The Naval Aviation FMS Logistics Converence

DISAM Journal, Summer, 2000 by Joanne B. Hawkins

In July 2000 the Naval Air Systems. Command hosted a Foreign Military Sales Logistics Process Improvement Team (LPIT) Conference. The theme of the conference was on supporting foreign military sales (FMS) aviation systems through partnerships. The emphasis was on partnership building between the U.S. Navy, U.S. industry, and FMS customers, and inter-service partnerships within the DoD to find solutions to the problems of logistics support of aging or obsolete equipment. RADM Wall B. Massenburg, Assistant Director of Logistics, NAVAIR 3.0, opened the conference by encouraging the participants to tackle issues that are important to both U.S. government and FMS customers. He emphasized that today the U.S. military needs the help of international customers and U.S. industry to be able to work together in partnerships to find solutions to the obsolescent issues. The concentration needs to be on the integrated logistics support (ILS) elements, such as support equipment, test program sets, maintenance, training, sp are parts, computer resources and technical data.

Security assistance foreign representatives (SAFRs) from fifteen FMS customer countries attended the conference, along with industry representatives of fourteen U.S. companies. Also represented were the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the State Department, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), and numerous Navy activities.

Last year's LPIT conference committed to working on several issues. These issues included better communication between FMS customers, industry and the U.S. Navy, a mechanism for FMS customer submission of quality deficiency reports (QDR), and Navy participation in the worldwide warehouse redistribution system (WWRS). The Navy has joined the WWRS, with Canada and Israel being the first FMS customers to submit letters of requests for WWRS cases, and the Naval inventory control point (NAVICP) has established an on-line QDR submission and response process through its FMS eBusiness Suite. The consensus during this year's conference was that communication between all parties has improved within the last year by the Navy's implementation of secure web sites, such as NAVICP's FMS eBusiness Suite, the FMS initial support tracker (FIST), and the program management database (PMD). These can be accessed by FMS customers and industry personnel to obtain Navy logistics data and updates about ongoing initiatives toward cus tomer improvement.

Of the numerous issues discussed at this year's LPIT conference, one that is of great concern is the bureaucratic process of third-country transfers and export controls. Current legislation requires U.S. government approval of all third party transfers of any item, regardless of type, age, value, duration, or reason, on a case-by-case basis. This requirement has drastically slowed down the process of end-item retransfers, and it has thwarted the exchange between FMS customers of spares and support equipment for the F/A-18, and other items which could be critical for the support of aging or obsolete FMS equipment. Doug Johnson of the State Department's Regional Security and Arms Transfer Policy office of the Bureau of Political Military Affairs (PM/RSAT) explained that FMS customers can get pre-approval to transfer material to other FMS customer countries by having their Minister of Foreign Affairs sign a blanket end-user agreement which does not have to be completed again for each retransfer. The State Depar tment has accepted such blanket assurances from Belgium, Denmark, Latvia, Albania, Israel, Malaysia and Chile, and has draft blanket assurances pending with Norway, the Czech Republic, Paraguay and Canada.

Industry representatives proposed that the State Department consider licensing an entire support package in conjunction with licensing the export of the end item. This would speed up the LOA development process of follow-on support cases and allow an easier exchange of components between purchasers of that end item.

Another problem identified at the LPIT conference was the restricted access to DoD web sites by international customers and industry representatives. Various local, Navy, or DoD policies have precluded the international customers from accessing publications, logistics data, financial information, and day-to-day operations resources via the Internet. Access policies vary within and between military services. Limited access is exacerbated by the 128-bit encryption requirements for CONUS browsers which are not compatible with lesser encryption standards overseas. Furthermore, the lack of a single conduit for information for international and industry customers requires a user to maintain an extensive list of frequently changing universal resource locators (URLs), numerous accounts and passwords. The ideal solution is a one-stop web portal or conduit which allows worldwide access around the clock, allowing for data segregation based on user needs. This single entry point should allow access to publications, engin eering and technical data, logistics and financial data, and should include, but would not be limited to, e-mail and a search capability. The lack of a consistent DoD policy on web site access, data management, and access pricing is an area of great concern to international, industry and DoD customers overall.