The DOD always wants to modernize at the expense of operations & maintenance.
When the Navy developed the first submarine platform to launch nuclear weapons in the 1950s and 1960s, the program spent over a billion dollars (TY$) a year at its height. That money came from two places: an increase in topline budget and cutting funds from O&M. When the budget growth is off the table, the DOD doesn’t hesitate to skimp on O&M.
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| First submarine launched missile test of the Polaris Fleet Ballistic Missile (FBM) Program, 21 Jul. 1960. See the full video. |
Mark Cancian at BreakingDefense sees the issue happening today. He tells us how Congressional committee members were made to go “find” more R&D funding. They used three types of “technical adjustments” to O&M programs: unjustified growth, under-execution, and rescissions.
“Unjustified growth” is usually an arbitrary cut for programs that increase beyond a certain percentage [relative to the last years].
“Under execution” means that in the past this account was slow to spend all of its money, so the bill takes a fraction of the amount of front. The problem for DoD is that in multibillion-dollar accounts it’s impossible to say ahead of time where slowdowns might occur, so this is often just a program reduction.
Rescissions are when Congress revokes funds that had been previously appropriated but have not yet been spent. Rescissions are justified if the original purpose of the funding is no longer valid, for example, $380 million taken from the JSTARS recap program that has now been canceled.
That’s pretty interesting. Some say we are heading for a readiness crisis. Readiness may act as a “pressure relief valve.” When O&M is underfunded, fewer systems are fielded or maintained. Can this go indefinitely? When new systems are fielded, will their O&M be pillaged for the next generation?
Some military pilots are only receiving 10 flying hours a month of training when you need a minimum of 30 hours a month to get beyond the basics.
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| 62% of Navy F-18s, and up to 74% of F-18s for the Marines, were unfit to fly by the end of 2016. |
The biggest problem may be the fact that engineering work-arounds in RDT&E can cause costly O&M procedures, lowering readiness even further. The F-35 can only fly twice a week, and is “overly dependent” on contracted maintainers.
The Marines have more aircraft than Great Britain, but only 40% of them could fly in Dec. 2016. Others are more cautious, finding readiness in better shape than the pessimists imply.
I was told by one executive in OSD that the only readiness problem is the F-18s. I’ve been told by another executive from the services that the problem is a whole lot bigger than that.
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