Abstract
Purpose The future retirement of US Air Force (USAF) legacy weapon systems (WSs) removes their associated funding from within the Air Force Working Capital Fund and their parts from its organic supply chain inventory. The trending outsourcing of product support to contracted logistics support and its potential long-term consequences to the USAF government-owned, government-operated, organic supply chain and the reconstitution capabilities it enables in the USAF’s organic industrial base, suggests the need to assess its risks. Although there is an existing body of research into the risks of outsourcing the USAF’s industrial repair, and federal legislation such as Core 50/50 laws enacted to institutionalize its risk management, there is comparatively little research into the outsourcing risks to the long-term viability of the supply chain on which that repair capability is dependent. The aim of this research is to fill that research gap by assessing and modeling those risks. This research concludes by providing several future research directions that may be evaluated to provide more detail. Design/methodology/approach Leveraging a conceptual model derived from research and a multi-criteria analysis framework to assess supply chain risk. Quantifying the predicted impact of retirements on funding and inventories of unique parts. Modeling the potential risk due to WS retirement. Findings Results indicated long term enterprise risks to the Air Force’s supply chain correlated to the retirement of WSs and their associated funding and spare parts inventory. Originality/value This research provides an in-depth evaluation of the USAF’s supply chain to assess the holistic risk of product support outsourcing and its long-term impacts on viability by using resource-based view and contingency theory as theoretical underpinnings. In addition, insights and implications for defense supply chain managers and decision-makers.
Highlights
During the years 1990-2015, the US Air Force (USAF) showed a preference toward contracted logistics support (CLS) for outsourced and privatized product support of supply chain management (SCM) functions for new weapon systems (WSs)
The methods used include the solicitation of unstructured feedback from both wholesale and retail supply chain managers, construction of a framework based on a resource-based view (RBV) and consideration of realistic timelines for the retirement of existing weapons systems
The effects of which propagated across the supply network
Summary
The future retirement of US Air Force (USAF) legacy weapon systems (WSs) such as the A-10 and KC-135 removes their associated funding from within the Air Force Working Capital Fund (AFWCF) and their parts from its government-owned, government-operated, organic supply chain inventory, impacting the fleet reconstitution capabilities and resilience it enables in the USAF’s defense industrial repair base. In Figure 1, product support outsourcing decisions made between 1990 and 2015 imply that funding for aircraft procured © In accordance with section 105 of the US Copyright Act, this work has been produced by a US government employee and shall be considered a public domain work, as copyright protection is not available. Published in Journal of Defense Analytics and Logistics. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited.
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