Maintenance of military aircraft often requires the acquisition and procurement of new and technologically advanced equipment, which is a major expense for any nation. RAND has researched and evaluated military acquisition, procurement, and maintenance activities for decades, providing essential recommendations to allow military decisionmakers to manage costs and make effective decisions and policy regarding aircraft sustainment activities.
REPORT
When a weapon system ceases production, the tooling not needed for sustainment that cannot be repurposed must either be disposed of or stored. Storage is not free, but system-specific tooling might become necessary for a restart, and starting from scratch can be expensive, although some tools cost more to store than they are worth. The authors examine these tooling retention issues for the C-17 cargo aircraft.
REPORT
The Air Force is considering upgrades to the KC-10 in several areas: avionics, command and control, multipoint refueling, defensive systems, and compatibility with night-vision systems. An assessment of options to upgrade the KC-10 weighed the costs and potential benefits of the upgrades against demands in homeland defense, theater employment, deployment, and air bridge operations and KC-10 roles (refueling only, airlift only, or…
REPORT
Recent Office of the Secretary of Defense planning guidance directs the services to plan for high levels of engagement and deployed operations, although their nature, locations, durations, and intensity may be unknown. This book synthesizes the results of the initial phases of a study of the basic issues and premises on which the Air Force plans, organizes, and operates its logistics enterprise.
REPORT
The U.S. Air Force's KC-10 air refueling fleet has been in service for 25 years without a major avionics upgrade. Without modernization, the KC-10 will not be in compliance with upcoming air traffic management mandates regulating the minimum allowed communication, navigation, and surveillance capabilities.
REPORT
Analyses demonstrate how F-16 and KC-135 aircraft maintenance units can be reconfigured to support mission generation operations, with heavy maintenance such as aircraft phase inspections reassigned to a network of centralized repair facilities. This approach identifies options that either exceed current maintenance capabilities at current cost levels or meet required capability levels at reduced cost.
REPORT
The findings presented here reexamine capabilities-based programming by introducing a new definition of capability metrics and a new set of algorithms for building and evaluating programs. The tools provide the programmer with a means to quantitatively and reproducibly develop programming options in light of an uncertain future, serving as a means to express capabilities and risks of resource allocations in terms of national planning…
REPORT
RAND developed a methodology to help understand and explain the differences between U.S. Air National Guard and active component aircraft maintenance productivity. This research focuses on maintenance options for supporting associate units, where the goal of the associate unit is to produce trained pilots in the most efficient manner possible.
REPORT
Given manpower reductions in the active duty Air Force and availability of highly trained Air National Guard (ANG) personnel, some missions could be transferred from the active component to the ANG without significant cost to the total force. Portions of missions such as Predator operations and support, air mobility command and control, Commander of Air Force forces staffing, and base-level intermediate maintenance could benefit from ANG…
REPORT
Aging U.S. Air Force fleets have deterioration problems, resulting in increased maintenance workloads. Programmed depot maintenance (PDM) is significant, requiring 2,000 to 50,000 labor hours and material. RAND developed the PDM Capacity Assessment Tool (PDMCAT), applied it to the KC-135 PDM process, with three alternative forecasts of future workload and two fleet-size scenarios, to inform aircraft availability and resource allocation…
REPORT
“Sustainment surge” describes the increase in weapon systems repair activity brought on by the operational demands of wartime or contingency operations. In light of the U.S. military’s transformations in force planning over the past 25 years, the authors of this report look at how the nature of surge has changed, whether legislation has hindered management in developing effective and efficient ways to manage surge, and…
REPORT
Despite many advantages, reorganizing the U.S. Air Force into an Air and Space Expeditionary Force places serious demands on combat support infrastructure. Consolidating intermediate maintenance at forward support locations may lessen the burden.
REPORT
This report presents a construct for reorganizing Air Force acquisition and purchasing activities using purchasing and supply management (PSM). PSM involves managing not only suppliers but the entire supply network. A PSM demonstration was chartered and eight initiatives were targeted to help modernize the spares process and ultimately put more spares into the hands of maintainers. The report presents a flexible, springboard design to…
PEOPLE
Senior Management Scientist
Ph.D. in business administration, M.B.A. in logistics management, The Ohio State University; M.S. in logistics, Air Force Institute of Technology
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