What’s the best way to control spiraling weapons sustainment costs?

A draft version of the National Defense Authorization Act the House Armed Services Committee will begin debating this week includes a provision requiring DoD to develop a strategic framework for sustaining its weapons systems. That document would need to incorporate considerations about the core logistics functions needed to keep each system operating over time, including the industrial base needed to support them.

 

“We spend more money to sustain a program than buying it to begin with,” he told reporters in April, when the legislation was first introduced. “In previous NDAAs, we’ve said that you have to have a sustainment strategy before you buy something. What we did not do, however, was require a sustainment strategy across systems.”

 

Separately, the House NDAA would require each of the military departments to appoint a full-time deputy assistant secretary focused exclusively on sustainment issues. The Navy did just that last September, and the Air Force has a similar position: The deputy assistant secretary for logistics and product support.

That was from “House NDAA presses DoD to get serious about sustainment costs.” A couple points on this:

First, it’s not like the DoD has neglected sustainment costs. There’s been several initiatives over the decades pushing toward lifecycle planning and costing. The JLTV is a poster child of planning for sustainment up front, and seems to have been a success, with costs expected to be below the HMMWV it replaces (~$21K per vehicle per year in BY$15 compared to ~$23K for the HMMWV).

But there was plenty of heartache, with the program starting back in 2007 and not reaching initial operational capability until 2019! This is about as straight forward a major acquisition as can be imagined.

So the first issue is that greater emphasis on sustainment costs will stretch out acquisition timelines and introduce more decision-makers into the process. Perhaps it is worth it. But I imagine that agile development and reduced sustainment costs can go hand-in-hand.

The jury on the JLTV is still out, with sustainment costs that are largely still predictions. I’d like to see real OSMIS data on the actual cost of sustainment for the early units. Another issue for the JLTV is that it seems to have had a rocky (or at least abbreviated) operational test program.

The second point is that when new layers of management are introduced, such as Deputy Assistant Secretaries for sustainment, they will feel like they have to do stuff. Usually that means large investments in IT tools and processes with dubious value. They’ll predict that the investments will pay for itself years into the future. Yet those leaders will be long gone before any payback is returned, if it is returned at all.

The DoD needs to break the vicious cycle of higher sustainment costs putting pressure on modernization, but modernization always winning out in “Night Court“-type prioritizations. The result is a fall in readiness to maintain a semblance of force structure.

That cycle needs to be broken using agile processes and harnessing emerging technology. (1) Software enabled technology naturally reduces marginal costs as well as sustainment costs. We see this happening with additive manufacturing, AI-enabled predictive maintenance, and so forth. (2) Low-cost attritable systems require less sustainment. Evidence shows that missiles cost less to sustain than manned aircraft. And unfortunately UAVs have high operations and sustainment costs because they are so labor intensive. Moving toward autonomous, low-cost, attribable UAVs should be a priority — not a relatively high-cost “loyal wingman.”

In the end, a push toward to future is the best way to break the vicious cycle of rising sustainment costs, not new layers of bureaucracy.