Examination of the U.S. Air Force's Aircraft Sustainment Needs in the Future and Its Strategy to Meet Those Needs (2011) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
1 Introduction
Pages 15-23
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From page 15... ...
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)
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From page 16... ...
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.
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From page 17... ...
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.
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From page 18... ...
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.
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From page 19... ...
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.
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From page 20... ...
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.
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From page 21... ...
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.
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From page 22... ...
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.
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From page 23... ...
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.
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