Keeping the tiger in the army's tanks an approach to commercialize military maintenance

Abstract

For the majority of the twentieth century, the U.S. military maintenance posture depended upon a large investment in facilities, equipment, and people comprising a vast collection of military depots. In recent years, defense reductions resulted in inadequate funds to sustain the existing depot infrastructure. The ensuing reductions in force, base closures, and disposal of surplus equipment greatly consolidated the military depots. Additionally, opportunities to commercialize military maintenance are being considered as a means to achieve further reductions without impacting military system readiness. The availability of trained personnel, vacant facilities, and unused equipment offers a number of commercialization approaches. The approaches differ in the disposition of these resources among owners and operators. Initially, the U.S. government played all roles. Today, contractors may serve in any of these roles. This paper describes a government-owned, contractor-operated approach to commercialize military maintenance.