AVIATION SUSTAINMENT PERFORMANCE BASED LOGISTICS OPTIONS

Aviation Sustainment Performance Based Logistics Options

Aviation Sustainment Performance Based Logistics Options

INTRODUCTION

The U. S. National Security Strategy has recently been implemented through the use of military power to resolve numerous conflicts throughout the world. Leaders have relied on military forces as the principal element of power to resolve various conflicts, ranging from the global war on terrorism to peacemaking and peacekeeping to preemptive war. Acknowledging the range of activities carried out by our military forces, many political leaders agree a transformation of our business and planning practices will be necessary in order to sustain peace around the globe.

This paper reviews the Executive Branch's support for the transformation of logistics. It analyzes the guidance of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics concerning the implementation of performance-based logistics (PBL). It describes the process for implementing PBL. It assesses PBL's capability to provide a comprehensive process to improve and sustain weapon systems' readiness. It describes the military services' concepts for implementing PBL. It explains the relationships, pertaining to PBL, among military services, defense activities, industrial bases, suppliers, and manufacturers. Finally, it describes how the Defense Logistics Agency plans to implement PBL and considers PBL's potential impact on the services.

CURRENT SUSTAINMENT PROCESS

Sustainment consists of the logistics support processes of supply, transportation, engineering, and maintenance that receive, store, and issue repair parts to the war-fighter. For aging U.S. weapon systems, the sustainment spending is approximately $60 billion annually. Some estimates nearly double that cost to sustain today's force structure and seizes the predicament (Sears, George, 2003).

To manage these dollars, DOD's logistics sustainment procedure consists of a complex array of numerous activities, processes, and automated systems. As an example, following an Army scenario for ordering a repair part from the supply chain, a supply soldier submits a requisition (if the needed part is not available in Prescribed Load List (PLL)), to a higher unit's supply support activity (SSA), which maintains an Authorized Support List (ASL). If the repair part is not available on the installation or field location (retail level), the requisition goes to Defense Logistics Agency's (DLA) inventory control points (ICP) (wholesale level) (Hill, Larry W. 2003). If the ICP does not have necessary repair parts available, the ICP contracts with one of the approximately 90,000 suppliers 8 at an industrial base (strategic level) to deliver repair parts immediately, anticipating that parts are in the pipe line or production line (Glasco, Larry, 2003).

There are a myriad of activities, processes, and automated systems that are involved in the current logistics support sustainment process (see Figure 1), which offers a snapshot of the war-fighter's and depot's requisition migrating though the process to repair the weapon systems. Each military service participates in this arduous process, which is supposed to deliver repair parts to the war-fighter in a timely manner. Logistics sustainment relies on a distribution network from the suppliers to DLA's depot for storage; maintenance activities for repairing the weapon system and data collection required for maintenance ...