Air Force Maintenance

The Air Force's Two Level Maintenance program, which seeks to save money by reducing maintenance staffing, equipment, and base-level support without sacrificing force readiness, is not fully achieving its intended benefits. The estimated costs to implement the program have increased, and the expected net savings have decreased--from $385 million to $258 million. In addition, not all program costs have been included in the cost-savings analyses. Under the program, the turnaround time to repair avionics items generally have met Air Force standards. For engines, however, the turnaround times have exceeded the standard by as many as 87 days. The use of the program to support troops during wartime will add to the airlift burden. Because the deployed forces will not have in-country intermediate maintenance capability, the forces will have to depend on airlift for spare and repair parts. However, the theater commander, not the Air Force, controls airlift priorities. As a result, the theater commander could decide that the need for combat power in the early stages of a conflict outweighed the return of unserviceable items to depot repair facilities and the movement of items from the depots to the battlefront.

GAO found that; (1) the TLM program is not achieving the full extent of the intended benefits; (2) between the time of the Air Force's first cost and savings analysis in 1992 and the second analysis in 1993, the estimated costs to implement TLM had increased and the expected net savings had decreased--from $385 million to $258 million; (3) in addition, all program costs have not been included in the cost/savings analyses; (4) for avionics items, the repair turn around time under TLM generally met the Air Force's established repair turn around standard; (5) for engines, however, the repair turn around times are exceeding the standard by as many as 87 days; (6) for example, the repair turn around time standard for the TF30-111 engine, used on the F-111 aircraft, is 41 days, but as of August 1995, its average repair turn around time was 128 days; (7) the use of TLM to support deployed forces in times of conflict will add to the airlift burden; (8) because the deployed forces will not have in-country intermediate maintenance capability, the forces will be dependent on airlift for their spare and repair parts; (9) however, airlift priorities are controlled by the theater commander not the Air Force; (10) as a result, a theater commander could decide that the need for combat power in the early stages of the conflict has a higher priority than return of unserviceable items to depot repair facilities and movement of items from the depots to the theater of operation; and (11) the need for early sustainment airlift to support TLM is an issue that has not been fully resolved and is one that could affect sustainment of the deployed forces.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: