From the Editor-in-Chief @
Email Nelson McCouch III
ArmyALT@gmail.com
on my handlebar to let the kid behind me know if I was going left or right. (Don’t judge me; it was cool at the time.) In the store, I saw a big chrome blinker with a wire and thumb switch that you could add to your bike. Neat! Several dollars later, I attached the switch to the handlebar, ran the wire along the top tube and attached the turn signal indicator to the seat post. Added batteries, and off I went!
W
BACK TALK
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Well, it worked great for the first few minutes. After a bump or two, it worked intermittently. Ten, after a hard day of riding with my friends, it never worked again. Poor design, cheap materials and no kid-testing led to one disappointed young boy.
By now you’re asking, “What the heck does that have to do with the Army, Army acquisition or the theme of this issue, sustainment?” Everything! Unlike a car, or a bike, for which sustainment equates to maintenance, military
sustainment
equates to acquisition products with properties allowing them to last for decades and flexible platforms able to meet military needs far into the future. At a program executive office where the equipment is designed, developed and delivered, sustainment is the difference between a product that works and one that doesn’t deliver—or, by another measure, the difference between a disap- pointed boy and a dead Soldier.
In the world of science, for experimental results to be valid, they must be repeatable. If scientists can’t reproduce the results, the results are not considered real. Now, substitute “sustain” for “reproduce” and you can see what sustainment means to acquisi- tion. If the production process can’t produce the required number of products; if there’s a material weakness; if the product doesn’t last because of a design flaw; if it just plain breaks because stress factors were determined improperly; or if main- tenance procedures are poorly written—then the product is not sustainable.
hen I was a kid, I wanted to add turn signals to my bike. I thought it would be cool to be riding along and slide a switch
Sustainment is a part of every facet of acquisi- tion—the products, processes and tactics. It has to be “baked in”; sustainment isn’t something that can be added later. Everybody has a stake in sustainment, from the requirements generators at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, through designers and developers, to the operators in the field.
Just what is sustainment, given that virtually no one outside of the military even recognizes it as a word? Several stories in this issue delve into what sustainment means to different Army stakeholders and why it’s important. For some, sustainment is in the technology that enables data to be stored and retrieved so that it’s available anywhere, anytime. See what the CIO/G-6 is doing to explore the cost- saving benefits of remote software sustainment in “Reaching for the Cloud.” Want a more traditional viewpoint? Learn how Army and Marine Corps commands joined forces with a major defense con- tractor to create a novel way to sustain the U.S. howitzer fleet in “Orchestrating Sustainment.”
Looking beyond the military, private industry has its own sustainment challenges. Like the Army, CSX Corp. has heavy equipment to maintain, from 50-year-old locomotives to cutting-edge electron- ics, and a large workforce to train and coordinate to accomplish this
sustainment mission. Take
the “A” train with CSX Chief Operating Officer Cindy Sanborn in “Sustainment on the Rails,” and understand why she’s excited to come to work every day.
Finally, I’d like to welcome the Hon. Katrina
McFarland as acting assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology and Army acquisition executive. Read her inaugural column on Page 6 and get to know her vision for Army acquisition.
Questions, comments, suggestions? Please send me a note at
ArmyALT@gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you!
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Nelson McCouch III Editor-in-Chief
ASC.ARMY.MIL 5
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