USAF Engines: Tired Iron and Cost-Effective Readiness Published Feb. 7, 2014 By Jayne Anderson 421st Supply Chain Management Squadron Tinker Public Affairs -- The Air Force is facing a very real challenge with respect to the cost of maintaining an aging engine fleet. To meet the challenge of maintaining cost-effective readiness, a dedicated group of professionals from the 421st Supply Chain Management Squadron, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, the Defense Logistics Agency and the 76th Propulsion Maintenance Group formed a well-integrated Engine Team that has stepped up to meet the challenge. This team ensures that the United States Air Force is a responsible steward of engine resources through continuous process improvement and policy review. The Engine Team worked to improve the engine reclamation policy and are currently developing a cold start identification and management program to keep engines supportable and flying well into the future. One of the main methods for providing essential cost-effective support for the older aircraft is reclamation of parts from engines in storage at such places as the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), also known as the "Boneyard," at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz. Since its inception in 2001, the TF33 (E-3, B-52, OC-135, WC-135, E-8) aircraft engine reclamation efforts have already realized savings of over $42 million per year and provided critical engine parts while new assets are being manufactured. The TF33 reclamation program has become the model from which all of propulsion can benefit. Reclamation of engines enables the materiel managers to fill holes in the supply chain caused by lack of manufacturers for old weapon system components, at a reduced cost to the Air Force and the US taxpayer. According to Randy Mikula, TF33 Logistics Management Specialist, "Aside from saving millions of dollars, which is great, some of the more obvious benefits we make happen are keeping the back shops and engine lines supportable." When all of propulsion follows suit, the results will be exponential. The TF33 powered the first flight of the Air Force's B-52H Stratofortress on March 6, 1961, and plans call for it to power the aircraft until 2045. Due to the age of the weapon system and lack of manufacturers able to provide parts, the team is continually faced with parts shortages that jeopardize mission support. As a readiness solution, the TF33 flight championed the use of engines available for reclamation and turned a "Red" program (parts shortage) to "Green" (parts available). The program is so successful, the Air Force Audit Agency is using the process as the standard by which to base all future audits within the engine community. The Air Force Materiel Command is rewriting its engine reclamation policies and procedures based on the 421st SCMS's and LPSA's best practices and lessons learned. The reclamation lessons learned were carried out on the F100 (F-15/16) this past summer and are currently being implemented for the T56 (C-130) engines. The F100 engine was faced with similar parts shortage problems beginning in the fall of 2012 when it was announced that the QF-16 would be replacing the QF-4 drones. These drones, which are full-scale aerial targets, are essential for testing newly developed weapons and train pilots for the rapidly changing nature of warfare. "Our Pratt & Whitney corporate contract expired in Sept. 2012," said Lance Winner, Lead F100 Program Manager. "We couldn't order with that contracting vehicle no longer available, so we took several mitigation actions anticipating did a lot of things to mitigate the problems that we knew we were going to have. We took pulled FY13 requirements and pulled them into FY12 and bought them on utilizing the current contract. When the contract expired, we began making tactical purchase requests for individual items." The problem with that was the long administrative lead time needed to finalize approval for purchase. The team then looked at engine reclamation as a faster way to get engine parts to the warfighter. "Our team sat down with the TF33 folks and picked their brains and studied their lessons learned and best practices and applied them to our program," Winner said. The F100 Team, in conjunction with AFLCMC/LPS and 76th PMXG, developed a plan to reclaim 5 engines prior to FY14 with a potential savings/cost avoidance of $1.3 million per engine. Two hundred F100 engines will be reclaimed over the next five years with a potential savings of $262 million. These engines will be disassembled by the 76th PMXG and routed through the depot repair process salvaging expensive, critical parts and reducing expenditure of program execution dollars. It will ensure that he QF-16 remote controlled manned and unmanned aerial targets will be supportable for years to come. "Engines are materially intensive, by their very nature," said Jeff Slayton, chief, F100/TF33/F117/F119 Engine Branch Propulsion Sustainment Division. "The reclamation efforts enacted by the TF33 and F100 engine IPTs have been very critical to translating more of the sustainment dollar into ready capability. Additionally, the teams are prudently balancing this affordability initiative with the long term supply chain capability. I'm very proud of our F100 and TF33 integrated teams."