Summary
The U.S. Air Force (USAF) tasked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine with establishing a committee to plan and conduct an in-depth study to examine and provide recommendations on how the Air Force can improve its sustainment planning process by planning early in the development life cycle or by other appropriate methods. The Committee on USAF Sustainment Planning Early in the Development Life Cycle was formed to (1) identify at what point or phase of the development of a weapons system should sustainment planning be integrated into the program; (2) examine and provide recommendations regarding how sustainment planning should be evaluated throughout the development process; (3) investigate and describe the current challenges with sustainment planning and determine what changes have occurred throughout the USAF acquisition process that may have eroded sustainment planning; and (4) identify opportunities for the USAF acquisitions offices to gain greater access to sustainment expertise.
Sustainment planning is often difficult in early stage development as final user requirements and the technical baseline are not yet locked down and are likely to evolve as competing technology trades are made. This results in program offices not being able to properly assess and account for the costs of sustainment in their development plans, which leads to distortions of the full cost of acquisition for weapons systems. Additionally, while program offices are tasked with life-cycle planning, which includes estimating sustainment costs, program staff often lack the necessary expertise to effectively estimate sustainment and product support costs. Lessons learned and best practices from previous sustainment activities are
often limited and not shared across program offices or incorporated into current planning activities. Further compounding the challenge of knowledge sharing, the committee found that the sustainment expertise of depot level repair and supply chain management commonly exists at Air Logistics Complexes (ALCs) or with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and is not easily accessible at the program offices.1
The vision of the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), the parent organization of the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) and the Air Force Sustainment Center (AFSC), references “creating agile, cost-effective war-winning capabilities”2 However, the committee found little evidence of these capabilities actually being implemented and executed across the Air Force enterprise. For example, the committee observed that logistics software or the software framework used to track maintenance requirements for a particular aircraft are typically nontransferrable to other aircrafts;3 and the use of additive manufacturing, which may expedite maintenance and repairs and decrease sustainment costs if adopted across the entire Air Force sustainment enterprise, appeared to be used only on an ad hoc program-specific basis.4
While the committee did find pockets of excellence within individual programs, no single leader or activity at the headquarters, the AFLCMC, or the AFSC, who have the requisite authority and resources to elevate and scale these program-level innovation and best practices across the Air Force enterprise, appears to exist. The committee’s most significant finding thus relates to the Air Force’s inability to plan, resource, manage, and execute sustainment at the enterprise level.
During the site visit to Delta Technical Operations (Delta TechOps), the committee learned that the airline manages and maintains 17 aircraft types and 13 different engines through an enterprise approach toward predictive maintenance that has yielded increased efficiencies and decreased idle time.5 This enterprise focus has resulted in marked improvements in reliability and significant reductions in life-cycle costs.6
Similarly, the Air Force operates a large fleet of aircraft of varying types, models, and series. However, acquisition, modernization, and sustainment for these aircraft
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1 Tours and discussions conducted during site visits to Wright-Patterson AFB from December 18-20, 2018, Tinker AFB from April 11-12, 2019, and Hill AFB from April 25-26, 2019.
2 Air Force Materiel Command vision statement: https://www.afmc.af.mil/Home/Welcome. Accessed on October 21, 2019.
3 Examples can be seen in the F-35’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) and the F-22’s Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), both of which are unique to the aircraft that they support.
4 Tours and discussions conducted during site visits to Tinker AFB and Hill AFB.
5 “Delta TechOps Metrics Briefing,” presented during committee visit to Delta TechOps, March 7-8, 2019.
6 Ibid.
are mainly performed at the program level. This structure, with program-oriented vertical lines of authority and funding, does not enable the Air Force to leverage cost-effective or innovative solutions that emerge when the fleet as a whole is considered. The current state of Air Force sustainment is captured in Figure S.1.
In spite of these challenges, the Air Force has a significant opportunity to achieve better life-cycle sustainment outcomes for all of its weapons systems programs through a scalable enterprise approach. The committee believes the Air Force would increase reliability, availability, and maintainability, while driving down total life-cycle costs, by adopting a more balanced and less program-centric capability to organize, plan, resource, scale, and execute sustainment for the Air Force as a whole. Underpinning this enterprise approach should be the development of an open sustainment architecture that allows for digital and technological solutions to plug in over time for both home stations and in forward deployed operations. This scalable approach is reflected in Figure S.2.
Figure S.3 provides more details about the contrasting “current” and “envisioned” concepts for the Air Force sustainment enterprise. The committee recognizes that the work to implement this transition will not be an easy set of tasks. It crosses many existing lines of effort, culture, organizations, and practice, not to mention legislative constraints. The role of OEMs or prime contractors in each program also has to be considered. This is particularly important in early program planning when acquisition strategies are formulated and OEM roles and intellectual property rights can be locked into programs. Recognizing these challenges, the committee nevertheless views this transition as critical if the Air Force is to achieve
significant improvements in sustainment planning and execution. The committee’s recommendations are informed by and consistent with this finding.
RECOMMENDATIONS
The current Air Force approach to managing its sustainment enterprise is out of balance, with an overwhelming focus on program-by-program sustainment planning, funding, and management—as opposed to an emphasis on planning, managing, and funding the sustainment enterprise as a whole. In this light, the committee proposes the following set of actionable recommendations:
Recommendation 1-1: The Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (SAF/AQ) should direct continuous product support and sustainment enterprise planning as an input and framework for program level sustainment planning.
Recommendation 1-2: The Air Force should establish an enterprise-level open system architecture for sustainment.
Recommendation 1-3: The Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (SAF/AQ) should introduce product support manager involvement early in program development.
Recommendation 1-4: The Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (SAF/AQ) should resource Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Logistics and Product Support (SAF/AQD) sustainment leadership expertise.
Recommendation 1-5: The Air Force should create an independent sustainment cost estimation and analysis capability.
Recommendation 1-6: The Air Force should elevate technical data rights strategy decisions and provide enterprise level sustainment data rights policy guidance, decision making, and program manager and product support manager training on technical data rights.
Recommendation 2-1: The Air Force should task an appropriate Air Force sustainment and modernization organization to be responsible for ensuring that weapons systems programs have the standardized tools and resources they need to acquire the data necessary to effectively evaluate program sustainment information and to conduct necessary sustainment analysis and
decision support during development. This organization should support an independent evaluation of the adequacy of sustainment planning and design efforts during development.
Recommendation 2-2: The Air Force should task an appropriate Air Force sustainment and modernization organization to train program executive officers, program managers, and product support managers to create, understand, and use meaningful sustainment metrics prior to Milestone A.
Recommendation 2-3: The Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Logistics and Product Support (SAF/AQD) should revise Life Cycle Sustainment Plan planning guidance to ensure that processes and reporting demonstrate critical thinking, focus on expected outcomes, detail strategies for meeting sustainment key performance parameters and key system attributes, and include approaches for performing evaluations consistent with this guidance.
Recommendation 2-4: The Air Force should include the proposer’s design for sustainment with technical justification based on total ownership cost analysis and trade-offs as a technical evaluation factor in all future solicitations for new platforms and major modernization efforts.
Recommendations 2-5: The Air Force should develop a stronger Air Force sustainment enterprise function, including designating a sustainment and modernization functional leader.
Recommendation 3-1: The Air Force Materiel Command should expand the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Logistics Directorate’s workforce development program in size and scope, add the Air Force Sustainment Center (AFSC) as a full partner, and include AFSC personnel in the program.
Recommendation 3-2: The Air Force should consider co-locating all of the product support managers with their respective program managers.
Recommendation 3-3: The Air Force Materiel Command should proactively manage the product support manager workforce, similar to more established communities like engineering and contracting, for continuous improvement and increased professionalism.
Recommendation 3-4: The Air Force should identify specific product support manager authorities needed to be compatible with Air Force sustain
ment expertise modernization plans and higher-level (i.e., higher/other than the program manager) Air Force sustainment policy.
Recommendation 3-5: The Air Force should designate a sustainment and modernization functional leader, with appropriate authorities, staff, and resources.
Recommendation 3-6: The Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (SAF/AQ) should reassess the appropriate role of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Logistics and Product Support (SAF/AQD) in support of the Service Acquisition Executive and the Air Force.
Recommendation 3-7: The Air Force should develop forward-looking sustainment modernization strategies and implement them across multiple programs.
Recommendation 3-8: The Air Force and original equipment manufacturers should consider using new supply chain optimization algorithms to replace traditional supply chain forecast models that will significantly improve availability and reduce supply chain costs.
Recommendation 3-9: The Air Force should issue guidance that indicates the minimum sustainment considerations for rapid acquisition programs, including sustainment modernization compatibility. The committee recommends the Air Force incorporate sustainment costs and considerations in the Section 804 program planning and decision-making processes.
Recommendation 3-10: The Air Force needs to proactively address the problem of dramatically extended service life from both a holistic enterprise-level approach, as well as a program-by-program approach.
Recommendation 4-1: The Air Force should institutionalize and expand efforts to learn from industry, to include best practices that may be adapted to the Air Force, and develop the requisite organic expertise needed to implement these practices.
Recommendation 4-2: The Air Force should establish and institutionalize a curriculum to train sustainment and product support personnel on commercial best practices and their use of cutting-edge sustainment technology.
Recommendation 4-3: The Air Force should refocus policy guidance from a checklist mentality to a knowledge-based acquisition approach.
Recommendation 4-4: The Air Force should leverage and increase the use of Department of Defense and/or government personnel programs designed specifically to give the department greater access to outside expertise.
