Air force launches billion-dollar plan to modernize depots

The Air Force wants to spend nearly $1 billion over five years to rebuild and modernize its aging depots as part of a larger effort to operate more efficiently.

The Air Force released a strategic plan earlier this week for how to best use its three depots, which are located at Warner Robins Air Force Base, Georgia; Hill Air Force Base, Utah; and Tinker Air Force Base, Okla. The depots are in-house repair centers that employ about 36,000 workers and spend more than $10 billion annually to maintain and repair the service's aircraft and other weapons.

Since closing two depots-Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas and McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, Calif.-in July 2001, the Air Force has been working on a plan to upgrade its remaining depot capabilities and operate them more efficiently. The new strategy is not a dramatic change from reforms under way at the depots, but is the service's attempt to wrap those reforms into a single plan that includes increased funding.

"The goals of the strategy are a highly qualified depot workforce, improved production throughput and quality, properly sized infrastructure, reduced cost and improved financial management," said an Air Force Materiel Command press release outlining the new strategy. The Air Force will achieve those goals through increased spending on depot infrastructure, better strategic planning, hiring new workers and increasing efforts to form partnerships with private firms.

One of the keys to the plan is increasing spending on technology and infrastructure for Air Force depots by $150 million annually from 2004 to 2009. The additional spending would bring the service up to industry standards, which call for spending 6 percent to 7 percent of a facility's annual revenue on infrastructure. "World class maintenance and repair operations require world class facilities and equipment," Air Force officials wrote in the plan.

The Air Force will also need to replace an aging depot workforce, where the average employee is 45 years old. "A new and younger workforce must be acquired and trained prior to the loss of highly skilled workers who are nearing retirement age to better leverage their skills," according to the plan. The depots will need more funds for managerial and technical training for the new workers, the plan said.

The Air Force must also begin looking at depots as corporate assets and include them in the service's overall strategic planning, the plan recommended. For example, the Air Force will hold biennial reviews to decide what repair work must be done in-house to ensure the service maintains key capabilities at a reasonable price. Additionally, the Air Force will begin a depot maintenance and review transformation process that will seek to identify the best practices and processes at each of the depots and then implement them across the three repair centers.

Under the plan, Air Force depots will continue to pursue partnerships with commercial repair and manufacturing companies to find ways to cut the costs of overhauling weapon systems. The service will also place a higher priority on establishing partnerships when first buying weapon systems and will develop criteria for forming partnerships when awarding contracts for the development of new weapons.

"This plan ensures the three [in-house] repair depots continue as key contributors to maintaining Air Force readiness and combat capability across the full spectrum of military operations for the long term," the plan said.