Equipment Sustainment Requirements for the Transforming Army

Even before the new Army vision took shape and the Army began its transformation efforts, the fast-paced, nonlinear operational concepts now associated with the Objective Force were emerging. Early on, it was recognized that dramatically better capabilities for keeping equipment operational-including large improvements in reliability, maintainability, fleet life cycle management, and logistics performance-would be needed to take full advantage of these concepts. And the aggressive deployment and footprint goals of the Army transformation increase the importance of making such advances. Growing recognition of the sustainability shortfalls of current equipment has combined with the new force concepts to prompt reviews of sustainability efforts in the acquisition process. In response, recent studies and workshops have developed recommendations for improving the ability of the acquisition process to produce more sustainable systems. In addition, the studies have raised questions about whether new equipment sustainment metrics are needed to define program requirements and have generated debate about whether sustainment requirements should be key performance parameters (KPPs) in acquisition. RAND Arroyo Center has been conducting research to identify how the Army should define equipment sustainment requirements for new systems. Such requirements should improve the Army's recognition of how various equipment sustainment characteristics affect outcomes, and this will help in the process of making tradeoffs among performance goals. This includes evaluating which requirements should be KPPs, and developing methods to support the successful application of the recommended equipment sustainment metrics.