The military has been
relying more and more on contractor support as systems have become more
technologically advanced and complex. On
the plus side, contractor support provides the technical expertise that the
military doesn’t have and doesn’t seem to want to train for. Contractors also represent a limited
investment for the military. They can be
used as needed and then terminated to save money. On the minus side, contractor support breeds
a dependency that weakens the military’s ability to sustain their own
equipment. Most importantly, the
contractors will not be present during combat.
A Defense News website
article touches on this issue as it affects the Army.
“Because of the rapid fielding of an enormous amount
of equipment during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army’s
ability to sustain equipment without the help of contractors [has] weakened,
service leaders have long noted.”
Of course, the issue affects
the Navy, as well.
“In a decisive action,” like early operations in Iraq, he said, “there
was no place for contractors or civilians to be on the battlefield. It was the
soldiers’ responsibility.”
This statement recognizes
the reality that contractors won’t be available, at least not near the front
lines, to provide support. If we don’t
learn how to provide our own support, we’re going to wind up fighting with
degraded and unrepairable weapons and systems.
Well, fine, you say, when
war comes we’ll train our own people to take over the support. Unfortunately, the level of technical expertise
required to support modern systems is far beyond the ability to quickly
generate competent technicians by running them through a quick training
course. It now requires years of study
to learn the complex electronics, physics, engineering, and software that go
into a typical modern system. Worse,
today’s systems require a combination of many skills. For example, an AESA radar system requires
knowledge of particle and wave physics, advanced electronics, software
programming, materials engineering, etc. to be able to diagnose and support the
system. You’re not going to send a kid
out of high school to a six week training course and expect him to be a master
of the system. The contractors that
support the various systems are often PhD level scientists and even the low
level contractor technicians are dedicated system specialists who have spent
years working with the system and spend the entire time doing nothing but
working with the system. The military
simply can’t match that kind of expertise and dedication with average soldiers.
An interesting case study is
the Navy’s Aegis radar system. When the
system was first introduced to the fleet the systems received top level
contractor support and the systems functioned at peak performance. As time went on and the system became well
established, the Navy reduced the level of contractor support and slowly, over
time, Aegis became degraded across the fleet.
The situation got to the point where the Navy had to commission one of
their infamous Admiral-chaired oversight panels in an attempt to correct the
systemic degradation. For those
interested, Aegis degradation is described in the 2010 Fleet Review Panel of
Surface Force Readiness (the famous Balisle Report), p.43.
This raises an interesting
question that I’ve brought up repeatedly.
Is it better to have an immensely complex but theoretically highly
capable system that can’t be maintained or repaired easily, usually operates
degraded, and is overly sensitive to blast effects or is it better to have a
lesser system that is easily maintained, easily repaired in the field, and
operates at max performance? In other
words, is it better to sacrifice some performance for the sake of reliability
and maintainability?
Consider the F-22/F-35
availability. The fleets seem to run
around 50% availability. Is it better to
have exquisite aircraft that are only 50% available – and in war that figure
will sharply decrease – or to have previous generation aircraft that are 90% available? Highly capable but stuck on the ground or
less capable but in the air and fighting?
I think a pretty good case
can be made for less capable equipment that is more reliable. That doesn’t mean you abandon all
technological advances but it does mean that you should maintain a healthy proportion
of “lesser” capabilities that can be maintained without contractor support. For example, don’t throw those A-10’s
away. The F-35 that you think is going
to do your close air support just isn’t going to be available when you need it.
The other obvious lesson,
here, is that if the military is going to buy technologically advanced systems,
they must also “buy” the in-house technical support that is required, meaning,
they must commit to providing sufficiently trained military technician, spare
parts, manuals, logistics support, etc. rather than rely on contractor
support. Of course, this means that the
true cost of fielding and operating a new system extends well beyond the
purchase price. If that overall support
cost is too great for the budget to bear, perhaps we need to rethink the degree
of technology that we want?
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(1)Defense News website,
“Ditching Pre-Positioned Activity Sets, Army Now Deploying Equipment From
CONUS”, Jen Judson, 13-Mar-2017,
