By Robbin Laird
The USMC has introduced three major air platforms in the past twenty years. The Osprey was introduced during the land wars, but introduced during the Obama Administration’s “pivot to the Pacific.” But with the Trump Administration’s emphasis on the “great power competition” in 2018 it began its enhanced role in the Pacific which has seen the introduction of the CMV-22B.
I have written about that in my book The Role of the Osprey in the Pivot to the Pacific.
Next the USMC introduced the F-35B and it played a key role in the ability of the U.S. military with partners to build out fifth generation capability during the era of the land wars. But not until the “great power competition” shift did the U.S. really focus once again on the fifth-generation transition.
Indeed, in my view this only is beginning again and the focus on how to effectively integrate and support a global fleet of U.S. and allied F-35s (what I call F-35 2.0) is only underway now.
I wrote about this in my book My Fifth-Generation Journey: 2004-2018.
But the CH-53K is being introduced in the new strategic context, in the era of “great power competition” and peer conflict. Hence, it is being introduced when its capabilities including its digital backbone need to be considered from the standpoint of the strategic context within which it is being introduced.
It is also being introduced in a context where there have been two strategic events which have also underscored that the logistical and sustainment approach used during the land wars is simply irrelevant. The pandemic undercut civilian and military supply chains and underscored their fragility. The conflict with China has also underscored the importance of secure supply chains rather than just-in time delivery from global suppliers wherever they are located and whatever their politics.
The war in Ukraine should not have been a shock and was logically implied in earlier Russian actions. We wrote about this in our book, The Obama Administration Confronts Global Change.
But what this war has overwhelmingly demonstrated is the lack of depth in the supplies to support military operations.
Not only has just-in time delivery and the absence of investment in supplies and equipment stockpiles been shown to have failed, the investments in building supply depth have still to be made in a coherent or strategic manner.
Enter the CH-53K. Here is an aircraft whose digital backbone can be leveraged to build predictive maintenance and an ability to shape effective knowledge of the supplies needed at the tactical edge to ensure that the CH-53Ks onboard the Navy ships it is supporting in distributed maritime operations can have the operational levels needed.
But how to ensure that the government, the prime contractor and the supply chain can do this?
To date, the best way to do that has been through a system called performance-based logistics. This is a system in which the government and the contractor work a partnership to incentivize the contractor to deliver best value supply chain support to the government. It has been based largely on the model of the land-wars in terms of operating at a pace necessary for peacetime deployments or support for warehouses abroad to support land operations.
It has not been re-shaped to do what the Israelis have thought necessary with their CH-53Ks, namely an ability to surge to support in time of conflict. Or put another way, if peacetime ops are not the norm, but surge operations to various levels is, how do we reshape PBLs to meet the new strategic norm?
I continued my conversation with Pierre Garant concerning the CH-53K and sustainability along these lines.
According to Garant: “The purpose of a PBL is to incentivize long-term production of the supplies for the aircraft. It allows the company working with the government on a PBL to build effective longer-term relationships with suppliers to have money flowing to ensure production of every key element needed to supply the operational fleet of aircraft.
He argued that “you’re building resiliency, and you’re building to anticipate obsolescence issues and to get ahead of the game with regard to problems and challenges to ensure supply chain effectiveness. Given the key role as well of government depots they are key partners in this entire effort.
“As we talked about last time, with the data coming off of the aircraft, we can generate big data to shape a realistic assessment ongoing of the performance of parts which can could then be used and translated in better management of the supply chain and to do so to get at those surge issues you mentioned.”
In my view, the traditional PBL approach has largely been an accounting approach to improve efficiency in the use of supply dollars. In a new PBL approach, the need to surge would be part of the consideration in funding the PBL. The legacy PBL has laid a solid foundation but we cannot assume that peacetime ops is the norm to define a PBL; we need to build in surge considerations in an era of great competition.
Credit Graphic: Performance Based Lositics Contracting-Does It Work?
Digital Maintenance in the Shift to Distributed Maritime Operations