Dec 16, 2013 19:20 UTC
Yours for a low, low price
In July 2012, after protracted bargaining over American aid money, Pakistan reopened its roads – the so-called PAKGLOC in military lingo – to NATO traffic in and out of Afghanistan after their closure at the end of 2011. That is the theory at least, but the practice has left much to be desired. Pakistani customs routinely slow traffic to a crawl with clearance paperwork. Add threats of violence from local tribal strongmen, when it’s not customs on the Afghan side suddenly claiming a right to exit taxes, and you end with near-gridlock. Security concerns have led the Pentagon to stop using PAKGLOCs for outgoing traffic as of December 3/13 for an indefinite period. This has forced continued use of the Northern Distribution Network (NDN), at a much greater cost.
Faced with these prohibitive outgoing logistics, the US military has a big incentive to think hard about what it really needs to bring back for future use.
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Dec 04, 2013 12:18 UTC
DLA: It’s a Blast!
This week DID’s Olivier Travers is attending WBR’s 2013 Defense Logistics event. Email me if you’d like to meet up or submit logistics themes for us to look into.
Vice Admiral Mark Harnitchek has been heading the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) for 2 years and presented an update on the agency’s challenges and progress during WBR’s 2013 Defense Logistics conference. He candidly talked about how DoD at large, and DLA specifically, had benefited from “budget largesse” in recent years, especially with supplemental budgets (i.e. OCO / war spending) and had grown “thicker in the middle” as a result. In plain admission of the government’s shortcomings, the development of a “culture of judiciousness” to apply better judgment and save money is necessary within DLA. This is a welcome evolution in public discourse after so much hand-wringing about sequestration and befuddlement at the very idea of having to operate within financial constraints.
VADM Harnitchek was equally frank in recognizing that part of the agency’s focus will translate into margin pressure for contractors. Like other DoD senior officials, he’s broadcasting a clear signal that budget constraints are expected to stay and everyone should learn to operate within them. This should lead to increased reliance on commercial capabilities and less DoD resources, in relative terms. To that effect, fuel and food are pretty much already run “factory to foxhole” through commercial suppliers.
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Jun 13, 2013 18:15 UTC
Not the British soccer player
Ed. note: This entry is part of DID’s coverage of the NDIA’s National Logistics Forum 2013.
In his keynote, Dale Bennett, EVP of Mission Systems and Training at Lockheed Martin, listed a few things DoD and industry can do to get better results despite increased funding constraints.
First, Bennett thinks that sharing technologies across programs can not only improve interoperability, but also reduce sustainment costs, presumably thanks to shared spare parts and better familiarity (because of repeat exposure) from the people doing the maintenance. AEGIS and its various spin-offs (e.g. AEGIS Ashore) is the program that he used to illustrate this trend.
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Nov 20, 2008 19:07 UTC
Virginia Block I-II
(click for SuperSize)
The SSN-774 Virginia Class submarine was introduced in the 1990s as a Clinton-era reform that was intended to take some of the SSN-21 Seawolf Class’ key design and technology advances, and place them in a smaller, less heavily-armed, and less expensive platform. The resulting submarine would have learned some of the Seawolf program’s negative procurement lessons, while performing capably in land attack, naval attack, special forces, and shallow water roles. In the end, the Seawolf Class became a technology demonstrator program that was canceled at 3 ships, and the Virginia Class became the naval successor to America’s famed SSN-688 Los Angeles Class. The Virginia Class program was supposed to reach 2 submarines per year by 2002, removing it from the unusual joint construction approach between General Dynamics Electric Boat and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding – but that goal has been pushed back to 2012 in progressive planning budgets.
In FY 2005 dollars, SSN-21 submarines cost between $3.1-3.5 billion each. According to Congressional Research Service report #RL32418, and the Navy is working toward a goal of shaving FY05$ 400 million from the cost of each Virginia Class boat, and buying 2 boats in FY2012 for combined cost of $4.0 billion in FY 2005 dollars – a goal referred to as “2 for 4 in 12”. In real dollars subject to inflation, that means about $2.6 billion per sub in 2012, and $2.7 billion in 2013. The Navy believes that moving from the current joint construction arrangement will shave FY05$ 200 million from the cost of each submarine, leaving another FY05$ 200 million (about $220 million) to be saved through ship design and related changes. “Virginia Block III: The Revised Bow” chronicles some of the significant cost-saving design changes underway to the Virginia Class Block 3 subs, which begin at SSN-784, the 11th ship of class.
How is the program doing? The good news is, they just won a major procurement award for their efforts…
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Nov 07, 2007 12:53 UTC
The American Office of the Secretary of Defense sent this on to DID, and we thought we’d pass it on to all of our readers in the Washington area. The American Veteran Center’s 10th Annual Conference begins today, and will take place November 8-10 at the Renaissance Washington Hotel. there is still time to register and attend.
The AVC conference is one of the largest annual gatherings of decorated military combat veterans, and will host some of the greatest heroes of WWII, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan. It features 3 days of speaker panels, wreath laying ceremonies at the World War II, Korea, and Vietnam memorials and an awards banquet. The conference also features salutes to Medal of Honor recipients and service members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the participants include:
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