The ability of the United States Air Force (USAF) to keep its aircraft operating at an acceptable operational tempo, in wartime and in peacetime, has been important to the Air Force since its inception. This is a much larger issue for the Air Force today, having effectively been at war for 20 years, with its aircraft becoming increasingly more expensive to operate and maintain and with military budgets certain to further decrease. The enormously complex Air Force weapon system sustainment enterprise is currently constrained on many sides by laws, policies, regulations and procedures, relationships, and organizational issues emanating from Congress, the Department of Defense (DoD), and the Air Force itself. Against the back-drop of these stark realities, the Air Force requested the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, under the auspices of the Air Force Studies Board to conduct and in-depth assessment of current and future Air Force weapon system sustainment initiatives and recommended future courses of action for consideration by the Air Force. Examination of the U.S. Air Force's Aircraft Sustainment Needs in the Future and Its Strategy to Meet Those Needs addresses the following topics: Assess current sustainment investments, infrastructure, and processes for adequacy in sustaining aging legacy systems and their support equipment. Determine if any modifications in policy are required and, if so, identify them and make recommendations for changes in Air Force regulations, policies, and strategies to accomplish the sustainment goals of the Air Force. Determine if any modifications in technology efforts are required and, if so, identify them and make recommendations regarding the technology efforts that should be pursued because they could make positive impacts on the sustainment of the current and future systems and equipment of the Air Force. Determine if the Air Logistics Centers have the necessary resources (funding, manpower, skill sets, and technologies) and are equipped and organized to sustain legacy systems and equipment and the Air Force of tomorrow. Identify and make recommendations regarding incorporating sustainability into future aircraft designs.

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 34. Chapters: Fleet Electronic Warfare Center, Joint Functional Component Command - Network Warfare, Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations, Naval Network Warfare Command, NCOW, Net-Centric Enterprise Services, Network-centric organization, Network-centric warfare, Network-enabled capability, Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, Network governance, Power to the edge (management technique), Revolution in Military Affairs, Transformation of the United States Army, United States Cyber Command.

This thesis examines the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) pilot implementation conducted at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego (SSC-SD), the first of four Department of the Navy (DON) pilot implementations. Specifically, comparisons are drawn between both successful and unsuccessful ERP implementations within private sector organizations and that of SSC-SD. Any commonalities in implementation challenges could be applied to future ERP implementations in both the DON and Department of Defense (DOD). The findings are based in part upon interviews and data collected. From the comparison, commonalities exist in ERP implementation challenges between private sector organizations and SSC-SD. Additionally the management techniques used to mitigate those challenges are similar. Finally, due to SSC-SD's financial management structure and appropriated funding constraints, unique obstacles were identified during the implementation. These unique obstacles will be encountered by other Working Capital Funded (WCF) organizations planning to implement ERP on the same scale as SSC-SD. This thesis supports that the implementation of ERP at SSC-SD was a success based on industry comparisons, the goals of Project Cabrillo's business case analysis (ECA), and its Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Act compliancy assessment, January 2002.

This pamphlet describes the critical role of Army officers who defied the odds and saw this immense project through to completion. They included Col. William C. Gorgas, who supervised the medical effort that saved countless lives and made it possible for the labor force to do its job; Col. George W. Goethals, who oversaw the final design of the canal and its construction and, equally important, motivated his workers to complete the herculean task ahead of schedule; and many other officers who headed up the project’s subordinate construction commands and rebuilt the Panama railroad, a key component of the venture. In just seven years, these soldiers, thousands of fellow Americans, and tens of thousands of workers from around the world turned the dream of an isthmian canal into reality. Their success immediately ranked among the greatest peacetime feats of the Army and the nation, and it remains so to this day.

As existing weapon systems age and the costs and cycle times on the maintenance, repair, and overhaul of these systems increases, various organizations within the U.S. Department of Defense are conducting independent studies to help the system become more efficient. Current research efforts on maintenance repair and overhaul operations focus on individual elements of this "sustainment" system. However, to more effectively solve the sustainment problem, research should be conducted on the whole enterprise, from raw material suppliers to final product delivery. To accomplish this objective, the authors developed a new "lean" framework for military systems sustainment. The goal of this model is to minimize non value-added activities throughout the entire enterprise. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the lean philosophy, follows with a characterization and analysis of the current military sustainment system, and then proposes a new lean sustainment enterprise model for how sustainment should be structured. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief description of an initiative (the U.S. Navy and Air Force Cartridge Actuated Device/Propellant Actuated Device [CAD/PAD] program) that has some elements of the proposed lean sustainment model. This example is used to illustrate that the proposed model is realistic, and that it can be implemented.