fleets, increasingly sophisticated
systems with higher sustainment costs, and support concepts configured late in
the lifecycle can drain the Air Force budget. There are many examples, such as the
C-130 aircraft, an airlift workhorse, where the increased operational tempo has
caused the scope of depot maintenance work to grow by 50 percent over the past
several years.
REPORT ORGANIZATION
The complexity of the Air Force sustainment enterprise lends itself to a high
degree of subject matter overlap between report chapters. This chapter provides
a broad context in terms of historical factors related to sustainment and the im-
portant fact that a single agreed-upon definition of sustainment does not exist.
Chapter 2 addresses element 2 of the TOR by analyzing statutes and DoD and Air
Force policies and procedures that direct selected aspects of acquisition that influ-
ence sustainment, as well as governances that are directed at sustainment activities.
The complex acquisition life cycle and actions affecting long-term sustainment
activities are also discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 covers element 1 of the TOR
by exploring the broad aspects of the resources consumed by sustainment. There,
historical Air Force budget and execution documents are examined and future
trends extrapolated.11
Chapter 4 responds to element 4 of the TOR by analyzing the Air Logistics Cen-
ters in terms of resources, processes, and organization. Chapter 5 addresses element
3 of the TOR by examining the history of sustainment and the “art of the possible”
in advancing technology into the current systems. High-payoff opportunities are
currently rare because investment focused on technology insertion targeting sus-
tainment is low and the “hurdle” rate for investment is extremely high. Chapter
6 deals with element 5 of the TOR by looking at opportunities and concepts that
can be used to incorporate sustainability into future aircraft designs. There is some
degree of overlap between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 in terms of the application of
11 The DoD budget for FY2011 was appropriated toward the end of the writing of this report, and
the best available data were used for the analyses in the report. In addition, the President’s FY2012
budget was released mid-way during the committee’s deliberation and serves as a source document
for analyzing future expected costs. Considerable time was devoted to trying to understand the de -
scription of the “efficiencies” outlined in the FY2010 and 2012 President’s budgets and their actual
net effect on sustainment. Importantly, the deliberations regarding Air Force sustainment efficiencies
were service-sensitive, and the committee was unable to gain an understanding of related ramifica-
tions. The committee also had sessions with staff members of the House and Senate Armed Services
Committee to gain their perspective on not only resource issues, but also policy considerations.
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technology to sustainment of weapon systems; the principle difference is historical
and current Air Force sustainment technology initiatives (Chapter 5) compared
to how technology for sustainment may be considered in future weapon systems
for operational capability and utility. Chapter 6 also offers a commercial model
for aircraft engineering, maintenance, and sustainment for future consideration.
Finally, the report is organized to provide the reader with a logical analysis of the
issues from the macro aspect of governance to the details of sustaining new systems
with technological innovation in the future. Findings and recommendations are
embedded in the text of Chapters 2 through 6 after the supporting evidence.
