A Sustainment History of the 20th Century

I have completed a draft of the chapter that David K. Stumpf requested for his upcoming book: Minuteman III. The chapter is entitled: Sustainment. 

Look for it on Amazon.com in about a year. 

So now I am taking that chapter and expanding it into a book, entitled: 

Fundamentals of Complex System Sustainment

A Management Model for Effective and Economical Support

Suitable for

Any Sufficiently Complex System

That Must Maintain Its Capability Beyond Its Planned Lifespan

Chapter 3 is entitled: A Sustainment History of the 20th Century

It briefly sketches the history of strategic bombardment from the Wright Brothers to the end of TRW's support of ICBMs. Army Signal Corps Air Doctrine, von Braun's rocket experiments, Zeppelin D.I, B-17, B-52, Bell Labs' birth of systems engineering, first SLBM patrol, Minuteman deployed, WWI, Spanish Civil War, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Cold War, First Gulf War. 

The intent is to show how we transitioned from rapidly fielding new versions of aircraft and missiles to keeping the B-52 and Minuteman employed for over a half century and how this made modern sustainment methods a necessity. 

Now that everyday life is filled with complex systems needing sustaining (Internet of Things, commercial space, internet for the poor, etc), everyone can learn from methods created in the last century. 

This chapter starts with a quote from Michael Crichton: "If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree."

Here is an excerpt from that chapter:

If none of the previously discussed history was apparent to Minuteman sustainers in the 1980s, simple numbers tell the story. By 1985, Minuteman III, with an often-quoted design life of 10 years, had been on alert for 13 years. And there seemed to reason to suppose it wouldn’t follow the pattern of Minuteman II which had been on alert 20 years by this point. Perhaps more telling, the venerable Strategic Air Command aerial nuclear bombing weapon system, the B-52 and KC-135, were already 30 years and 28 years old, respectively.

... and, of course, the Minuteman, B-52, and KC-135 weapon systems are all still going strong today. 

As always. Any comments to this blog on sustainment are appreciated and will likely wind up in this upcoming book. 

Process

Many Federal organizations, including the DoD, have demonstrated difficulties in creating and maintaining agile processes. This is most likely due to the already existing methods of ensuring compliance. National policies get formalized. The DoD issues formal written directives to ensure national policies are followed and no laws are broken. Various entities within the USAF issue regulations to codify the required actions. In the case of operations and maintenance of weapon systems, these actions are formalized into actual written orders called “technical orders”. Stray from the technical order and formal discipline is forthcoming.

So when it becomes time to create local processes for sustainers to follow, a myriad of existing direction, plus direction on how to provide directions, means that processes are created with some difficulty. Public punishments in recent years have increased the desire of some to be “risk adverse” and avoid “rocking the boat”. When processes are finally published, they could be out of date and missing key steps. Updates occur with similar difficulty.

All of this can be avoided by approaching sustainment processes with an inverted mind-set. Although processes cannot include steps that break law or counter policy, these dangers are much less than the perception. Processes should mirror current actions. Audits should occur regularly, but not to ensure personal compliance with processes, but to quickly update them to the current best practice. Audits should never be perceived as a threat to the process users, but an opportunity to communicate information needed by team leaders and managers. Updates and sign-off should occur at the lowest levels possible. Mid management should review written processes to look for possible policy or public law violations and provide feedback if concerns are found. But the emphasis should be on quick updates to capture improvements.

Excellent sustainers strive to ensure their processes can be updated within one week and never take longer than two weeks. They ensure that interim deviations are easy to get. The auditor cultivates a cooperative atmosphere that draws out the needed changes from the process owners and implementers. Once these are identified, a responsible person grabs the process changes and gets them through review and sign-off. Top managers are key to this process as they cannot simply reject processes, but may at times even need to get “down and dirty” with the team to ensure process changes never linger due to management approvals. Metrics on audit coverage and process update times are critical to the managers and leaders to ensure they take the time each week to focus on whether the organizational processes are healthy and improving. Without active leadership on a weekly basis, the organization and its processes will stagnate. Sustainment affordability and effectiveness will immediately suffer without immediately understanding the real cause.