Bryan Clark: One big challenge they [the DOD] have is sustainment costs. Sustainment costs of our force — partly because it’s aging, partly because it’s getting more sophisticated — are growing much faster than the rate of inflation. So right now a concern among DOD leaders is, just owning the stuff we’re buying is going to become such a big cost that we’re going to have to cut down on the amount of things we buy in the future.
Gen. Larry Spencer (Ret.): If you’re in DOD’s shoes, you’re saying, “OK, they gave me money to go purchase F-35s and ships and tanks, great.” But at some point, they also know our government can’t sustain that level of spending and cuts are going to come from some where. So when you invest in those systems, and two or three years from now the budget goes down, what do you do?
That was from a Government Matters discussion, “New budget deal increases defense spending.” The strategy that they cite to mitigate the high sustainment cost of new systems like the F-35 is the “high-low” mix, so the F-35 procurement would be paired with F-15EX, similar to how the F-15 was the “high” to the F-16s “low” in the 1970s.
I think Clark and Spencer’s characterization of the sustainment problem is missing the fact that high sustainment costs are a consequence of poor research and development decisions. It is crazy to assume that higher capability can only be achieved with higher costs. The F-35’s automated logistics system (ALS) was intended to lower costs. It’s not that it was impossible to see higher technology leading to lower costs. But poor execution seems to be causing far higher costs, similar to what happened when ALS was attempted on the F-15 decades before.
Counterfactuals are sketchy, but I don’t think it is unreasonable to assume that if the F-35 program was run in a different way, or if it was thoroughly tested before making a production decision, that we wouldn’t be in the same sustainment conundrum.
Sustainment costs are a consequence of acquisition decisions. Injecting more and more requirements by adding sustainment to design contracts is not the answer. Instead, rigorous testing will reveal the performance, costs, and sustainment measures. That updated information must be used to make decisions as to what enters the force structure, not information available before the program even started.
(Software is a bit different because marginal cost of reproduction is zero, but still the user testing and acceptance of features remains integral to ensuring the code is sustainable.)
Sustainment and other specifications are so critical to put into development contracts if designers know they’ll never get a production contract if it the test articles are not operationally effective and suitable. The suitable part of test and evaluation ensures that a system must be reliable, maintainable, and so forth.
If nothing is done at the front end of the acquisition cycle to make sure only cost effective systems are fielded, then we can be sure that high sustainment costs will continue crowding out R&D/procurement dollars in a vicious cycle. Perhaps that is necessary. Only when there is a crisis will there be a willingness to really rethink the process.
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