‘ENTERPRISING’ SUSTAINMENT
BALANCING ACT
A member of Joint Task Force – Bravo jumps from a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during helocast training at Lake Yojoa, Honduras, Feb. 25. The Army is seeking an enterprise approach to sustainment, balancing force structure, modernization and readiness. (U.S. Air Force photo by Capt Zach Anderson)
important,” he added, not just from a cost-saving and training aspect, but also in terms of readiness, given that Soldiers may need these skills on the battlefield.
Over the past several years of combat operations, the Army has procured and fielded equipment so quickly, reacting to demand rather than anticipating it, that it is time to return to a systems approach and find ways to make the sustainment process much more efficient, according to panelist COL Patrick Mason, commander, Red- stone Test Center, Redstone Arsenal.
In the modernization arena, that includes reducing “unique” equipping solutions, investing in energy innovations and focusing on systems with “embedded prognostics” that are self-diagnosing, if not self-healing, according to the pan- elists.
It also means fully recognizing
life-cycle sustainment costs as the Army upgrades or procures systems.
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Crosby suggested that digitizing and automating sustainment can help the
A major cost driver for Army aviation is software, which “will overcome us if we don’t get a handle on it,” Collyar said. Software support costs continue to go up in every aviation system—and, for that matter, across every system in the Army, he said, describing the cost-curve rise as more logarithmic than linear.
Now-retired MG William T. “Tim” Crosby, then the Program Executive Offi- cer Aviation, agreed. Crosby, who also was on the panel, said that post-produc- tion software can be costly and that the Army needs to find cost efficiencies across all life-cycle systems. A solution, he said, is to digitize and automate sustainment using a task-based system. Tis approach would provide Soldiers a systematic, vis- ible means of troubleshooting and getting to the root cause of system failures.
Army identify issues at their origins rather than simply treating symptoms. He noted that the Army could learn from industry, which does this well. So, instead of continually buying replacement parts for, say, a leaking transmission seal, this approach would identify the root cause for the fail- ure, which might lead to a redesigned replacement seal, he said. It would cost more upfront but would save money over time, not to mention increasing safety.
Tese systems-based measures would improve accountability and auditability by making it easier to capture costs across the entire enterprise, spot problems with specific parts, and understand projected mean times to failure and environmental impacts on parts, Collyar said.
Army aviation must work in partner- ship with industry to achieve a balance among force structure, modernization
Army AL&T Magazine
April–June 2014
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