The US Military Needs Size And Scope As Much As High Tech

By Dennis Santare and Chris Trost

_{Dennis is a partner in Oliver Wyman’s Aerospace and Defense practice and a former Marine Corps pilot. Chris is a vice president with Oliver Wyman Engineers and ex-Navy.}

Superior technology is an advantage the United States military has historically leveraged to deter, fight, and win wars. But it’s not just advanced weaponry that has helped us fend off enemies. Our strength has also depended on our ability to mass combat power to overwhelm adversaries.

That’s a point that has gotten lost at times as the race to acquire the most advanced weapons technology gets consistently prioritized. At a recent aerospace and defense conference, discussions centered almost exclusively around developing, acquiring, and fielding high-tech systems to deter Chinese aggression in the Pacific. But in an actual confrontation with China, the initial reliance would almost certainly be on our fighter jets, aircraft carriers, and submarines — tactical weaponry to hold a line or push the Chinese forces back. Unfortunately, if the Chinese happen to read any recent US Government Accountability Office report on the mission readiness of our aircraft and ship fleets, they might not be so deterred.

Despite years of hand-wringing over the number of weapons systems that are mission-capable during a typical fiscal year, our sustainment measures still fall far short of where they need to be to get the job done. In fact, over the last decade, the readiness picture for our weapons systems has only worsened. Even during the Global War on Terror — our last major military engagement — our aircrews were forced to work around reliability issues and less-than-fully mission capable aircraft to support ground troops, despite being given supply-chain priority by the Pentagon.

The US sustainment record

The fiscal year 2023 GAO report to Congress on weapon systems sustainment shows 26 of 49 aircraft, including the F-35, did not meet their annual mission-capable goal in any fiscal year between 2011 and 2021. Only one type of aircraft met the target in all 11 fiscal years, and only three met the goal in a majority of the years reviewed.

The same is true with our readiness on water. The ability to deter aggression through sustained presence in the Pacific hinges on the Navy’s ability to project force by operating ships and submarines in international waters. But the readiness number for ships and submarines aren’t much better than for aircraft.

The US Marine Corps reported that fewer than one-third of Navy amphibious ships are ready to deploy compared with the 80% goal. The Navy’s Admiral responsible for attack submarines reported that 18 out of 50 are currently in maintenance or waiting their turn compared with the Navy’s target of 10.

Recently, the Navy has pitched a readiness-focused budget to Congress, which is a step in the right direction. More is needed. The Defense Department must also prioritize the ability to generate combat power quickly, consistently, and persistently in projected theaters of operations as a core element of deterrence. That will take a more balanced, holistic approach to how we operate and maintain weapon systems. It will also likely require a diversion of resources from procuring new platforms and technologies.

Missing the mark

The bottom line: The US military has been unable to address its decades-long readiness problem across all types of platforms. Millions of dollars have been spent on various improvement initiatives since 2011, but none has managed to address the root cause — the inability of the sustainment system to balance tradeoffs between operational demands and maintenance needs. As the father of quality management W. Edwards Deming put it, “every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Tweaking a clearly broken system has not and will not change the results.

Any overhaul must start with understanding the interdependency of how platforms are maintained and operated and their ultimate service life. Any two of the elements can be managed, but the third is then a reflection of the interaction of the other two. In other words, if the military extends a system’s operations and defers maintenance, the system will sacrifice service life and readiness. It’s what we at Oliver Wyman call the “iron triangle” of sustainment — an indisputable reality that can’t be changed by decree, wishful thinking, or some arbitrary schedule established by a maintenance depot.

Maintenance depot throughput becomes a critical element to manage and must be aligned to the readiness demands of the platforms they support. Failure to do so results in a sustainment system like the one the military has lived with for decades.