Ancient AF maintainer here (1981-2007) who feels your pain. The original idea for the USAF reducing base repair capabilities was based on the insane idea we'd have enough spare parts plus the utter desperation to reduce manning. (BTW OBOGS originated with the desire to get rid of base LOX plant manning, I read that in F-20 Tigershark promo literature at the time. F-20 went nowhere but OBOGS was infamous for years before getting sorted.) Fixing ground vehicles is EASY given the tools, tech orders and effing permission to do so. (I've done that and more as a civilian) and local mobile machine shops permit making/repairing parts.
Abandoning local repair capability is a terrible idea from the POV of sortie generation so the Air Force has Gold Flag https://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/04/01/geek-squad-saves-air-force-millions.html but that doesn't go nearly far enough. I worked back shop as a Comm/Nav troop and local repair kept USAFE running in West Germany on systems which broke far more often (hooray for tubes and tuning motors) than the circuit cards coming into fashion which better lend themselves to local troubleshooting and replacement.
Most civilians are unaware of CANNIBALIZATION which is what keeps fleets of all kinds from aircraft to civilian trucking fleets going. Lose the local ability to cann equipment parts and you lose the ability to return systems to combat in hours instead of days. You also lose Battle Damage Repair capability (I was ABDR qualified) too. For example when a volume pot failed on TDY I was able to bypass it with a jumper and reinstall the box (pilot controlled it with the master volume) and save many sorties at next to no cost, but that's because we could get local permission to do such things.
I'd like to see other AF/Army/Navy/USMC/Coasties respond with their stories because I know how common those are.
This kind of thing a non-trivial factor in the chronic high costs and low readiness rates of the various F-35 fleets. Many gruesome examples in the below primer by Dan Grazier (would be great to interview on the subject, btw) from the Project for Government Oversight (POGO),
I left USN submarine service in early 90s. I never saw this issue at that time in that community. Suspect that even now, this porblem (contractor serviced equipment) is NOT the case in submarines. They are built to operate far from base for months, with ZERO resupply and even ZERO (outbound) communications.
Ah, the optimism of youth. Do you really think anybody in the military does NOT want this problem fixed? But the problem starts with procurement - which is shorthand for "people who sit in offices in W.D.C. and will never have to deal with the problem they are creating." Also, never overlook the problems of L-O-B-B-Y-I-S-T-S. The military buys what the lobbyists influence it to buy. That is a deeper problem than some soldier who is frustrated because his rocket won't fly or his artillery can't hit the target. Those problems are just "collateral damage." A life here, another one there. In the military, people die. In W.D.C. nobody has ever died from being influenced by a lobbyist.
"They paid field service reps to stay in Afghsnistan all making way way more than we made. They all made 6 figures. I've seen the billing statements."
I don't doubt they'd have to pay 6 figures to get a civilian to stay in a war zone. However you shouldn't assume that the number on the billing statement is the number the actual contractor is getting paid.
Ancient AF maintainer here (1981-2007) who feels your pain. The original idea for the USAF reducing base repair capabilities was based on the insane idea we'd have enough spare parts plus the utter desperation to reduce manning. (BTW OBOGS originated with the desire to get rid of base LOX plant manning, I read that in F-20 Tigershark promo literature at the time. F-20 went nowhere but OBOGS was infamous for years before getting sorted.) Fixing ground vehicles is EASY given the tools, tech orders and effing permission to do so. (I've done that and more as a civilian) and local mobile machine shops permit making/repairing parts.
Abandoning local repair capability is a terrible idea from the POV of sortie generation so the Air Force has Gold Flag https://www.military.com/daily-news/2013/04/01/geek-squad-saves-air-force-millions.html but that doesn't go nearly far enough. I worked back shop as a Comm/Nav troop and local repair kept USAFE running in West Germany on systems which broke far more often (hooray for tubes and tuning motors) than the circuit cards coming into fashion which better lend themselves to local troubleshooting and replacement.
Most civilians are unaware of CANNIBALIZATION which is what keeps fleets of all kinds from aircraft to civilian trucking fleets going. Lose the local ability to cann equipment parts and you lose the ability to return systems to combat in hours instead of days. You also lose Battle Damage Repair capability (I was ABDR qualified) too. For example when a volume pot failed on TDY I was able to bypass it with a jumper and reinstall the box (pilot controlled it with the master volume) and save many sorties at next to no cost, but that's because we could get local permission to do such things.
I'd like to see other AF/Army/Navy/USMC/Coasties respond with their stories because I know how common those are.
This kind of thing a non-trivial factor in the chronic high costs and low readiness rates of the various F-35 fleets. Many gruesome examples in the below primer by Dan Grazier (would be great to interview on the subject, btw) from the Project for Government Oversight (POGO),
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/06/the-f-35-and-the-captured-state/?fbclid=IwAR1iWUQKCAjdQwNDu4MhHgBnZyH4W8d9QZlIEB5-m_YMvxWC3Wa7lIkvz_0
I left USN submarine service in early 90s. I never saw this issue at that time in that community. Suspect that even now, this porblem (contractor serviced equipment) is NOT the case in submarines. They are built to operate far from base for months, with ZERO resupply and even ZERO (outbound) communications.
Ah, the optimism of youth. Do you really think anybody in the military does NOT want this problem fixed? But the problem starts with procurement - which is shorthand for "people who sit in offices in W.D.C. and will never have to deal with the problem they are creating." Also, never overlook the problems of L-O-B-B-Y-I-S-T-S. The military buys what the lobbyists influence it to buy. That is a deeper problem than some soldier who is frustrated because his rocket won't fly or his artillery can't hit the target. Those problems are just "collateral damage." A life here, another one there. In the military, people die. In W.D.C. nobody has ever died from being influenced by a lobbyist.
"They paid field service reps to stay in Afghsnistan all making way way more than we made. They all made 6 figures. I've seen the billing statements."
I don't doubt they'd have to pay 6 figures to get a civilian to stay in a war zone. However you shouldn't assume that the number on the billing statement is the number the actual contractor is getting paid.