Looks like the single poor review of your book by "Matty Mo" at Amazon is because he implies that you are not embracing Global Warming. Matty can be wholly disregarded, Mr. Archibald. Hope the book royalties roll in steadily.
The comment I saw by the AF general in charge of the program was that they underspeced the cooling bleed air needed and to get enough that the electronics don't cook they have to run the engine hotter than planned. Which reduces the interval between depot visits. The depot (run by PW) can't turn around the engines as fast as the powerpoint promised and they are getting more than planned. And there wasn't money in the budget to buy another few hundred $25 million engines to ensure airframes all had working engines. Luckily for P&W the DoD saved a claimed 3 billion by stopping development of the GE/RR alternate engine in 2011...
"So the aircraft could relay a message to the supply warehouse and say, this part is getting ready to fail. And then Lockheed could send that part out to the base and it could be replaced, …"
What happens when that software fails, or it gets hacked, or the aircraft's comms link to the supply warehouse goes down?
What happens when a squadron's worth of Fat Amy aircraft suffer a myriad of unforeseen damaged parts in the opening days of a war in the western Pacific?
"Your maintenance request is very important to us. We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volume. Please stay on the line, our bots will get to you in the order received. Thanks for being a valued customer of LockMartBoeDyn".
JIT is going to fail spectacularly in the civilian world as soon as any major conflict is probable. Everything will grind to a halt because MBA's (with the encouragement and support of our government) outsourced most of our industry overseas. Furthermore, a non-trivial number of parts and material come from our most likely enemy.
With respect to military programs, JIT is pure insanity, implemented by non-serious people who have no intention of winning a near-peer conflict.
Have no expertise in logistics, procurement or business model. Re JIT, is the rationale for not stockpiling parts to save money? If and when you'll need spare parts you'll need to buy them anyway so why not buy them at today's price and stockpile them where they may be needed before inflation and a difficult supply pipeline makes them costlier and unobtainable just-in-time? Seems the sane thing to do is have "X" amount of widgit "Y's" at all location "Z's". Based on past and present usage, you could always have the depot order replacement parts base on inventory dropping below a set threshold. As this seems to be a Guns-or-Butter issue, it just might be time for the MBA's in DC to tell the non-working folks on the federal payroll to tighten their belts so to better have their futures assured. *sigh* I remember the suck during the Jimmy Carter era when as a noob EWC was made the EMO on our Frigate when the DIVO got fired how terrible it was to have a stingy fixed budget for parts and getting dumped on for down equipment because you had no money to buy parts that were actually available. The suck in 2024 has to be worse. I am rethinking the Jimmy v. Joe thing now.
JIT works great, until it doesn't. In business school we learned of a huge auto factory in Japan that was shut down for a day because the subcontractors truck that was delivering some widget was T-boned outside the factory...they had JIT refined to the point that the widgets were unloaded from the truck EXACTLY at the time needed to add to the line....no widgets today, the line rumbles to a halt.
I dare say whatever they saved in warehouse space was less than what they had lost that day
In the commercial world you have to pay taxes on property in some places. Once upon a time people just filled warehouses with written down inventory. See Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner. The Toyota model also notes that when you build vast batches of parts you need big warehouses to store them in, which costs money to operate, it makes more sense to just have the parts you need for the day on hand, not the parts you need for a month on hand. Toyota doesn't do this in the simplistic way people teach it, which is why they ran out of electronics modules much later then many car manufactures in 2020-21.
"Based on past and present usage, you could always have the depot order replacement parts base on inventory dropping below a set threshold"
It's supposed to be pretty much that, except typically the orders are made far in advance to lock in a price, and the deliveries are scheduled. So it can work to save inventory money in a stable environment, however, even civilian industry experiences disruptions, and it sucks, for example, to be unable to ship 1000 $300 widgets because you got a bad batch of $.03 parts.
An additional issue is simply not knowing what parts are needed - because of a lack of significant operational data on a weapons system (say, the F35). Even before we started fighting them, we were having issues keeping them flying in training environments because parts were not wearing out as expected.
The same with robust weapons systems like the F18: I recall that some parts from F18s on museum display had to be cannibalized to support flying ops....because the needed part was not available anywhere else in a timely manner.
Or getting parts from the boneyard - because the needed parts were too long-lead, or too expensive.
When I worked for Douglas Aircraft (before medical school) we had an issue with a missing ferry pylon - a device much like a DC-10 engine pylon that could be attached to the wing inboard of the existing engine to ferry spare engines around (they are too large in diameter to fit inside, even with a cargo door DC-10). So, Douglas would loan the pylon to airlines buying a new airplane so they could ferry spare engines to their bases. Laker Airlines bought a new airplane, picked it up in Long Beach, with the pylon and engine, and flew it to London.....while they are over the water, Laker goes into bankruptcy, and their assets are seized.
Now, Douglas is in a bad position: The pylon was seized and it would take months to get the legal issues hashed out..... It would be more than a year to build another pylon, and it was fully committed. So, what to do?
ProTip: It's easy to commit grand theft airliner... We flew the airplane to Iceland, pulled the pylon off of it and got it out of the country. The Icelandics reported a strange airplane sitting on the ramp...
You also have the issue of OPTEMPO. If your spares are based on an aircraft flying 100 hrs a month in peace time and in a surge operational environment it's flying 300 hrs--- there's gonna be a shortage of parts/consumables.
True enough. And peacetime flying is not nearly as aging to the airframe as wartime flying is: Things simply wear out MORE, and things you don't normally see break in peacetime....do.
Well, we'll need to get our rare earths processing up to speed to start ensuring we have base commodities for our Military Industrial Base.
I would think we'd be developing a base knowledge of what parts are most likely to fail on F-35s by now, so we could keep those parts on hand. As is, better keep making Super Hornets and spares for them.
When the 35 operates against a peer, they may discover a problem that we don't know about - a blind spot, capability issue, whatever. If we had multiple platforms, another platform might be able to deal with the issue. When all your eggs are in one basket and you drop the basket, all of the eggs break. War is not efficient.
War is not efficient is well said. The problem is we no longer have a tight definition of a war. Hence which version of “war” should we build our weapons (and logistics) to operate in.
That’s the basic plot of 2034: - Novel of the Next World War, by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis (Ret). Ackerman was a USMC special operator. His career got derailed when, relying on false info from a Taliban plant in Afghanistan, he led an operation that turned 25 or so Afghan civilians to room temp (and someone had to take the fall). ADM Stavridis, among other things, commanded the Enterprise Battle Group in combat operations in the Persian Gulf. So, both men have experience when things don’t work as expected, as well as the results of vulnerability to sabotage. The book is making the rounds of the officially unapproved reading list among Field Grade Officers and Senior NCOs. (And, to kinda give away the plot, the U.S. doesn’t fare well).
The electronic network battlefield, and whether or not networks will be able to function is a relatively new "domain" or sub domain. The reliance on networks to get precision weapons to hit targets for us to have any chance at all in the Pacific is a big question. Ring laser backups and other backups to GPS help, the days of buddy lasing and tv guided munitions are apparently in the past for strike aircraft.
If the F35 network isn't functional, is that a single point of failure for your single point of failure aviation asset? The world wonders...
In fact it has the advantage that every single one built can....as they all have a built in laser designation system...no need to rely on a small number of targeting pods that are never where you need them to be....or that are maintenance nightmares that go down when you most need them....
There will also be 'TV guided' munitions with IIR seekers. Only their links will be a whole lot more reliable and less easy to jam than they used to be....
I don't recall the last time I spoke with an OEM who wasn't dealing with seemingly intractable labor challenges, supply chain nightmares, and numerous new projects on hold because they don't know when the new components they're going to use will be delivered. If they use a single vendor for multiple parts, typically what happens is they're short one SKU but have the others available. As time passes Peter robs Paul, parts that were ready to be shipped are picked over to meet demands of other orders and the part that was holding things up comes in. The OEM customer gets a whole "new" tale of woe from the vendor.
Not always with freight charges these days... I've heard some pretty wild stuff and it makes me very happy I have nothing to do with the procurement side of things.
There is a nice writeup on the 2003 Invasion of Iraq logistics out there. It was a CF. Basically the units invading got no Class IX repair parts. Water, fuel, food and ammo worked (more or less), but combat vehicles availability went to hell by the end on the dynamic phase as the repair parts in the forward support battalions and brigade supply sections were used up with no replenishment. Extensive cannibalization was used to keep some combat power available.
Jets are a lot more picky about this kind of thing than trucks and tracks are. If forward deployed units they don't have on-hand stocks of parts to support continuous operation for weeks without getting a continuous flow of FedEx flights, well they won't be operating for long in combat.
"Squadron logistics personnel were always on the prowl to meet needs. Upon arrival in Saudi Arabia, tents, liners, cots, and PRC-77s (short range radios) were hard to get. There was only a trickle of Class IX support items (repair parts for Marine Corps equipment)."
My older brother and I served together on the same ship as RD2's back in the 60's. He got out and had a career at Aberdeen Proving Ground, beginning as a warehouseman and ending up a senior logistician. When Gulf War I came around, APG was looking for civilian volunteers to go. Brother Bob volunteered. It was the Vietnam he never got to go to. He went as a procurement agent with a fat checkbook, a knack for haggling and a directive to buy whatever the local Army people had shortfalls in. We weren't but 40-50 miles apart, him ashore and me at sea. Poor guy got Hep A, B and C there and toughed it out unknowing and untreated. Died of liver cancer 12 years later. He had no regrets. Going there was his proudest moment.
Dale, I've got some similar stories to share. Where are you located? I am on the Northern Neck of Virginia. Born at Jacksonville, NC, moved as a child to Indian Head, Aberdeen, and Picatinny. After world-wide service, I landed here. If you are local, we should consider meeting. Harry
Am in Baja Alabama (Cantonment, FL). Don't travel much anymore. daleflowers@hotmail.com is my email. 3 hots & a cot if you are nearby anytime. Would like to hear your stories.
Works great for some things, not so great for others, exactly what sort of printing process controls what it is good for. Hot Isostatic Presses make it useful for more. But HIP units large enough for parts that big are massive in both size, weight and cost. Also there are electron beam additive manufacturing systems that can make big long parts fairly fast, but they are huge and expensive.
The type of additive printing I'm referring to is performed by equipment that one doesn't order commercially. Both PEOs for the Columbia and the Ford have noted that additive mfr shaved huge amounts of time off on deliveries of critical parts that were going to be significantly delayed by going through conventional means of manufacturing. It's not a panacea but when it comes to dealing with maintenance and readiness, it definitely has a role to play.
i've thought for awhile now that we need to be investing heavily (and with clear eyes that it may turn out bust) into driving progress in the tech capability and pushing the frontier forward. we simply aren't going to compete with the PRC on 2000's era industrial and manufacturing processes, have to look at how to gain leverage thru technology.
The center for additive mfg excellence opened in Danville, VA recently. There is a substantial piece of additive mfg being pursued throughout DOD and the PEO for Enterprise has said they want it to be the first "3D printed ship" which I took his meaning to be they're looking to do as much as possible with additive mfg for that particular build. On the submarine side of things, I believe the number of parts under catalog is 5500 (quoted by NAVSEA I believe) and an aggressive push to deal with additive mfg there for long lead parts is being push especially with regards to centrifugal pumps. And as for shipbuilding? Welding robot tech developed in Europe is coming to Austral as I understand. I don't see things getting better short of a rennaissance in shipbuilding automation and employing additive mfg to deal with parts shortages and long lead times especially with regards to castings, etc. In one area, solid rocket motors, X-Bow and Ursa Major are planning to throw a monkey wrench in the traditional production model for SRMs has run by going with additive mfg. All are to the positive.
What are they putting in the water down in Danville these days? Recently learned about the USN Sub force backed "Accelerated Training for Defense Manufacturing" (https://atdm.org/), which is also Danville based. Exactly the right idea, though execution is 90% or more of success in this arena and TBD on how that goes.
Don't need LMCO. A good QA Analyst should already be tracking what's going on in their command so MO/MMCO have an idea of what their next pack-up should be looking like, or if they're eating too much of a particular part number.
The problem with how the military implements Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) is that, as Sal says, they use it for efficiency instead of effectiveness.
The "just-in-time" model F-35 is using is "breakdown based" and will always be time-late when the budget you're executing this year is based information that is two years old.
CBM's biggest benefit is forecasting and it would be interesting if the "war-gaming modelers" would run a few games focused on supply chain (to include the DoD POM process). If they did, they'd see that the failure models that exist within CBM can be used to keep our ships and aircraft in the fight for extended duration within the reality of a limited budget since it will allow budget and sustainment planners to focus the resources where they are most needed.
The mad scramble we currently use to drive up mission readiness rates for short periods (usually tied to some FOGO fitrep bullet or real world crisis) is unsustainable over the long term.
Israel (and their F-35s) are reaping the benefits of operating in a theater about twice the size of New Jersey. If Noble Eagle and flying CAPs over the US taught us anything it should be that sortie numbers are one thing but hours on the airframe and powerplants are what burn through engines and generate maintnance hours. There is always a pencil pusher somewhere whipping numbers against reality. Sorties tend to be what burns through fuel and munitions stockpiles where airframe and powerplant hours tend to eat up the spares.
As a retired IT guy I don't believe that the aircraft-ground-LM-supplier round trip network security is any better than any other government networks. It will work until someone slurping raman for lunch decides it won't. IMHO.
From what I can see, among the three deployed CSG’s only VFA-97 on Vinson has F-35C’s. I know that B’s have been deploying on gators but looks like Bataan still has Harriers? Can’t be a whole lot of real world metrics on naval F-35 sustainment. Not a confidence building scenario.
And then there's awe inspiring precedent set during the F-35C Class Alpha mishap when the JO attempted a Sierra Hotel approach break that ended up in a ramp strike - aircraft went into the drink and it suddenly became a national-security race to retrieve the wreckage before Country Orange found it and had access to our goodies. How much did that recovery cost? Are we going to replicate every time a F-35 goes into the water???
would have loved to be the "ashtray" at the end of the long green table for her FNAEB. Not often that you get to write off $100 million with a "hey, watch this".
I remember that one. From what I remember, the pilot had a history of stupid, and should have been grounded long before. I think one of the victims volunteered to take the place of a scheduled crewman, fully knowing the danger. He should have gotten a medal, as far as I am concerned; "Greater love hath no man,..."
Somebody mentioned it either here or on Ward Carrol's YT channel a few weeks ago and I looked into it a bit. I think some of the senior leadership that failed to ground the guy were punished a bit.
Apples to Oranges General. Israel enjoys a mission radius of less than a hundred miles. Our radius will be hundreds or thousand just to get the F35’s into the fight due to China taking out our infrastructure and airfields west of Wake. FFS are these GOFO’s lobotomized after Colonel /Captain??!!!
Well congress has absolutely no idea what ground truth is anyways so the general can say what ever fable he chooses and congress will clap like a monkey.
There used to be something called safety stock - the minimum number of spare parts as history shows are necessary to keep the equipment operational until the supply chain catches up with real world realities. Is that not a promotable idea for support of these planes?
It is...but the procurement system chronically skimps on spares. Back in the Second World War, German industry built tanks. But not spare parts to keep them running.
It's the old habit of measuring what is easy to measure. Not what is IMPORTANT to measure.
War Materials Stock - containers of aircraft parts ready packed in containers, tagged and sealed sitting in supply warehouses.....And NEVER, EVER used for routine mx without Command authorization.
All true. But..."Preferred munitions" leans a lot more towards significant standoff distances in the Pacific than Europe / Middle East. The environment takes line of sight almost out of the picture (pun intended) and "reliable and less easy to jam" with regards to the links is...TBD.
Afterburner doesn't melt turbine blades. (See flameholder.)
That is not the source of the loss of margin.
Looks like the single poor review of your book by "Matty Mo" at Amazon is because he implies that you are not embracing Global Warming. Matty can be wholly disregarded, Mr. Archibald. Hope the book royalties roll in steadily.
The comment I saw by the AF general in charge of the program was that they underspeced the cooling bleed air needed and to get enough that the electronics don't cook they have to run the engine hotter than planned. Which reduces the interval between depot visits. The depot (run by PW) can't turn around the engines as fast as the powerpoint promised and they are getting more than planned. And there wasn't money in the budget to buy another few hundred $25 million engines to ensure airframes all had working engines. Luckily for P&W the DoD saved a claimed 3 billion by stopping development of the GE/RR alternate engine in 2011...
"So the aircraft could relay a message to the supply warehouse and say, this part is getting ready to fail. And then Lockheed could send that part out to the base and it could be replaced, …"
What happens when that software fails, or it gets hacked, or the aircraft's comms link to the supply warehouse goes down?
What happens when a squadron's worth of Fat Amy aircraft suffer a myriad of unforeseen damaged parts in the opening days of a war in the western Pacific?
Or what happens when Lockheed lies and says the part is due when it’s really not? Prove me wrong.
[Soft pan flute background music]
"Your maintenance request is very important to us. We are currently experiencing higher than normal call volume. Please stay on the line, our bots will get to you in the order received. Thanks for being a valued customer of LockMartBoeDyn".
More like - The part is on the way from China - here is the USPS tracking number .. bye
As long as it's a USPS number...The China Post number is totally useless. Not like the USPS number, which is just useless
JIT is going to fail spectacularly in the civilian world as soon as any major conflict is probable. Everything will grind to a halt because MBA's (with the encouragement and support of our government) outsourced most of our industry overseas. Furthermore, a non-trivial number of parts and material come from our most likely enemy.
With respect to military programs, JIT is pure insanity, implemented by non-serious people who have no intention of winning a near-peer conflict.
Have no expertise in logistics, procurement or business model. Re JIT, is the rationale for not stockpiling parts to save money? If and when you'll need spare parts you'll need to buy them anyway so why not buy them at today's price and stockpile them where they may be needed before inflation and a difficult supply pipeline makes them costlier and unobtainable just-in-time? Seems the sane thing to do is have "X" amount of widgit "Y's" at all location "Z's". Based on past and present usage, you could always have the depot order replacement parts base on inventory dropping below a set threshold. As this seems to be a Guns-or-Butter issue, it just might be time for the MBA's in DC to tell the non-working folks on the federal payroll to tighten their belts so to better have their futures assured. *sigh* I remember the suck during the Jimmy Carter era when as a noob EWC was made the EMO on our Frigate when the DIVO got fired how terrible it was to have a stingy fixed budget for parts and getting dumped on for down equipment because you had no money to buy parts that were actually available. The suck in 2024 has to be worse. I am rethinking the Jimmy v. Joe thing now.
JIT works great... if not many people are doing it. But if they are, disruptions really mess things up.
JIT works great, until it doesn't. In business school we learned of a huge auto factory in Japan that was shut down for a day because the subcontractors truck that was delivering some widget was T-boned outside the factory...they had JIT refined to the point that the widgets were unloaded from the truck EXACTLY at the time needed to add to the line....no widgets today, the line rumbles to a halt.
I dare say whatever they saved in warehouse space was less than what they had lost that day
In the commercial world you have to pay taxes on property in some places. Once upon a time people just filled warehouses with written down inventory. See Thor Power Tool Company v. Commissioner. The Toyota model also notes that when you build vast batches of parts you need big warehouses to store them in, which costs money to operate, it makes more sense to just have the parts you need for the day on hand, not the parts you need for a month on hand. Toyota doesn't do this in the simplistic way people teach it, which is why they ran out of electronics modules much later then many car manufactures in 2020-21.
"Based on past and present usage, you could always have the depot order replacement parts base on inventory dropping below a set threshold"
It's supposed to be pretty much that, except typically the orders are made far in advance to lock in a price, and the deliveries are scheduled. So it can work to save inventory money in a stable environment, however, even civilian industry experiences disruptions, and it sucks, for example, to be unable to ship 1000 $300 widgets because you got a bad batch of $.03 parts.
An additional issue is simply not knowing what parts are needed - because of a lack of significant operational data on a weapons system (say, the F35). Even before we started fighting them, we were having issues keeping them flying in training environments because parts were not wearing out as expected.
The same with robust weapons systems like the F18: I recall that some parts from F18s on museum display had to be cannibalized to support flying ops....because the needed part was not available anywhere else in a timely manner.
Or getting parts from the boneyard - because the needed parts were too long-lead, or too expensive.
When I worked for Douglas Aircraft (before medical school) we had an issue with a missing ferry pylon - a device much like a DC-10 engine pylon that could be attached to the wing inboard of the existing engine to ferry spare engines around (they are too large in diameter to fit inside, even with a cargo door DC-10). So, Douglas would loan the pylon to airlines buying a new airplane so they could ferry spare engines to their bases. Laker Airlines bought a new airplane, picked it up in Long Beach, with the pylon and engine, and flew it to London.....while they are over the water, Laker goes into bankruptcy, and their assets are seized.
Now, Douglas is in a bad position: The pylon was seized and it would take months to get the legal issues hashed out..... It would be more than a year to build another pylon, and it was fully committed. So, what to do?
ProTip: It's easy to commit grand theft airliner... We flew the airplane to Iceland, pulled the pylon off of it and got it out of the country. The Icelandics reported a strange airplane sitting on the ramp...
You also have the issue of OPTEMPO. If your spares are based on an aircraft flying 100 hrs a month in peace time and in a surge operational environment it's flying 300 hrs--- there's gonna be a shortage of parts/consumables.
True enough. And peacetime flying is not nearly as aging to the airframe as wartime flying is: Things simply wear out MORE, and things you don't normally see break in peacetime....do.
Nonsense. During the Covid panic, there were no shortages.
/s
Not for us; I've had a three year supply of TP running FIFO since 2008!
The spec for the ALS and the reality diverge!
While GAO found the contract supply system had problems matching parts to data on whereabouts of parts.
Sounds like a good way to telegraph your fleet-readiness to an enemy, that's really great.
"Just in time" isn't.
JTL - Just Too Late
Well, we'll need to get our rare earths processing up to speed to start ensuring we have base commodities for our Military Industrial Base.
I would think we'd be developing a base knowledge of what parts are most likely to fail on F-35s by now, so we could keep those parts on hand. As is, better keep making Super Hornets and spares for them.
Extraction industries are eeevil. Miners have been told to learn how to code.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/out-of-work-coal-miners-find-new-work-in-computer-industry/
Once out of the ground you have ore smelters. Ewww!
^ I was going to make the Breaking-Eggs-To-Make-An-Omelet (BETMAU) argument to clue you in NEC but fear Vegan backlash. So, yeah...Ewww!
When the 35 operates against a peer, they may discover a problem that we don't know about - a blind spot, capability issue, whatever. If we had multiple platforms, another platform might be able to deal with the issue. When all your eggs are in one basket and you drop the basket, all of the eggs break. War is not efficient.
All my eggs were in our Constitutional Republic (sad face) ...
War is not efficient is well said. The problem is we no longer have a tight definition of a war. Hence which version of “war” should we build our weapons (and logistics) to operate in.
That’s the basic plot of 2034: - Novel of the Next World War, by Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis (Ret). Ackerman was a USMC special operator. His career got derailed when, relying on false info from a Taliban plant in Afghanistan, he led an operation that turned 25 or so Afghan civilians to room temp (and someone had to take the fall). ADM Stavridis, among other things, commanded the Enterprise Battle Group in combat operations in the Persian Gulf. So, both men have experience when things don’t work as expected, as well as the results of vulnerability to sabotage. The book is making the rounds of the officially unapproved reading list among Field Grade Officers and Senior NCOs. (And, to kinda give away the plot, the U.S. doesn’t fare well).
The electronic network battlefield, and whether or not networks will be able to function is a relatively new "domain" or sub domain. The reliance on networks to get precision weapons to hit targets for us to have any chance at all in the Pacific is a big question. Ring laser backups and other backups to GPS help, the days of buddy lasing and tv guided munitions are apparently in the past for strike aircraft.
If the F35 network isn't functional, is that a single point of failure for your single point of failure aviation asset? The world wonders...
F-35 can do buddy lasing....
In fact it has the advantage that every single one built can....as they all have a built in laser designation system...no need to rely on a small number of targeting pods that are never where you need them to be....or that are maintenance nightmares that go down when you most need them....
There will also be 'TV guided' munitions with IIR seekers. Only their links will be a whole lot more reliable and less easy to jam than they used to be....
I feel like we got a stark example of the failure modes of Just-In-Time supply during the many covid-related disruptions of 2020-2022.
This is not something you want to try and replicate in a wartime environment.
To which we are repeatedly told that mfr's are still dealing with.
There are still a lot of items with longer lead times than they should have. Industrial controllers, etc.
I don't recall the last time I spoke with an OEM who wasn't dealing with seemingly intractable labor challenges, supply chain nightmares, and numerous new projects on hold because they don't know when the new components they're going to use will be delivered. If they use a single vendor for multiple parts, typically what happens is they're short one SKU but have the others available. As time passes Peter robs Paul, parts that were ready to be shipped are picked over to meet demands of other orders and the part that was holding things up comes in. The OEM customer gets a whole "new" tale of woe from the vendor.
"they're short one SKU but have the others available"
Of course, the available parts are delivered so you can pay for them ...
Not always with freight charges these days... I've heard some pretty wild stuff and it makes me very happy I have nothing to do with the procurement side of things.
There is a nice writeup on the 2003 Invasion of Iraq logistics out there. It was a CF. Basically the units invading got no Class IX repair parts. Water, fuel, food and ammo worked (more or less), but combat vehicles availability went to hell by the end on the dynamic phase as the repair parts in the forward support battalions and brigade supply sections were used up with no replenishment. Extensive cannibalization was used to keep some combat power available.
Jets are a lot more picky about this kind of thing than trucks and tracks are. If forward deployed units they don't have on-hand stocks of parts to support continuous operation for weeks without getting a continuous flow of FedEx flights, well they won't be operating for long in combat.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Sounds like Gulf War I.
https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/With%20the%202d%20Marine%20Division%20in%20Desert%20Shield%20and%20Desert%20Storm.pdf
"Squadron logistics personnel were always on the prowl to meet needs. Upon arrival in Saudi Arabia, tents, liners, cots, and PRC-77s (short range radios) were hard to get. There was only a trickle of Class IX support items (repair parts for Marine Corps equipment)."
My older brother and I served together on the same ship as RD2's back in the 60's. He got out and had a career at Aberdeen Proving Ground, beginning as a warehouseman and ending up a senior logistician. When Gulf War I came around, APG was looking for civilian volunteers to go. Brother Bob volunteered. It was the Vietnam he never got to go to. He went as a procurement agent with a fat checkbook, a knack for haggling and a directive to buy whatever the local Army people had shortfalls in. We weren't but 40-50 miles apart, him ashore and me at sea. Poor guy got Hep A, B and C there and toughed it out unknowing and untreated. Died of liver cancer 12 years later. He had no regrets. Going there was his proudest moment.
Dale, I've got some similar stories to share. Where are you located? I am on the Northern Neck of Virginia. Born at Jacksonville, NC, moved as a child to Indian Head, Aberdeen, and Picatinny. After world-wide service, I landed here. If you are local, we should consider meeting. Harry
Am in Baja Alabama (Cantonment, FL). Don't travel much anymore. daleflowers@hotmail.com is my email. 3 hots & a cot if you are nearby anytime. Would like to hear your stories.
Hahaha Baja Alabama. I know it well.
Here's hoping that additive mfg expands exponentially to allow a far wider breadth of supplier options.
Current state-of-the-art metal printer 36"×36"×36" print, 3-4 days. Better than 12"×12"×12" in the same time or longer.
Works great for some things, not so great for others, exactly what sort of printing process controls what it is good for. Hot Isostatic Presses make it useful for more. But HIP units large enough for parts that big are massive in both size, weight and cost. Also there are electron beam additive manufacturing systems that can make big long parts fairly fast, but they are huge and expensive.
Yeah, we do sand printing where I work, but the owner wants us to do some metal printing, too.
The type of additive printing I'm referring to is performed by equipment that one doesn't order commercially. Both PEOs for the Columbia and the Ford have noted that additive mfr shaved huge amounts of time off on deliveries of critical parts that were going to be significantly delayed by going through conventional means of manufacturing. It's not a panacea but when it comes to dealing with maintenance and readiness, it definitely has a role to play.
i've thought for awhile now that we need to be investing heavily (and with clear eyes that it may turn out bust) into driving progress in the tech capability and pushing the frontier forward. we simply aren't going to compete with the PRC on 2000's era industrial and manufacturing processes, have to look at how to gain leverage thru technology.
The center for additive mfg excellence opened in Danville, VA recently. There is a substantial piece of additive mfg being pursued throughout DOD and the PEO for Enterprise has said they want it to be the first "3D printed ship" which I took his meaning to be they're looking to do as much as possible with additive mfg for that particular build. On the submarine side of things, I believe the number of parts under catalog is 5500 (quoted by NAVSEA I believe) and an aggressive push to deal with additive mfg there for long lead parts is being push especially with regards to centrifugal pumps. And as for shipbuilding? Welding robot tech developed in Europe is coming to Austral as I understand. I don't see things getting better short of a rennaissance in shipbuilding automation and employing additive mfg to deal with parts shortages and long lead times especially with regards to castings, etc. In one area, solid rocket motors, X-Bow and Ursa Major are planning to throw a monkey wrench in the traditional production model for SRMs has run by going with additive mfg. All are to the positive.
What are they putting in the water down in Danville these days? Recently learned about the USN Sub force backed "Accelerated Training for Defense Manufacturing" (https://atdm.org/), which is also Danville based. Exactly the right idea, though execution is 90% or more of success in this arena and TBD on how that goes.
I suspect it has something to do with VA Tech...
The software is a problem, at least in enough aircraft to make it so. Fixable, yes. Detectable, maybe.
Is Lockheed still hoarding maintenance data as proprietary information?
Don't need LMCO. A good QA Analyst should already be tracking what's going on in their command so MO/MMCO have an idea of what their next pack-up should be looking like, or if they're eating too much of a particular part number.
I wonder if the Maintenance officers have access to the raw data/reports that their aircraft generate.
Back in our day the F-18 eccams was downloaded by IM-2 AZ's. Too be frank? I don't remember us using it when said engines rolled in as retrograde.
The problem with how the military implements Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) is that, as Sal says, they use it for efficiency instead of effectiveness.
The "just-in-time" model F-35 is using is "breakdown based" and will always be time-late when the budget you're executing this year is based information that is two years old.
CBM's biggest benefit is forecasting and it would be interesting if the "war-gaming modelers" would run a few games focused on supply chain (to include the DoD POM process). If they did, they'd see that the failure models that exist within CBM can be used to keep our ships and aircraft in the fight for extended duration within the reality of a limited budget since it will allow budget and sustainment planners to focus the resources where they are most needed.
The mad scramble we currently use to drive up mission readiness rates for short periods (usually tied to some FOGO fitrep bullet or real world crisis) is unsustainable over the long term.
Israel (and their F-35s) are reaping the benefits of operating in a theater about twice the size of New Jersey. If Noble Eagle and flying CAPs over the US taught us anything it should be that sortie numbers are one thing but hours on the airframe and powerplants are what burn through engines and generate maintnance hours. There is always a pencil pusher somewhere whipping numbers against reality. Sorties tend to be what burns through fuel and munitions stockpiles where airframe and powerplant hours tend to eat up the spares.
As a retired IT guy I don't believe that the aircraft-ground-LM-supplier round trip network security is any better than any other government networks. It will work until someone slurping raman for lunch decides it won't. IMHO.
Not retired yet, but I have to concur.
From what I can see, among the three deployed CSG’s only VFA-97 on Vinson has F-35C’s. I know that B’s have been deploying on gators but looks like Bataan still has Harriers? Can’t be a whole lot of real world metrics on naval F-35 sustainment. Not a confidence building scenario.
And then there's awe inspiring precedent set during the F-35C Class Alpha mishap when the JO attempted a Sierra Hotel approach break that ended up in a ramp strike - aircraft went into the drink and it suddenly became a national-security race to retrieve the wreckage before Country Orange found it and had access to our goodies. How much did that recovery cost? Are we going to replicate every time a F-35 goes into the water???
would have loved to be the "ashtray" at the end of the long green table for her FNAEB. Not often that you get to write off $100 million with a "hey, watch this".
That one guy (from what I've read) did it with a B-52 at an airshow, sadly taking a few others with him.
I remember that one. From what I remember, the pilot had a history of stupid, and should have been grounded long before. I think one of the victims volunteered to take the place of a scheduled crewman, fully knowing the danger. He should have gotten a medal, as far as I am concerned; "Greater love hath no man,..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6io8Tjv7xk
It was the co-pilot. I think he was squadron xo.
Somebody mentioned it either here or on Ward Carrol's YT channel a few weeks ago and I looked into it a bit. I think some of the senior leadership that failed to ground the guy were punished a bit.
with his wife and 2 kids looking on. The sky pig doesn't do too well at 95 deg AOB.
Apples to Oranges General. Israel enjoys a mission radius of less than a hundred miles. Our radius will be hundreds or thousand just to get the F35’s into the fight due to China taking out our infrastructure and airfields west of Wake. FFS are these GOFO’s lobotomized after Colonel /Captain??!!!
Before. It's a prerequisite for the eagle on one's collar.
Well congress has absolutely no idea what ground truth is anyways so the general can say what ever fable he chooses and congress will clap like a monkey.
Mandatory for selection to O-7. You can get out as a Colonel or Captain, and still be sane.
There used to be something called safety stock - the minimum number of spare parts as history shows are necessary to keep the equipment operational until the supply chain catches up with real world realities. Is that not a promotable idea for support of these planes?
It is...but the procurement system chronically skimps on spares. Back in the Second World War, German industry built tanks. But not spare parts to keep them running.
It's the old habit of measuring what is easy to measure. Not what is IMPORTANT to measure.
Or someone cheaps out and buys the least expensive part instead of the best part.
Hence time on wing goes from 500 hours to 217 with the additional transportation and repair costs. But hey! It's a different pot!
War Materials Stock - containers of aircraft parts ready packed in containers, tagged and sealed sitting in supply warehouses.....And NEVER, EVER used for routine mx without Command authorization.
All true. But..."Preferred munitions" leans a lot more towards significant standoff distances in the Pacific than Europe / Middle East. The environment takes line of sight almost out of the picture (pun intended) and "reliable and less easy to jam" with regards to the links is...TBD.