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Identify When Sustainment Planning Should Be Integrated into a Program
The key to achieving successful sustainment outcomes—operational and cost-effective support including reliability, availability, and maintainability—is to recognize that sustainment is a critical part of the requirements formulation process and design process. Achieving effective sustainment is more than just the typical elements associated with logistics such as parts, training, test equipment, and maintenance that result from the development and production phases of a program. It is instead an integral part of the requirements definition and systems engineering processes that begins in the pre-systems acquisition phase and continues through design and development, production and deployment, and beyond into operations and support. It involves the requirements trade-offs that drive the system design and understanding how complexity of the design affects the reliability of the system’s components, the environment in which the system operates, manufacturing quality, and the design and development of the support system. The purpose of this process is to systematically arrive at a design that provides the best balance of performance and cost over the entire life cycle of the program. That process starts on day one. In other words, sustainment planning should begin when the program is first being contemplated.
However, simply beginning sustainment efforts early is not enough. Once begun, success is determined by the character, quality, and rigor of these efforts conducted by Air Force requirements, program management, engineering, and sustainment leaders. Specifically, do these leaders understand what to do, how to do it and when to do it? When sustainment leaders understand their mission and take an active role in the program, the Air Force receives a system that is reliable,
available, and maintainable in accordance with program requirements, and “better, cheaper, and faster” than the system it replaces. Since 70 percent of a system’s lifecycle costs are in sustainment, product support requirements must be considered in the design at the start of the acquisition process.1 The opportunity space for having the largest positive impact reducing sustainment cost and fielding reliable maintainable systems in major capability acquisition is during the Material Solution Analysis phase prior to Milestone A and at the Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction (TMRR) phase prior to Milestone B, as reflected in Figure 1.1. Seventy percent of a system’s life-cycle cost is set during these critical phases and 90 percent is set by Milestone C at the conclusion of Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase. By the time the Production and Deployment phase begins, it is simply too late to affect life-cycle cost and reliability without incurring prohibitive engineering and redesign costs.2
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1 General Accountability Office, Weapon System Sustainment: Selected Air Force and Navy Aircraft Generally Have Not Met Availability Goals, and DoD and Navy Guidance Need to Be Clarified (GAO-18-678), September 2018.
2 Ray, J., SAF/AQD Briefing presented at the Committee on Early Sustainment Planning in the Development Life Cycle—Meeting 2, January 23, 2019.
Sustainment planning should thus be an enterprise function that is continuous and addressed before any individual program is even contemplated, specifically when the Air Force is planning for the future of the sustainment enterprise as a whole. For defense programs, there are four key steps to achieving successful sustainment outcomes.3
- Understand and document balanced and reasonable warfighter needs and constraints.
- Ensure the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is adequately designing for reliability, availability, and maintainability.
- Ensure the OEM produces reliable and maintainable systems.
- Monitor field performance of the system and make continuous improvements.
The Department of Defense (DoD) 5000 acquisition instruction series emphasizes that there is no singular way to structure a program and it encourages tailoring every program to optimize the structure to suit the product being acquired. The key steps to successful sustainment outcomes should start during the pre-acquisition phase, be tailored to provide the most efficient process, and run concurrently with other activities throughout the acquisition process.4 These actionable tasks require an understanding of logistics, engineering, contracting, and military operations.
Finding 1-1: In spite of often-dramatic increases in the speed, range, performance, and capability over the years, sustainment problems like poor reliability, availability, and high-cost persist.
For example, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is projected to have operating and support costs that are 60 percent higher than the combined Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft it replaces.5 A review of additional audits, reports, and interviews with Air Force sustainment personnel reveals some common and persistent challenges among new programs, all resulting in low readiness and increased cost.6
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3 Department of Defense, “DoD Guide for Achieving Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability,” August 3, 2005.
4 Department of Defense Instruction 5000.02, “Operation of the Defense Acquisition System,” January 7, 2015.
5 General Accountability Office, F-35 Sustainment: Need for Affordable Strategy, Greater Attention to Risks and Improved Cost Estimates, GAO-14-778, September 2014.
6 Information compiled based on interviews and discussions with Air Force sustainment leaders and personnel conducted during site visits to Wright-Patterson, Tinker, and Hill Air Force Bases from December 2018 to April 2019 and literature reviews of General Accountability Office reports and testimonies.
- Early in the development phase, weapons systems requirements routinely focused on technical performance with less consideration given to operating costs and readiness.
- Using emerging and immature technologies impedes the ability to design platforms with high reliability.
- Collaboration is often episodic and limited among organizations responsible for requirements setting, product development, and maintenance.
- Defense contractors’ reliability design practices are inconsistent with best commercial practices for accelerated testing, simulation-guided testing, and product certification and control.
- Sustainment requirements are often poorly defined or unrealistic and lack priority towards achievement.
Additionally, the committee observed the following characteristics prevalent in new programs:7
- Failure to design-in reliability early in the development process;
- Inadequate lower-level testing at the component or subcomponent level;
- Reliance on predictions instead of engineering design analysis;
- Failure to perform engineering analysis of commercial off-the-shelf gear;
- Lack of reliability incentives in the contract; and
- Unanticipated software integration issues affecting readiness and cost.
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.
Treating sustainment as both an enterprise-wide integrated Air Force activity that supports all programs, as well as a program-level activity to support unique individual programs, will provide the Air Force with the resources and ability to optimize sustainment investments and management. It will also enable the Air Force to place its sustainment planning workforce in appropriate program offices to effectively conduct sustainment planning from at the crucial earliest phase of program inception.8
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7 Michael J. Sullivan, Director Acquisition and Sourcing Management, General Accountability Office, “Defense Acquisitions: Addressing Incentives is Key to Further Reforms,” Testimony Before the Committee on Armed Service, U.S. Senate, April 30, 2014.
8 There may be organizational trade-offs and resource requirements concerning where enterprise level planning activity should be conducted and how large it should be, but the most obvious candidate is AFLCMC and the most important immediate task is to establish an initial capability.
Recommendation 1-2: The Air Force should establish an enterprise-level open-system architecture for sustainment.
Developing an open-system architecture (OSA) for sustainment creates the opportunity for commonality across systems, eases planning for deployment operations, introduces technology advancements as new weapon systems are added to the inventory, and systematically inserts technology across supply and maintenance. In this context, OSA goes beyond the digital domain and references the need to create the framework for an enterprise sustainment ecosystem that incorporates the foundational elements for supply, maintenance, information systems, support equipment, and technical information.
Finding 1-2: At both the Air Force enterprise and program office levels, staffing for both early program design and for addressing sustainment requirements and functions throughout the program’s life cycle is woefully inadequate.
The Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Logistics and Product Support (SAF/AQD) at Headquarters Air Force is responsible for enterprise oversight of product support, supply chain management, materiel maintenance, and support functions required throughout the life cycle of weapon systems.9 With a lean staff of nine individuals, SAF/AQD does not have the capacity or necessary authority to affect and influence sustainment and product support requirements during the crucial earliest stages of the program’s life cycle. The Air Force and DoD are replete with sustainment instruction and guidance on “what to do,” “how to do it,” and “when to do it.”10 The missing element is staffing and retaining a sufficient cadre of qualified experts who are capable of introducing sustainment planning early in the program’s life cycle.
Similarly, while most program managers recognize the importance of starting sustainment planning early, the committee found that an insufficient number of qualified personnel are actually assigned to this function. Additionally, the committee observed that some product support managers (PSMs) do not possess the requisite background knowledge or functional expertise needed to effectively plan for sustainment and to influence requirements at the outset of the program. This topic will be addressed in more detail in Chapter 3.
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9 Retrieved from http://ww3.safaq.hq.af.mil/Organizations/SAF-AQD on October 17, 2019.
10 See USAF Product Support Enterprise Vision, USAF Life Cycle Management Center Product Support Contract Requirements Tool, USAF Life-Cycle Logistics Workforce Guidebook, DoD Product Support Guidebook, DoD Handbook-Acquisition Logistics; Designing and Assessing Supportability in DoD Weapons Systems: A Guide to Increased Reliability and Reduced Logistics Footprint, Defense Acquisition University Program Managers Toolkit; DoD Reliability and Maintainability; DoD Guide for Achieving Reliability, Availability and Maintainability.
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.
The ability to conduct trade-offs and capture balanced program requirements for sustainment early in program development is essential. To facilitate effective early sustainment planning, the PSM should be assigned at program inception as a direct report to the program manager (PM) to highlight the importance of sustainment requirements, planning, and management toward achieving program success. Clear descriptions of PSM responsibilities should also be promulgated to ensure requisite knowledge, skills, and competencies that includes a fundamental understanding of logistics engineering can address program sustainment requirements.
For example, PSMs should understand the foundational elements of physics-of-failure techniques, failure reporting, criticality analysis and correction, accelerated life testing, simulation-guided testing, and component stress testing. Similarly, PSMs and their staffs must understand the basis of what drives system availability and be able to oversee and validate contractors’ efforts in this regard. Ideally, selection of PSMs should look favorably on sustainment experience in operational fleets as this competency appeared to be a key characteristic of successful PSMs.
In addition, the organization responsible for managing the Air Force sustainment enterprise should take a more active role in pre-acquisition activities and include high-level sustainment requirements planning prior to the Material Development Decision (MDD). This provides the opportunity to evaluate reliability, maintainability, and support strategies in the analysis of alternatives (AoA) before selection of the final solution. At Milestone B, when the Acquisition Program Baseline (APB) is established, the APB should include clear language providing sustainment related requirements at each subsequent program milestone.
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.
Sustainment leadership expertise on the Service Acquisition Executive (SAE) staffs should be resourced adequately to support review of early planning activities, especially during requirements development, and to support enterprise level sustainment planning activities throughout the program’s life cycle. If adequately resourced (which it is not currently), this staff can be an effective agent for the SAE in linking these two efforts to ensure sound cross program and individual program planning are timely and effective. Procedures should be put into place requiring all Acquisition Category (ACAT) I and II level programs receive review from AQD prior to moving through requisite milestones including MDD.
Recommendation 1-5: The Air Force should create an independent sustainment cost estimation and analysis capability.
Both requirements and early design choices should be anchored in sound sustainment cost analysis. For this reason, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) should consider establishing a more robust cost estimation and analysis capability. A good model for the type of capability envisioned is the Cost Department at Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), which has a comprehensive and independent cost estimating and analysis competency in their engineering division (AIR 4.2).11 The purpose of this effort is to provide the NAVAIR Commander, Navy Program Executive Officers, and the Naval Aviation Enterprise with independently formulated and informed decision-making support related to current acquisition plans, legacy platforms, sustainment strategy alternatives, upgrades and/or modernizations, ownership cost reduction initiatives, and wartime contingency operations. Additionally, NAVAIR routinely convenes an Estimating Technical Assurance Board throughout the acquisition life cycle to validate and approve technical, programmatic, and cost inputs and assumptions. The intent of this process is to provide high fidelity, defendable, and realistic cost estimates for Naval Aviation programs and for the NAVAIR sustainment enterprise.12
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.
A crucial part of early sustainment planning, for both programs and the Air Force sustainment enterprise as a whole, is understanding technical data rights strategy. Most U.S. Air Force (USAF) weapons systems will have to be supported by the Air Force sustainment enterprise for decades. Therefore, decisions made early in the acquisition process to either acquire or not acquire data rights have far reaching ramifications on sustainment costs, the ability to compete spares procurements and repairs, and the capability to repair engines, components and the airframe organically. These decisions, often expensive, regarding what and when to procure technical data must align with the Air Force’s strategy for the sustainment enterprise. While individual PSMs and PMs are critical stakeholders in these decisions, they may not have the necessary enterprise perspective or
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11 Early Sustainment Planning Committee Meeting presentation from John Johnson, Christopher Mushrush, and Robert Dudley, NAVAIR Cost Department (AIR 4.2), February 19, 2019, Washington, DC.
12 The governing document is NAVAIR Instruction 5223.2A, “Establishing Technical and Programmatic Baselines for Naval Air Systems Command Cost Estimates.”
resources, and may be overly-focused on near-term objectives. The two ACAT I program case studies listed in Box 1.1 are exemplars of the issues regarding strategy, decision making, and understanding.
