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Life Cycle Management:
Integrating Acquisition and Sustainment
2
BY LIEUTENANT COLONEL JAMES O. WINBUSH, JR., CHRISTOPHER S. RINALDI, AND ANTONIA R. GIARDINA
Since it formally created an Acquisition Corps, the
Army has continually strived to improve the
process of developing, procuring, and sustaining
its weapon systems. Because sustainment costs
account for the largest portion of total life cycle costs
for weapons, they remain one of the focus areas for
acquisition reform. Army policy designates program
managers (PMs) as responsible and accountable for all
life cycle phases, including sustainment. However,
holding PMs accountable for sustainment continues to
be particularly challenging because planning, programming,
budgeting, and execution of sustainment
funding largely reside in the Army Materiel Command
(AMC), not with PMs.
In an effort to improve total life cycle management,
the Army has undertaken an initiative to bring the
acquisition, logistics, and technology communities
closer together. A memorandum of agreement, signed
on 2 August 2004, between the Assistant Secretary of
the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology,
The Honorable Claude M. Bolton, Jr., and the Commanding
General of AMC at that time, General Paul J.
Kern, formally launched a plan for the two organizations
to work together to establish life cycle management
commands (LCMCs). The Chief of Staff of
the Army, General Peter J. Schoomaker, approved the
initiative on 16 August.
The LCMC initiative is designed to help achieve
the Army’s overarching goal of transforming into a
more lethal and agile force that requires a significantly
smaller logistics footprint to sustain itself.
Logisticians in the field need to know about the
LCMC initiative because it will integrate sustainment
concerns with the development and acquisition of
materiel. The result of the LCMC initiative will be a
seamless materiel continuum from factory to foxhole,
with a leaner but more effective and responsive logistics
system. The dividing line between acquisition
and sustainment is ending, and logisticians will
become part of an Army that manages materiel and
support from an integrated life cycle perspective.
Background
In October 2001, the Army initiated an action to move
all project and product managers and their associated
acquisition programs out of materiel development
commands and into existing, restructured or newly created
PEO organizations. This action abolished the
Deputies for System Acquisition in three AMC major
subordinate commands (the Army Aviation and Missile
Command, Army Tank-automotive and Armaments
Command, and Army Communications-Electronics
Command) and realigned their functions to the PEOs.
This restructuring created a single, streamlined
chain of command for acquisition functions. It also
made PMs fully responsible for life cycle management
of their assigned programs. However, the realignment
did not transfer the funding, personnel, or other
resources needed to carry out sustainment functions.
AMC furthered the Army initiative in October 2002
by creating the Army Research, Development, and
Engineering Command (RDECOM). This command
consolidated the research, development, and engineering
elements of all AMC major subordinate commands
into one organization. The consolidation of the separate
elements under one command structure fosters synergy
among them and provides better support to the Army’s
PEOs. RDECOM is now the center of gravity for integrating,
maturing, and demonstrating all emerging technologies
for Army acquisition programs, which
significantly decreases the time it takes to get these critical
capabilities from the laboratory to the soldier. The
RDECOM commander has the centralized control to
“weight the main effort” for technology development to
assist the PEOs in getting the right capabilities to the
field at the right time.
Establishing Life Cycle Management
The realignment of the PMs and creation of
RDECOM established direct command and support
relationships for developing and integrating technologies
for Army acquisition programs. However, these
changes continued to foster a separation of sustainment
from other acquisition functions. In effect, the changes
created three “stovepiped” communities—technology
development, acquisition, and sustainment—and did not
provide the sustainment community with a direct link to
the technology development or acquisition communities.
Decisions made early in a system’s life cycle disproportionately
emphasize the acquisition of materiel
capabilities, resulting in insufficient focus on operations,
training, and support. Inadequate sustainment of
JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2005