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Identifying Opportunities for USAF to Gain Greater Access to Sustainment Expertise
The Air Force has taken steps to emphasize the importance of life cycle sustainment and product support to achieve reliable warfighting capabilities at a reasonable and predictable cost, but additional opportunities for improvement exist. In 2012, the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) restructured from 12 centers to 5, to include the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center and Air Force Sustainment Center.1 The reorganization was intended to unify efforts and standardize processes across the Air Force acquisition and sustainment enterprise. In 2014, the Air Force established a Senior Executive Service (SES)-level Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force position within the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (SAF/AQD). This executive is responsible for enterprise oversight of product support, supply chain management, materiel maintenance, and weapons system life cycle support functions.2 SAF/AQD also serves as the functional advocate for product support managers and guides logistics and sustainment resource decisions with a focus on ensuring that weapons sustainment levels are able to meet warfighter requirements.3
In addition to this significant organizational focus, the Department of Defense (DoD) implemented policies to require key performance parameters (KPPs) for
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1 The other Air Force Materiel Command centers include: the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center, and the Air Force Test Center.
2 Retrieved from http://ww3.safaq.hq.af.mil/Organizations/SAF-AQD on October 17, 2019.
3 Ibid.
material availability and key system attributes (KSAs) for material reliability and ownership cost. Both of these policies positioned the Air Force to obtain total ownership costs and reliability on equal footing with the traditional focus on technical performance. The challenge in changing this emphasis, however, depends on how well the Air Force leverages this opportunity with knowledgeable and expertly equipped sustainment workforce.
The qualification and competency of the sustainment workforce are the most important factors in effective planning, designing, acquiring, and executing Air Force sustainment activities. The committee was impressed with the dedication, enthusiasm, and professionalism of all the Air Force sustainment professionals we interacted with over the course of the study. In today’s highly competitive environment, there needs to be a constant focus on recruiting, building, and retaining a technically competent workforce. In the course of our study, the committee heard from a number of Air Force organizations that are taking steps to address recruitment and retention challenges. For example, the software engineering groups at Oklahoma City, Ogden, and Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex have established a new website to streamline and shorten the often bureaucratic and lengthy government recruiting and hiring process.
The committee’s earlier recommendations to rebalance the Air Force’s program-centric view of sustainment to one that cuts across multiple programs at the enterprise-level may be accomplished by first designating a sustainment and modernization functional leader, who is empowered with appropriate authorities and assigned proper resources. The functional lead, who is equipped with an appropriate support staff and resources, would create a focal point for initiatives aimed to improve access to sustainment talent and expertise. This approach would be analogous to the professional career development and workforce improvement responsibilities of a corporate chief engineer.
As addressed in Chapter 3, AFMC’s organizational realignment to the five center construct and assigning program managers (PMs) full life-cycle responsibilities for their respective programs represent good steps toward addressing deficiencies in sustainment planning. The committee did not find any evidence to suggest that either of these initiatives need to be modified. The committee did conclude, however, that product support managers (PSMs) who are not geographically co-located with their respective PMOs are challenged to engage early in program development and throughout the program’s life cycle. Moreover, a lack of qualified workforce proficient in product support and logistics hampers the Air Force’s ability to effectively execute sustainment planning across the enterprise.
Relatedly, the committee is concerned that the Air Force is ill equipped to address the increasing need to recruit and retain technical expertise in the areas of data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and other technological capabilities required to modernize sustainment approaches, such as in the areas of predictive
maintenance or condition-based maintenance plus. These modernization initiatives, supported by a cadre of technically competent sustainment experts, will drive the Air Force’s ability to innovate and introduce more cost-effective sustainment approaches across the Air Force.
In simple terms, there are two ways to foment technical expertise: acquire or grow. The Air Force’s organic sustainment workforce consists primarily of long-term former military and career civilian personnel. This composition will likely remain unaltered in the foreseeable future, but the option of acquiring technical expertise from external sources may serve as a complement or enhancement to the capabilities of the organic workforce. For example, employing high-skilled contractors to focus on one specific area of sustainment modernization like AI may augment the organic capabilities.
However, it is the view of the study committee that the Air Force should not outsource sustainment functions to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) or contractors in their entirety. Instead, it should take a nuanced approach and consider all factors in determining the appropriate mix of organic and acquired sustainment expertise necessary for the program and for the Air Force enterprise.
Finding 4-1: Opportunities exist for the Air Force to gain greater expertise in the areas of product development and sustainment modernization by leveraging best practices from industry.
Commercial companies are driven by competitive pressure from customers and fiduciary responsibilities. As a result, operating and support costs are central to new product development decisions. Industry also understands that by the time a product’s requirements are firm and the design concept has been defined in advance of full-scale production, 90 percent of that system’s operating and support costs have been determined—and they behave accordingly.4 For this reason, they develop expertise in designing for sustainment and are constantly seeking competitive advantages in this area. Similarly, operators of commercial airlines are constantly seeking ways to increase reliability and reduce the costs of aircraft in continuous service.
Compared to commercial development programs, Air Force acquisition processes still, in large measure, do not consider cost and reliability KPPs and KSAs as high-priority goals during product development. The focus is routinely on technical performance and schedule, which results in lower readiness and increased life-cycle cost. In contrast, commercial companies consider operating cost and reliability as
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4 John Ray, SAF/AQD Briefing presented at the Committee on Early Sustainment Planning in the Development Life Cycle on January 23, 2019. The percentages in this briefing approximate the numbers in other sources—the DoD Product Support Managers Guidebook and the DoD Guide for Achieving Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability.
requirements equal in importance to technical performance characteristics. Accordingly, commercial companies and their development partners typically focus their efforts on designing and developing products that are accessible, reliable, easy to maintain, and inexpensive to operate. This best practice promotes sustainment expertise and incentivizes modernization from which the Air Force can benefit.
In considering commercial best practices from which the Air Force could potentially adopt, the study committee consulted a preliminary Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on weapon system reliability that examined reliability approaches from Boeing Commercial Aircraft, FedEx, General Electric, Pratt & Whitney, and Maytag. Additionally, the committee visited Delta TechOps (DTO) and heard about the ongoing efforts between DTO, Georgia Tech Research Institute, and the Air Force in seeking ways to adopt commercial aviation best practices for the Air Force. From this research, the committee identified several best practices summarized in Box 4.1.
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.
One possible approach to achieving this objective is to expand the SAF/AQ-sponsored Education with Industry (EWI) program by assigning Air Force fellows to companies focused on cutting-edge commercial and technological capabilities, and ensuring post-EWI assignments that maximize the transition of industry knowledge to the broader Air Force. The committee learned from current EWI fellows that their post-industry assignments are not always aligned with their industry tours. This is a missed opportunity for both the Air Force and the Airmen that may be resolved by ensuring post-EWI assignments are properly aligned with industry tours.
Finding 4-2: Proactive development and management of PSM career paths and training foster a deeper understanding of sustainment and achieve better product support outcomes.
PSMs who have experience in the commercial sector benefit from their understanding about industry best practices. Moreover, PSMs who are empowered through professional training and career development are better able to execute critical thinking or “thinking that is purposeful, reasoned, and goal directed as opposed to compliance oriented.”5
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.
The curriculum should highlight industry best practices and case studies that demonstrate for example, how to incorporate advanced technology into new programs during the design phase, as well as applying it to programs in production, and explaining their relevancy toward Air Force sustainment planning. This will encourage future generations of PSMs and sustainment professionals to introduce and adopt innovative solutions across the Air Force enterprise.
Finding 4-3: Existing sustainment planning processes discourage the pursuit and development of advanced sustainment expertise and its early inclusion in program development.
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5 Steven Gerras, Colonel (Ret), Ph.D., “Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking: A Fundamental Guide for Strategic Leaders,” U.S. Army War College, August 2008.
The Life Cycle Sustainment Plan is required by DoD Instruction 5000.02, “Operation of the Defense Acquisition System,” and is intended to serve as the seminal document in guiding both effective and efficient program sustainment outcomes. Regrettably, this guidance along with many other DoD and Air Force sustainment directives, are heavily process and checklist focused. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the “U. S. Air Force Product Support Managers Toolkit” consists of over 200 pages of checklists.
While critical thinking was encouraged in the DoD acquisition improvement initiative, Better Buying Power, the general guidance has been on adhering to approved processes and guidelines. This has the unintended effect of PSMs generating a series of rote and largely useless sustainment planning documents instead of using their best judgments to determine effective and efficient sustainment solutions. Box 4.2 provides an example of the type of questions involved in critical thinking.
Recommendation 4-3: The Air Force should refocus policy guidance from a checklist mentality to a knowledge-based acquisition approach.
Guidance documents and policies should emphasize the importance of seeking evidence, closely examining rationale and assumptions, analyzing the applicability of introducing innovative technologies and efficient processes, and planning and managing their adoption across the Air Force enterprise. Air Force PSMs should also consider adopting appropriate methods to gather and assesses data and perfor-
mance metrics, effectively interpret and understand compiled information, employ methods to arrive at well-reasoned decisions and solutions, and identify ways to assess them against applicable criteria and standards.
Finding 4-4: The Air Force has not taken advantage of existing tools designed to bring outside expertise into the Air Force.
There are a number of programs designed to give the Air Force access to outside expertise; these include the use of highly qualified experts (HQEs) and individual program augmentees (IPAs). In conversations with Air Force sustainment leaders, however, the committee noted that these programs are not being effectively utilized, particularly in the area of sustainment modernization. The standard personnel system is structured to compensate civilians the same way, and the use of outside experts, who are generally paid higher salaries than the government workforce, is not structurally incentivized. This discrepancy in pay should not serve as a barrier to employing outside sustainment experts.
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.
There are many ways in which the USAF could potentially leverage non–Air Force experts. HQEs, IPAs, DoD fellows, academic and industry consultants, contractors, and university interns may all augment and bring new and innovative perspectives to the Air Force sustainment community. By broadening the expertise and understanding of the organic workforce to outside experts, the Air Force can enhance its use of commercial practices across the sustainment enterprise.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The Air Force sustainment enterprise is vastly complex and imbalanced. Organizations, processes, leadership, authorities, and workforce are often decentralized and program driven. Simply focusing on one specific area is inadequate in addressing these interwoven sustainment challenges. Instead, adopting a holistic set of enterprise level institutional changes, policies, and resource reallocations may yield more positive and scalable sustainment outcomes.
The Air Force has an opportunity to reshape sustainment organizations and processes. The establishment of the Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO) is an encouraging step in addressing sustainment of aging fleets in a way that is both efficient and cost effective. According to former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, one of the goals of the RSO is to “leverage agile manufacturing and reform legacy
sustainment processes to drive down costs and meet warfighter needs rapidly.”6 A second goal is to inject new technologies into Air Force maintenance, support, and repair.7 To date, the RSO has focused on projects in condition-based maintenance, agile manufacturing, and automation, which are all techniques that may be adapted across all programs. It remains to be seen, however, if these efforts will be scalable across multiple programs in the longer term and instill tech innovation across the Air Force sustainment enterprise.
Many of the recommendations made throughout the report address specific areas of Air Force sustainment; these recommendations, when taken as a whole, can produce positive improvements in operational effectiveness, cost efficiency, and systems reliability, maintainability, and availability. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the key to achieving successful sustainment outcomes is to recognize that sustainment is a critical part of the requirements formulation and design processes. Those processes must start on day one, when the program is first being contemplated.
The committee recognizes that there are additional issues and topics that require further examination. They include: aging equipment, obsolescence, health of the industrial base, supply chain security, intellectual property rights, among others. Most of these topics fall outside the scope of this study, but deserve further attention as the Air Force progresses toward an enterprise approach to sustainment.
The committee is grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the improvement of the Air Force’s sustainment enterprise. The support, cooperation, and openness from Air Force leaders and sustainment professionals were greatly appreciated. The committee applauds the attention the Air Force is focusing on improving sustainment and the recognition that there are significant opportunities for improvement, including both greater operational capability and cost reductions. During the site visits, the committee encountered dedicated professionals intent on making the Air Force as ready and capable as possible. By taking a step back from the all-consuming day-to-day tasks of keeping the fleet flying and rethinking how it approaches sustainment from an enterprise perspective, the Air Force will open the doors to a more balanced and less program-centric approach toward sustainment that will pay large dividends for decades to come.
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6Air Force News, “Air Force Establishing New Office Aimed at Driving Down Maintenance Costs,” July 25, 2018.
7 John A. Tirpak, “Smart Sustainment,” Air Force Magazine, November 1, 2019.
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