Reset/Recap
Written by William Murray
MLF 2011 Volume: 5 Issue: 9 (October)
With fiscal year 2012 and beyond Defense Department budgets tightening and troop levels decreasing, military vendors are gearing up for opportunities to provide refurbishment of Army and Marine Corps truck and vehicles as a cost-effective alternative to purchasing new ones. They are also considering their potential to supplant military personnel in daily maintenance, in addition to the recapitalization and reset of trucks, HMMWVs and mine resistant ambush protected (MRAP) vehicles in the Army and Marine Corps, although MRAPs would not seem well-suited to the fight in Afghanistan.
With proper care, including reset/recap services that involve stripping vehicles to their frame rails and rebuilding them again, many of these vehicles can last for 20 years or more of punishing, in-theater use through the improvement of each vehicle’s suspension. Reset and recap services usually involve air conditioning each vehicle’s armor-ready cab and repainting the vehicle before its delivery to the customer with a more powerful drive train. To appreciate the value of these reset/recap services, however, military officials have to carefully consider total life cycle costs for their trucks.
One vendor said that using reset/recap services can result in as much as 25 percent cost savings, compared with purchasing new vehicles. “During this tough defense business climate, we believe there will be an increased reliance on reset/recap services,” said Bill Harris, director of government sales and business development at Heil Trailer International of Chattanooga, Tenn., which has been providing reset and recap services for more than five years. “Despite weak economic conditions, costs remain high and volatile. Combined with a moderating defense budget, these conditions will drive more reset/ recap business, which is typically more economical than purchasing new equipment,” he said.
Heil Trailer International and its Kalyn Siebert subsidiary are supporting the Army’s Heavy Tactical Group, the Marine Corps’ Heavy Fleet Team, and they are also marketing to the Air Force and Navy.
For one contractor pitching its military truck repair capabilities, it’s a matter of his organization’s core competency allowing the military to focus on inherently military activities. “They’re in the motor pool working eight hours a day, fixing trucks,” said Lawrence J. Lanzillotta, vice president of Army and Marine Corps Ground Vehicle Reconstitution for Northrop Grumman, speaking of his personnel who maintain 7,000 high-usage Army training rotation vehicles at Fort Irwin, Calif., Fort Polk, La., and Fort Eustis, Va. “Our workforce gets to be very experienced. A lot of them are retired Army vehicle maintenance personnel, and they’re not pulling guard duty or having to go to the firing range for rifle qualification,” Lanzillotta said.
The majority of Northrop Grumman’s vehicle sustainment work occurs at two of the Army’s premiere training centers: the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk. The company has been providing field-level maintenance, vehicle maintenance and supply, and repair parts supply and management services to the U.S. Army for nearly 35 years. This maintenance and repair program at Fort Irwin sustains more than 4,900 armored and tactical wheeled vehicles and equipment, including nine different MRAP models and 500 commercial and civilian vehicles. All of this while maintaining a 97 percent operational readiness rate for all fleets and a 100 percent on-schedule mission accomplishment rating.
The Army had wanted that the previous week-long gap between a vehicle maintained and returned to service be reduced to three days. “We know what parts to order ahead of time because we know what breaks,” he said. And the company was able to shift 20 repair personnel to one location to meet growing customer needs, Lanzillotta said. “It’s like if you had a rental car fleet of 7,000 vehicles in intensive use, you would know how many flat tires you would have in a month and know what to order ahead of time.”
Units visiting the National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center don’t have to bring extra parts or equipment because Northrop Grumman’s vehicle uptimes are so reliable, Lanzillotta said. “We free up soldiers to be able to do other work,” he said. A retired Army officer, Lanzillotta is a former principal deputy secretary of defense (comptroller).
Despite its success stateside, Northrop Grumman doesn’t have any responsibilities in truck maintenance with the Marine Corps or the Army outside the continental U.S. In addition to working in ground sustainment with the U.S. Army for 35 years, Northrop Grumman has worked with the Saudi Arabian National Guard in truck maintenance for more than 30 years, working with a fleet of 1,100 vehicles, according to Lanzillotta.
Outside the continental U.S., Army officials are finding that MRAPs are better suited for Iraq, a country with highways and better roads than Afghanistan, where the roads are more narrow, poorly maintained and sometimes no more than dirt trails used by farmers and animals.
Rushed into service several years ago in response to the congressional outcry that resulted from roadside bombs and improvised explosive devices in Iraq killing hundreds of American and coalition servicemembers during the first few years of the Iraq War, MRAPs have effectively protected U.S. troops from these deadly threats. “It was a highly survivable solution,” said Stephen Greene, vice president of communications for Textron Systems Corp. of Wilmington, Mass. His company has delivered 3,300 vehicles to DoD in Iraq. “But you couldn’t take them down a city street because they would hit buildings and knock down power lines.”
MRAPs are also known to occasionally roll over during operations, including one 2008 disaster in Afghanistan that resulted in three Green Berets drowning in a river. In addition to their troubles on primitive roads, MRAPs are also known to have difficulty with sudden turns and rickety bridges.
Greene pointed out that as many as 20 percent of MRAPs in theater are not in service. “There is a lack of parts to keep them going,” Greene said, forcing some soldiers and Marines to cannibalize from broken-down vehicles to keep the better MRAPs running. He argues that the Army and Marine Corps would be better served by having little variation between the models of MRAPs used, to make it easier to stock parts that would work on all MRAPs.
Oshkosh Defense, another major player in the Army vehicle refurbishment program since 1970, has upgraded more than 2,000 MRAP vehicles produced by other manufacturers with its TAK-4 independent suspension system to provide improved mobility in challenging terrain, which could be particularly helpful in Afghanistan.
“They could meet their goal of 80 percent uptime and not have to be as reliant on the supply chain,” Greene said. “It’s good for training to use fewer variations in MRAPs,” he said. Textron also works with the Afghan, Bulgarian, Colombian and Iraqi armies, helping it gain valuable experience that it can bring to bear in working with the U.S. military.
“There may not be a better way to use spare parts, but we would suggest that each logistic arm [of an armed services branch] look at developing contracts that stock ‘critical reserves,’” said Heil Trailer’s Harris. “The Marine Corps does this very effectively.” Usually a resource-challenged service, the Marines pride themselves on carrying out their mission effectively with less.
“The Humvee is survivable and reliable, but not reliable in some environments,” Greene said. “For effective recap, the [military] services have to have a better understanding of [total cost of ownership] for these vehicles to be in service for 20 years,” or the temptation will be to purchase new vehicles when a refurbished one could save the military money over the long haul.
In 2010, the Army asked Heil Trailer to consider installing an armor system on its tactical refuelers. “In the past, the military contracted with third-party suppliers and installed armor after the units were delivered,” Harris said. “This was very expensive and time consuming. By bringing the capability in-house for the government, we provided a better solution that saved the Army a lot of time and money,” working with High Impact Technology LLC to provide extensive training and modifications to Heil Trailer’s Athens, Tenn., facility to perform the “add-on-armor” government contract.
“This engineering and design effort covers a wide spectrum of systems and components used on our trailers, from tactical lighting requirements to suspensions designed to navigate extreme terrain,” Harris said, reached between trips overseas. “In addition, we updated the U.S Army’s engineering drawings so they would continue to realize exceptional armor kits on future tanker requirements,” Harris said. “We delivered an exceptional value to the government and that fact was recognized by [the U.S. Army’s Tank Automotive Command (TACOM)] Fuel Tanker Semitrailer System Acquisition Manager in April,” with effusive praise.
Oshkosh Defense, with 700 service personnel deployed in the U.S. and abroad—including more than 280 in Afghanistan—marked a milestone earlier this year: It had refurbished its 2,000th vehicle for the U.S. Army in-theater. Through the Theater-Provided Equipment Refurbishment (TPER) program, officials at the Oshkosh, Wis.-based company claimed that they’ve saved the Army significant funds through the service not having to ship the vehicles back to the U.S. for refurbishment.
“Many of the heavy and line-haul trucks that have come to this facility have seen almost a decade of rugged, in-theater use,” said Mike Ivy, Oshkosh Defense’s vice president and general manager of Army programs. “The TPER program allows us to significantly reduce the cost of refurbishing the Army’s vehicles,” he said in a company release. According to Oshkosh Defense, its TPER program work is enabling the Army to save 60 days of maintenance cycle time when compared to how long it would take if each vehicle were shipped back to the U.S. for repairs.
Working closely in supply chain management with TACOM and the Defense Logistics Agency through their facility in Kuwait, Oshkosh Defense officials repair 60 to 65 Army vehicles each month, using 300-1,000 replacement parts, according to a company release.
In July, Oshkosh Defense announced it had won a recapitalization contract from TACOM’s Life Cycle Management Command to refurbish 160 trucks from the Army’s heavy tactical vehicles fleet, including the heavy expanded mobility tactical truck A4s and palletized load system A1s. Oshkosh Defense would restore the vehicles to zero-miles, zero-hours condition at significantly less cost to the Army than acquiring new vehicles under the contract’s terms. Oshkosh Defense also reached a 10,000 vehicle milestone in providing support to the Army, Army National Guard and Marine Corps, returning the medium- and heavy-payload vehicles to zero-miles, zero-hour condition.
In June, the Oshkosh Defense announced it would deliver more than 730 trucks from the Army’s Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles to the TACOM Life Cycle Management Command, showing the company’s key position in the Army’s fleet management strategy. Oshkosh Defense is working with the heavy mobility tactical truck A4s, which are a backbone of the military’s logistics and resupply fleet, and the new heavy equipment transporter A1s through the contract. ♦
The majority of Northrop Grumman’s vehicle sustainment work occurs at two of the Army’s premiere training centers: the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, and the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk. The company has been providing field-level maintenance, vehicle maintenance and supply, and repair parts supply and management services to the U.S. Army for nearly 35 years. This maintenance and repair program at Fort Irwin sustains more than 4,900 armored and tactical wheeled vehicles and equipment, including nine different MRAP models and 500 commercial and civilian vehicles. All of this while maintaining a 97 percent operational readiness rate for all fleets and a 100 percent on-schedule mission accomplishment rating.
The Army had wanted that the previous week-long gap between a vehicle maintained and returned to service be reduced to three days.
“We know what parts to order ahead of time because we know what breaks,” he said. And the company was able to shift 20 repair personnel to one location to meet growing customer needs, Lanzillotta said. “It’s like if you had a rental car fleet of 7,000 vehicles in intensive use, you would know how many flat tires you would have in a month and know what to order ahead of time.”
Units visiting the National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center don’t have to bring extra parts or equipment because Northrop Grumman’s vehicle uptimes are so reliable, Lanzillotta said. “We free up soldiers to be able to do other work,” he said. A retired Army officer, Lanzillotta is a former principal deputy secretary of defense (comptroller).