The Closed-Loop Planning System for Weapon System Readiness

Abstract : The U.S. Air Force Spares Campaign and other analyses identified the need for a new, consistent approach for managing spares and repair requirements. The objective is to provide resources to achieve the levels of fully mission capable sorties and weapon system availability required in the Air Expeditionary Force (AEF) environment for both regional contingencies and major theater wars. The new approach is needed because the Air Force does not have a procedure to allocate limited funding for depot repair across weapon systems in a way that links the trade-offs to the projected readiness of each weapon system. In fact, no current system computes the readiness related to various levels of depot repair funding. The current planning system for depot-level repairs develops a requirement based on historical repair demands. The funding of the requirement depends on other priorities within the Air Force budget process, and frequently the requirement is not fully funded. With the current planning systems and process, the implications of this shortfall cannot be easily estimated in terms of reduced sortie capability or weapon availability. This is, in effect, an open-loop system that cannot easily show decisionmakers the consequences of their repair budgeting decisions. A closed-loop system would allow decisionmakers to choose budget levels and feed back the readiness implications. Alternatively, it would allow decisionmakers to iterate among levels of readiness and required budgets to see what the budget consequences of desired levels of readiness would be.