Advertisement

All together now…
(click to view full)

Over the past 18 months, DID has spent a fair bit of time covering Britain’s defense procurement reforms, in particular its practice of “contracting for availability” rather than spare parts or maintenance hours on a number of its key platforms. The ATTAC contract covering the UK’s Tornado strike/interceptor fleet is simply the most recent example of many, but their approach of starting at a smaller level and expanding the scope once performance is proven and trust built has become standard procedure in this field.

Across the pond, the USA is significantly behind Britain in this area. Fortunately, they have not ignored the model entirely. A recent $200 million contract to maintain their B-2 Spirit stealth bomber fleet demonstrates that some progress is being made….

Keeping it up
(click to view full)

Under the new 1-year, $200 million contract awarded by the U.S. Air Force’s Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center, original aircraft manufacturer Northrop Grumman will provide maintenance and sustainment support for the nation’s fleet of 21 B-2 stealth bombers via 3 delivery orders. What’s different is that under the new “contracting for availability” performance-based logistics approach, Northrop Grumman will be measured by its ability to meet specified combat readiness requirements for the B-2 fleet, rather than being given money for specific tasks, spare parts, or maintenance on a specified schedule. All of that now becomes the contractor’s responsibility.

The specified readiness rate was not published, but it may represent a challenge for the contractor. Introduced from 1993-2000, America’s B-2 fleet has historically had availability rates below 50% for a number of reasons. In practice, what this meant was that even with moderate usage, an average of only 6-10 stealth bombers were actually available for missions at any given time.

As was the case with Britain’s Tornados, the effort to change the B-2 bomber’s maintenance framework is happening slowly. In 2002, the Total Systems Support Partnership (TSSP) was inaugurated between Northrop Grumman and the USAF; Air Force personnel worked closely with Northrop Grumman, in order to simplify the processes used to identify and deliver consumable spare parts to the B-2 fleet, resulting in improved combat readiness at a reduced cost. The USAF’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate also played an important role, as detailed in DID’s April 2006 article “Improvement Program Slashes B-2 Maintenance, Improves Readiness.”

The success of the TSSP program led to the B-2 program’s selection as part of a 2005 PBL pilot program conducted in 2005, and the new 1-year contract indicates a cautious but growing sense of trust and understanding between Northrop Grumman and the Air force in this area.

Tornado maintenance
(click to view full)

It’s worth noting that countries like Britain have made these availability-based contracts long-term or even “through-life-of-platform” affairs, in order to remove any incentives to skimp on work (like upgrades) whose benefits or problems may not show up for several years. The B-2 program isn’t there yet; it’s still part of a learning curve and set of test programs designed to help the American DoD understand and successfully apply this new contracting approach.

The B-2 may prove to be a good choice for this purpose. Britain’s experience indicates that combining maintenance and upgrades within an availability-based framework offers significant benefits, and the USAF certainly has plans to upgrade its B-2 fleet over the coming years. Like the Tornados, the B-2’s readiness record to date also shows room for improvement.

As such, the current contract’s 1-year duration makes the B-2 maintenance and sustainment contract an excellent bellwether for the success and adoption of availability-based contracting within the US military.

The pressures driving such reform attempts certainly aren’t going away. Gary Roehrig, director of Performance-Based-Logistics for Northrop Grumman’s B-2 program, cited the fact that Air Force operations and maintenance budgets are continually under pressure as one of the factors influencing the new approach. This was certainly the case in Britain as well, where reformers like Nigel Bairsto found that they only had enough budget to keep half the Tornado interceptor/strike fleet flying under conventional maintenance contracting approaches. Under the new ATTAC framework, that’s no longer a problem. Better yet, the monies are locked in to future budgets as a fixed contractual expenditure, rather than a discretionary item.

One suspects that kind of arrangement would suit the US Air force just fine.

Additional Readings

• Northrop Grumman (Jan 11/07) – Northrop Grumman Awarded $200 Million Contract to Implement More Efficient Way to Support B-2 Bomber: Performance-Based Logistics offers Air Force, taxpayers more ‘bang’ for the maintenance buck

• DID (Jan 2/07) – Britain Hammers Out Through-Life Support Framework for Tornado Fleet

• DID (July 13/06) – UK MoD Issues Report on Through-Life Equipment Management