Post by hunter on Sept 13, 2019 3:15:59 GMT
Up to 70 cents of every dollar the Pentagon spends on a weapon goes toward sustainment. Will Roper wants to change that by paying companies more money up-front for cutting-edge designs.
“We have allowed this business model to be created where industry loses money designing things for us,” the Air Force acquisition chief said Wednesday at the Defense News Conference. “We gotta own that. That’s a horrible business model if you want to have a world-class, cutting-edge Air Force.”
What ends up happening, as Pentagon sustainment chief Ellen Lord likes to note, is that the military pays companies even more to maintain and buy spare parts for its arms.
It’s hard to change the buying structure on existing projects, so Roper wants to change things up with new projects. One candidate is Next-Generation Air Dominance, essentially the Air Force’s future- warplane project. The goal is “to pay for cutting-edge design and not ask industry to take a loss,” he said.
Roper’s looking into other ideas as well. General Electric has offered the Air Force a licensing agreement allowing the military to 3D-print engine parts. It’s “similar to downloading something on iTunes and you pay the fee for that license,” he said.
“If we put it into our printer queue, then we pay the fee to print that part. I think that’s a great idea,” Roper said. “It’s something that we probably don’t want to do for lots or hundreds of thousands [of parts], but if we need a few things that are currently not available, I think that’s great to up our readiness and lower cost.”
Another example is Leidos’ decision to loosen its grip on the intellectual property rights of its software, he said. “I think that’s a pretty bold statement to say, ‘We’re going to view ourselves as providing software as a service while you, the Air Force, are saying you use software as a service’,” Roper said. “That just simplifies our model of working together.”
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