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When considering the current state of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, it is important to understand both its present and likely future composition. As discussed in Chapter I, reductions in future budgets will force a change in the way Naval Aviation does business. Following the end of the Cold War, there was a large shift in the needs of the DOD as countering the Soviet Union was no longer the focus of American foreign policy. The composition of the armed forces changed greatly over the next two decades away from a European-centric strategy. According to the New York Times, by 2014, the number of U.S. troops had decreased from 400,000 during the Cold War to a current force of about 67,000 (Cooper and Erlanger 2014). At the same time, the number of aircraft had decreased from approximately 800 at the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s to about 172 today (Cooper and Erlanger 2014). The cuts in Europe have left the Navy with fewer forces, numbering approximately 7,000 sailors and marines with no aircraft carriers stationed in the Mediterranean (Cooper and Erlanger 2014).

Based on the nature of the geopolitical changes that took place between 1990 and 2014, this shift was to be expected. The shift in forces away from Europe also shows that plans for weapons systems need to be flexible and adapt to changing realities. Many weapons systems that form the backbone of the modern U.S. Navy were developed to fight the Soviet threat, including the H-60 helicopter. Modern weapons systems need to be able to be modified to engage threats that exist in the present that might not have been the focus of design decisions in the past.

U.S. combat systems have required great evolution to meet a much different threat than seen even during the first Gulf War in 1991. The Naval Aviation Vision 2020 points out the change from the force composition during the first Gulf War to the forces that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 93 percent of Navy and Marine sorties in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom involved the use of precision guided weapons, which was a significant increase from the first Gulf War (Taylor et al. 2005). Due to this change to a more precise type of warfare, weapons systems have become more costly to

both acquire and maintain. As was discussed in Chapter I, however, there are severe budget limitations that will constrain the DOD for the foreseeable future. This dichotomy between the increasing cost of weapons systems and the decreasing resources available for their production and maintenance is the primary trade space available to military decision makers.

The NAE has understood for nearly a decade that the cost of acquiring weapons is too high. This fact is conveyed through the use of “reduce the cost of doing business” as one of its strategic readiness goals (Taylor et al. 2005). This statement is almost hopelessly board in dealing with the costs of equipping the military. Costs associated with manning and acquisition decisions dominate the cost calculations of the military, but these are not the only areas where cost savings can be achieved.

To reduce the cost of business, the NAE has focused on providing more capability per dollar in the fleet and increasing the efficiency of processes by both upgrading and modernizing the fleet (Taylor et al. 2005). The priority to modernize and upgrade the fleet has an enormous significance, since the entire fleet cannot simply be replaced with new ships or aircraft. One need look no further than the enormous cost of the F-35 project to understand that creating completely new aircraft systems is likely cost prohibitive in the current fiscal environment. The focus then shifts to ways to save costs using the people and equipment that the Navy already has.

To achieve cost savings, changes can be made in the composition of the force in terms of people, weapons, and processes. Manning composition, although extremely important, is outside the boundaries of this study. This thesis will seek to find ways to reduce manning requirements, but questions related to how to best populate aviation units are not the focus. Instead, the emphasis will remain on possible cost savings achieved by altering the processes surrounding legacy systems. Through improving the efficiency of systems already in place, cost savings can be achieved today that allow for the use of greater resources for future systems.

With this focus on cost in mind, legacy systems must be modernized in ways that both save costs and extend the system’s lifecycle. This modernization poses two

enormously important questions: how well is Naval Aviation meeting the goal of increasing efficiency in order to upgrade the fleet? Furthermore, has the Navy maximized its use of resources today or do areas exist where resources can be conserved without a negative impact on combat readiness? If the Navy has not used all means available to increase efficiency without a negative impact on combat readiness, then new processes and functions must be developed to achieve this greater efficiency.

Table 3. Naval Aviation Vision 2020 Strategic Readiness Goals.

Strategic Goals

Balance Current and Future Readiness Reduce the Cost of Doing Business Enhance Agility

Improve Alignment

Attain and Maintain Visibility Across the Enterprise

Table 4. Naval Aviation Vision 2020 Strategic Readiness Actions.

Strategic Actions

Prioritize capabilities, define requirements, and efficiently acquire and prepare relevant and optimally sized Naval Air Forces that satisfy our nation’s warfighting needs

Operate with a common set of linked processes, each having an owner, metrics, and an action plan that drives continuous improvement

Install processes that are repeatable, agile and predictive

Manage performance and financial metrics as the common Enterprise language

Execute a Continuous Improvement Program designed to define, measure, improve and control NAE processes, to include Human Capital, acquisition, training, and materiel readiness

Develop quantifiable outcome metrics to measure our success and cultivate improvements that positively impact current and future naval readiness

Since Naval Aviation seeks to become more efficient, how does the NAE plan to achieve the goal of “reducing the cost of business as usual?” According to the Naval Aviation Vision 2020, relevant actions from Table 4 must be taken to meet the NAE’s combat readiness goals from Table 3 (Taylor et al. 2005). This combination of readiness goals and actions not only lays out the ways in which the NAE hopes to reduce the cost to train, equip and operate the fleet, but also provides the philosophical basis for this study.

In systems engineering terms, the six actions from Table 4 serve as the top-level user requirements that the NAE must meet to achieve success in “reducing the cost of doing business.” The user’s requirements inform the analysis needed to determine how well each of these areas is satisfied by current processes and to identify shortfalls that exist. Therefore, a capability gap analysis is used to measure the fleet’s success in meeting the NAE’s requirements. Since this vision is nearly a decade old, it is also likely necessary for a reassessment of readiness goals, since the fiscal environment of 2005 was much different than that of 2014. Since the 2005 goals were meant to shape the force in 2020, they still remain relevant today but their relevance is quickly approaching its end.

Since the NAE has set the requirements for future success, it is important to understand how these requirements are quantified and success is measured. This understanding requires that the term success be defined in a way that can be measured and compared between possible outcomes. Since the NAMP, as discussed in Chapter II, focuses on creating a system of constant “performance improvement,” any measurement of success should be able to determine the value of improved performance. (COMNAVAIRFORINST 2013) However, performance improvement is a vague and there are myriad ways that improvement can be interpreted. Additionally, many of the variables related to performance improvement have competing interests, so no improvement scheme can assure unanimously positive results related to all aspects of any system. To maintain a narrow focus, the basis for this research is the writings of the NAE that set priorities for requirements.

As can be seen in Table 3, the five strategic goals are put forth as essential ingredients for performance improvement across the lifecycle of aircraft development and sustainment. Furthermore, the series of strategic actions presented in Table 4 provide a basis for developing metrics to measure success and meet the requirements from Table 3. Therefore, an appropriate framework must be created that accurately applies the principles established in Tables 3 and 4. This framework provides the best way to measure the outcome of any performance improvement regime.