Measuring the Value of Renewal: Age, Operational Tempo, Deployment, and Reset Effects on the Readiness and Maintenance Costs of Army Vehicles

Abstract : Faced with a complex and rapidly changing security environment, the Army has been pursuing multiple initiatives to increase preparedness for a wide range of contingencies. One such initiative is the renewal of ground systems. Renewal refers to equipment reset (return to combat-ready or 10/20 condition),1 overhaul, or recapitalization (overhaul and upgrade to return vehicle to zero hours/zero miles condition (Boucher, 2007)). Anecdotal reports (e.g., Lorge, 2008) suggest that the renewal program has been valuable; however, there is a need for quantitative analyses measuring its impact and, more generally, whether the effects of age, usage, and deployed operating environments on a vehicle justify renewal. Two prior RAND studies (Peltz et al., 2004; Pint et al., 2008) conducted multivariate analyses of the effects of age (years since manufacture date), annual usage (miles traveled during a year or portion of a year), and location (site of usage) on readiness and maintenance costs. However, both studies were based on one to three years of peacetime data per vehicle, as the policy of archiving usage and mission-critical failure records was fairly new when data were gathered for those studies.2 Also, maintenance costs were based on mission-critical failures that had part orders; they did not include the costs of repairs without part replacements or repairs that were non-mission-critical. Additionally, the studies did not assess renewal effects, as the Army s renewal program had not yet begun. (Overhauls had occurred but were not routinely tracked.) Other studies of age and/or usage effects on Army equipment (Simberg, 2001; Congressional Budget Office, 2007) used similar data and methods and were based on maintenance actions before the current comprehensive renewal initiative.