January 2003 - Product Support and Maintenance: Teaming Experts With Maintainers

 By MG John M. Curran

       In this first issue of 2003, I want to take an opportunity to thank all of you for what you do for Army aviation.  We are a respected, well-trained and well-equipped, capable and versatile, power-projection and lethal force in the Army's arsenal of combat, combat-support and combat-service-support forces. This year, on April 12, we celebrate our 20th anniversary of aviation as a branch. You can be proud that Army aviation stands ready to defend the nation.

      There is a fine line between reliance and over reliance when it comes to contracted maintenance. A walk today through any Army hangar worldwide will reveal a wide variety of workers involved in aircraft maintenance. Alongside our aviation-maintenance soldiers, you'll see contracted mechanics and technical inspectors, field service representatives (tech reps) from every manufacturer involved in some activity, and U.S. Army Materiel Command logistical assistance representatives (LARs), all working to keep aircraft flying. 

      Our primary, non-negotiable contract with the American people is to be ready to win our nation's wars. Key to our mission readiness is having operationally flyable aircraft. My advice to commanders, maintenance officers and NCOs is … Use your contracted expertise, but don't surrender to it. Attend any local production-control meeting, and you'll discover the myriad of contract and civil employees present. The ratio of civilian to green-suiter may surprise you.

      This involvement doesn't stop when units deploy, as many of our contractors make their way to field sites to continue essential maintenance support. The AMC LAR will be there as well. 

      For good reason, these hard-working individuals have become a staple in a mission-oriented unit. They have become our subject-matter experts. We often look to the factory representative for answers. The knowledge base they provide is more than essential. In fact, these positions were created to reduce the time it took to get direct product support to the field. Tech reps were initially employed with the purpose of providing technical communication between manufacturers and military users. Having the engineering expertise on the ground is invaluable in the troubleshooting process. The individual efforts of these people increase our fleet readiness, reduce downtime and ensure currency of maintenance information Armywide. 

      However, relying too heavily on this vast source of knowledge can become a problem. It often becomes our first source of information. Leaders can tend to drift to these sources instead of doing the research themselves or entrusting the matter to their soldiers. We can unintentionally relegate our own maintainers to a stand-by or backup position.      

      When leaders bypass soldiers to get the information as directly as possible, the results can be unwittingly devastating. While it will produce quick results, it will adversely affect the force in the long term. By neglecting our soldiers in this fashion, we are possibly inserting a small amount of mistrust and a lack of confidence. If we continue to skip the soldiers in the troubleshooting and information loop, they become less able to have confidence in their own decision-making. Eventually, we will drive the maintainer to go to the contractor for information first. 

      With that as the model for communication, where will that leave the soldiers when they are on the battlefield? What decisions are we teaching them to make when the contractors are not available? With the subject-matter experts being the contracted representatives, we have to guard against having our own maintainers take a back seat in our quest for information.

      While troubleshooting a problem, the first comment often heard is "Where's the LAR?" We want to get them involved first, so we don't miss anything or waste time making mistakes. While this can get issues resolved in a timely manner, the contractors can be spread only so thin, or make it just so far on the battlefield. This issue applies to the maintainers of aircraft, aircraft electronic logbooks, supply records and anywhere else we have civilian personnel doing Army tasks. The contractor becomes the continuity. They maintain the institutional knowledge. The Logistics Assistance Program (LAP), detailed in ARs 700-4, 700-138 and 750-1, emphasizes the word "assistance." It is to help commanders develop their units' capabilities to resolve materiel-readiness problems. While capitalizing on the benefits a contractor brings to the fight, we have to ensure expertise resides in our soldier population as well.

      We should always integrate sustainment training in our operations. Sustainment training involves more than just the day-to-day operations in the hangar. While it is important to get the fleet launched, and to know common tasks, we need to make time to do individual maintenance task training. The troubleshooting portion of our maintenance is not something our soldiers can learn through reading. Troubleshooting is an art in which we can use the expertise of the contractors to develop technically proficient maintainers.

      Bear this in mind: "The Logistics Assistance Program does not relieve commanders of logistics-readiness responsibilities or functions. Commanders are responsible for developing a self-sustaining capability. The LAP is not intended to be a permanent augmentation to the commander's staff; instead, it is limited to the amount of time necessary to solve specific problems and train assigned personnel." [From FM3-4.500]

      We can wisely use the knowledge of the experts to train our young leaders and soldiers. We can instill in our leaders that the "down time" between major training events is not vacation time, but rather a tool to be used to train maintainers. A day of learning to troubleshoot may seem like a vacation to mission-weary maintainers; but it pays off in mission readiness if thoroughly planned and executed.

      The modernized aircraft that the Army depends on today are complex, technically advanced and harder to maintain than the legacy aircraft from the 1960s and 1970s. Maintenance is more challenging than ever before. Test-measurement and diagnostic equipment has also become much more complex and challenging. These are the primary reasons that Contract Field Service Reps and LARs have become so critical to Army aviation, but we must always remain cognizant of the fact that soldiers need the hands-on experience and training to learn their MOSs well. They cannot do this by working on the modernized aircraft two hours a day. On average, the maintainer spends from five to 18 hours maintaining an airframe, per flying hour, depending on the aircraft type.  There are units flying 5,000-plus annual hours. This requires years of hard work and dedication for a mechanic to learn his business and become an asset in his unit. 

      Maintenance continues to be a challenge. With reduced resources, higher OPTEMPO, decentralized command and control, and lighter, faster, highly mobile units, it becomes imperative that we afford our soldiers the maximum opportunity to become experts in their fields. In our training environments, we need to facilitate maintenance training and focus on the technical aspects of the job. When we direct our attention to maintenance training, readiness improves. We can, from within, create confident, more technically proficient soldiers. It is these soldiers who will enable our force to be a more flexible and efficient portion of the national effort.

      Thanks, and keep up the great work.

 MG John M. Curran is the commander of the U.S. Army Aviation Center and chief of the aviation branch.