The Year in DoD Sustainment
THE YEAR IN DoD SUSTAINMENT
The United States military has been deeply engaged in war efforts across Southwest Asia for roughly five years now. MLF recently posed a short series of questions to some key people working sustainment issues to gauge from their viewpoints the successes and challenges of sustainment efforts.
By Dawn S. Onley
The United States military has been deeply engaged in war efforts across Southwest Asia for roughly five years now. That often requires rapid movement across the battlefield. Perhaps no community has felt the brunt of this quite like the logisticians who support the warfighter and the industry community that supports military logistics programs and systems.
MLF recently posed a short series of questions to some key people working sustainment issues to see how their responses were similar or dissimilar.
MLF had great dialog with Jeff Renard, CACI senior vice president; Tim Garcia, president and CEO of Apptricity; and Thomas G. Cornwell, president of DRS Sustainment Systems Business Segment.
Q: With a military deeply engaged worldwide, what do you foresee as the biggest challenges ahead in meeting sustainment requirements?
Cornwell: Our military men and women are serving around the world at dozens of camps and bases in some extremely austere locations. The biggest challenge that we see the military facing today, and into tomorrow, is how to deliver these soldiers the sustainment resources that they need—fuel, water, power, ground transportation, heat and air conditioning—in order to survive and operate.
DRS Sustainment Systems is working hard on the technological solutions that can help our warfighters address their needs, by developing and integrating differentiated technologies that exceed the requirements of our customer.
An example of how we do this is in our Expeditionary Water Packaging System (EWPS). Almost half the convoys operating in the Southwest Asia theater are carrying water for the soldiers, and each year, more than $200 million is tied up in moving the water—in fuel costs, manpower, security, vehicles and other resources. And of course, there is significant risk to our personnel as they drive the convoy routes that carry the water. The EWPS allows encamped soldiers to bottle and use drinking water from local sources, saving the expense—and risk—that comes with moving water about the theater.
Renard: There are a number of challenges for contractors to better support the military’s sustainment requirements. First, we must always take costs into consideration, even while expediting procurements and services. We must build and maintain a sustainment system that is agile, seamless and modular, in order to respond to unique requirements and also scaleable to handle both large and small operations. We must be able to provide better predictions of requirements, in order to lighten sustainment loads. We have to find ways to further reduce lead time to obtain material and equipment. And, we have to continue to find ways to track and shift assets, even in transit and to track and report readiness, looking for leading indicators before they reach criticality.
Garcia: The biggest challenge in meeting sustainment requirements lies in the military’s ability to automate supply chain/logistics processes in all our current theaters of operation. Today’s battlefield is a progressive, dynamic environment that requires rapid decision-making. Automating common processes enables our military to adapt quickly to changing circumstances for greater global success in-theater.
Q: What areas has the military made significant strides with sustainment?
Garcia: The military has made great strides in automating and streamlining supply chain processes, but much more needs to be accomplished to reach the levels of sustainment today’s battlefield requires.
Cornwell: There is a growing understanding of the strategic role that sustainment plays in the success of our military operations. Additionally, while our fielded forces have historically accomplished the mission with somewhat low-tech sustainment solutions, relative to operations systems, we now find that military forces are actively seeking high-tech solutions in the area of sustainment. Today, DRS Sustainment Systems is developing, integrating and fielding advanced technologies for systems that are smaller, lighter and more mobile, and which have significantly lower acquisition, operational and life cycle costs, all while meeting or exceeding emerging requirements for performance.
Renard: The military has improved its ability to install remote monitoring, diagnostic and prognostics capabilities into their systems in order to sense and predict failures, thereby allowing for earlier response of the supply and maintenance communities and reducing forward deployed requirements. The Navy has also developed a process to prioritize maintenance based on its contribution to readiness and to identify funding requirements to reach a selected level of material readiness.
Q: How have funding and the contracting process affected the way contractors are doing business today versus a few years ago? Do you see any changes coming?
Renard: More contracts are performance-based in nature, but with little guidance provided by government as to performance-based metrics.
The use of IDIQ type vehicles has shortened industry’s response time. This limits teaming opportunities, stresses internal infrastructures and often leads to low risk or less leading-edge offerings.
While funding remains low, government expectations remain high which lead to very aggressive bidding required to win. This sometimes has an adverse effect during contract execution since industry has little flexibility in responding to changing government requirements. With razor thin margins in place industry is forced to become more aggressive in change management.
Increased reliance on electronic submissions limits our ability to present complex architectural solutions.
Garcia: We haven’t seen any evidence that current funding and contracting processes have impacted the way contractors do business. However, we do recommend significant changes in the way contractors should be doing business.
The future of military sustainment is analogous to the Rapid Deployment Force of the 1980s. Contractors need to develop and present technologies that enable the military with sustainment processes that are dynamic. They need advanced technology that allows the branches of service to operate independently as well as inter-dependently. To be effective, contractors must investigate technologies thoroughly and not rely on marketing materials with the latest buzzwords to make decisions.
Cornwell: The use of supplemental funding and a more streamlined approach to contracting has allowed the defense industry—DRS Sustainment Systems included—to meet the urgent requirements of the warfighter in theater more quickly and easily. For instance, since October, we’ve provided armored roof assemblies for more than 1,000 MRAP vehicles, and many of those vehicles are in Iraq today, providing protection to our warfighters.
Q: What is your view on partnering with other companies or service providers? Do you seek these kinds of arrangements or prefer to work everything as much in-house as possible?
Cornwell: Key partnerships with other defense technology industry leaders is one of our key strategies, and is vital to the success of DRS Sustainment Systems in exceeding the requirements of our customers. Doing so allows us to quickly integrate proven technologies into sustainment solutions, in a very cost-effective manner.
Renard: We embrace partnering, in order to bring the best possible mix of capabilities to support our customers. To lower risk and increase quality control, we prefer to keep as much work in house as possible, but we recognize that some of our partners have niche capabilities, or they have better understanding of the customer’s unique requirements. Combining our talents provides a more diverse capability set than can be provided by any one company.
Garcia: Apptricity’s partnering policy is to embrace opportunities to work with other companies and service providers. We currently collaborate with larger defense contractors, but as our company grows, we will retain greater portions of the business in-house. We will continue to work with partners as opportunities present themselves, but the challenge with these partnerships is that they often necessitate educating contractors about Service Oriented Architecture and the capabilities of our advanced technology. Working independently enables us to deploy faster using our internal resources and gives us the ability to respond to client demands more efficiently. ♦