Title: Air Force and Navy Need to Address Worsening Trends in
Maintaining Aircraft

Description: The U.S. Air Force and Navy spend billions of dollars each
year maintaining their fleets of fighter jets, bombers, and other
aircraft. Maintaining these weapons directly affects the military's
readiness, as maintenance delays could reduce the amount of time
aircraft are available for operations and training.  But in a new
report, we found that maintenance trends for aircraft have worsened
since fiscal year 2015. So what's going on here? We'll get an update
from GAO's Diana Maurer. 

Related GAO Work: GAO-22-104533, Air Force and Navy Aviation: Actions
Needed to Address Persistent Sustainment Risks

Released: June 2022

[Music]

[Diana Maurer:] The Air Force and the Navy need to do a better job
maintaining the aircraft they have today.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for
news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. I'm
your host, Holly Hobbs. The U.S. Air Force and Navy spend billions of
dollars each year maintaining their fleets of fighter jets, bombers, and
other aircraft. Maintaining these weapons directly affects the
military's readiness, as maintenance delays could reduce the amount of
time aircraft are available for operations and training. But in a new
report, we found that maintenance trends for aircraft have worsened
since Fiscal Year 2015. So what's going on here? We'll get an update
from GAO's Diana Maurer, an expert on defense weapons sustainment, and a
director in our Defense Capabilities and Management Team. Thanks for
joining us.  

[Diana Maurer:] Glad to be here. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Diana, what is going on here? Why have maintenance
trends worsened? 

[Diana Maurer:] So there are many different reasons why maintenance
trends have actually worsened over the past several years. Both the Air
Force and the Navy have had challenges training and retaining skilled
maintainers, who are necessary for repairing their aircraft. There's
also been challenges in getting the parts that they need to repair the
aircraft. In some cases, units on the flight line have to wait extended
periods of time for spare parts. One unit we spoke to had to wait six
months for a fan component and 14 months for a part that holds the
aircraft's critical braking system together. So delays like that in
parts make it difficult to complete maintenance in a timely manner.
There are other challenges as well. Some of them are pretty mundane.
Some units had shortages of things like forklifts, cranes, and other
equipment they needed to actually perform the maintenance. In some
cases, they had to fly or drive to other bases to get the equipment they
needed.  

[Holly Hobbs:] So, this seems like a difficult thing to measure. How do
we know it's gotten worse? 

[Diana Maurer:] One of the key measures that we relied upon is known as
the mission capable rate, which is the percentage of time an aircraft
can fly and perform at least one of its missions. So we looked at these
mission capable rates across the eight aircraft in our review. And what
we found is that mission capable rates declined from 2015 to 2021, with
some aircraft being far below the goals that the Navy and the Air Force
set for them. We looked at other measures as well, and found that, among
other things, repairs were taking longer and that those trends were
moving in the wrong direction.  We also heard examples of increased
cannibalization, which is they park an aircraft and essentially pull a
lot of the parts off it to support and maintain other aircraft. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So this is a longstanding issue and it's an issue we
reported on before. What, if anything, has the military done to plan or
address it? 

[Diana Maurer:] You're right, Holly.  We've been tracking aircraft
readiness and aircraft maintenance, for a number of years. And our prior
work has found systemic fleet-wide challenges. In fact, over the past
decade, the vast majority of the Air Force and Navy's fixed-wing
aircraft, were unable to meet their mission capable goals. On the plus
side, the Air Force and Navy have taken steps to address these various
challenges. They're aware of them. They're very concerned about them.
And they have a number of initiatives underway. At the highest level,
both services have developed strategies to change the way they do
maintenance. They've also developed fleet-wide initiatives, for example,
better track and analyze the various issues using data mining, take a
look at best practices that the private sector might be using to see
whether they can be applied for use in the military, and other efforts
and initiatives.  So both the Navy and the Air Force have a lot of
things underway to try to turn this trend in a more positive direction. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So what were the gaps in these efforts? 

[Diana Maurer:] There was one area in particular where we found a gap,
and that has to do with keeping Congress informed. Six years ago,
Congress required all of the services to conduct what are known as
sustainment reviews for major weapons systems. So that involves
reporting back to Congress on how well major weapons systems, including
aircraft, are doing at performing their missions as well as the cost to
operate and support those systems. When we looked at what the Air Force
and the Navy were doing, we found they had not completed the sustainment
reviews for all the aircraft. In fact, it was going to be many years
before they were going to complete those reviews. The second problem we
found was that the Air Force and the Navy weren't positioned to develop
and report on what they were going to do to specifically address the
challenges that they were facing that are identified in these
sustainment reviews. So it's not just reporting back to Congress on
where they are, they also need to report back to Congress on what
they're planning to do to fix those problems.

{MUSIC}

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Diana just told us that the Air Force and the Navy
face a number of challenges in maintaining aircraft. And that while they
have taken steps to address these issues, they have not met
Congressional reporting requirements, and were not positioned to develop
and report on how they would address maintenance needs. So, Diana, what
do we think needs to happen to help the Air Force and the Navy address
its aviation needs? 

[Diana Maurer:] Well first, we think it's important for the Air Force
and the Navy to complete these congressionally required sustainment
reviews with a greater sense of urgency. And we believe this will be a
critical step to help them gain a better understanding of what is
necessary, move maintenance in a better direction rather than in the
wrong direction. We also recommended that both services develop
mitigation plans to help remedy the various problems that they identify
and completed sustainment reviews. It's not enough to report on the
problems to Congress. It's also important to find solutions and report
back to Congress. We also had a potential action for Congress to
consider. The Air Force and the Navy are already required to report to
Congress on potential growth in operating and support costs, but they're
not required to report on big gaps between where those services want to
be in terms of maintenance and sustainment outcomes and where they
currently are. So we suggested to Congress that they may want to put a
requirement on the Navy and the Air Force to also report back to
Congress on those systems where there are particular large gaps between
what the services want those aircraft to do and what they're actually
able to do in a real world environment. 

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what's the bottom line of this report?

[Diana Maurer:] The bottom line of this report is that the Air Force and
the Navy need to do a better job maintaining the aircraft they have
today. That's absolutely critical for them to be able to carry out their
military missions and ensure that they have the appropriate level of
military readiness. We're encouraged that the Air Force and the Navy,
and the Department of Defense more broadly, are taking efforts to
address these challenges. But there needs to be continued and sustained
senior leadership attention and focus on sustainment and readiness and
maintenance to ensure that the military forces we have today are able to
meet the military missions today, as well as be able to meet the demands
of tomorrow.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Diana Maurer talking about GAO's recent review
of the U.S. Air Force and Navy's aviation maintenance needs. Thanks for
your time, Diana. 

[Diana Maurer:] Thank you. 

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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