Situation report: NAVAIR

Wings of Gold, Summer 1999 by Lockard, John

While new aircraft with state of the art technology are always exciting, the work done behind the scenes at our Naval Aviation depots is what keeps our warfighters in business. Some of the most visible programs are completing impressive milestones -- the F/A-18E/F has entered OPEVAL, and the V-22 completed sea trials and will enter OPEVAL in the fall. One of our most successful programs and a workhorse of recent operations in Yugoslavia, the Tomahawk cruise missile, recently proved ready for the next millennium with a successful Y2K test. The Joint Direct Attack Munitions and the Joint Standoff Weapon have passed initial combat trials with flying colors.

With that in mind, it's easy to become focused on the part of NAVAIR's mission that concentrates on developing, acquiring and supporting naval aeronautical technology -- the systems that will enable dominance from the sea well into the 21 st century. As exciting as the Osprey, Super Hornet and the JSF programs are, daily readiness depends on platforms such as the P-3, S-3, E-2, H-60, F14, EA-6B and FlA-18. For some of these, operating at peak performance, has become increasingly more challenging. This is an absolutely critical task that is being performed daily at our depots.

In 1998, the NADEPs at Cherry Point, NC, North Island, CA, and Jacksonville, FL, as well as the Naval Air Pacific Repair Activity in Atsugi, Japan, repaired approximately 114,000 components for the Naval Inventory Control Point in Philadelphia and performed maintenance on more than 400 aircraft and 1,000 engines for our Type Commanders.

The depots recognize the critical nature of reducing cycle times and costs in order to keep the force as ready and capable as our Nation demands. They are the vanguard of NAVAIR's Business Process Reengineering efforts and have been since the early 1990s when collectively, they made a commitment to adopt modern business practices. The depots understand they must give their customers a bigger return on their maintenance dollars. All are tenaciously pursuing improvements to ensure fleet customers receive high-quality, responsive and cost-effective services.

Nowhere is this commitment to reducing bottom line costs to our customers more evident than at NADEP Jacksonville where some of our most versatile and critical systems are maintained. The Jacksonville TEAM keeps the F-14, EA-6B, P-3 and EP-3 systems ready to meet any operational mission.

In FY98, Jacksonville returned 27 P-3s, 14 F-14s and 10 EA-6Bs to the Fleet. The depot also performed more than a million hours of component work and systems support more efficiently and quickly than ever before.

As an initial operating site for commercial off-the-shelf software Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP-II), NADEP Jacksonville is the first of 18 DOD depots to go "live" with the full system as a model for other sites. Already, the prototyping of an MRP-I I tool has yielded a 20 percent improvement in on-schedule completion of F-14 AWG-9 repair work.

At NADEP Cherry Point, the NAVAIR TEAM maintains five aircraft types: the H-46, AV-8B, H-53, QF-4S and F-4E (for Egypt), as well as five different engines and a multitude of components and support services. In its own reengineering effort, NADEP Cherry Point achieved significant process improvements such as reducing the average turn-around time for component repair from 175 to 81 days. These successes no doubt were critical in NADEP activities receiving International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 9000 certification by the Quality Management Institute.

Recently, the TEAM at NADEP North Island received both the California Council for Quality and Service's U.S. Senate Productivity Award and the San Diego Business Journal's Total Excellence in Management Award for its 80-year tradition of excellence in maintaining systems like the F/A-18, E-2, C-2, S-3, LM-2500 engine and various components. This year alone, NADEP North Island is scheduled to perform maintenance on more than 120 aircraft, 21 LM-2500s and 1.8 million man-hours of component repair.

Perhaps our least-known force multiplier is the Naval Air Pacific Repair Activity headquartered in Atsugi, Japan. With forward-deployed detachments in Atsugi, Okinawa, and Naples, NAPRA offers depot-level services ranging from heavy structural repair to complete rework. Ordinarily, aircraft assigned to forward units in Japan and elsewhere would have to return to depots in the continental United States (CONUS) for these services -- often requiring costly transportation of aircraft and lengthy down times.

Just last year, NAPRA reworked 26 aircraft at contractor facilities in Italy, Japan, Singapore, and Korea. Additionally, the NAPRA TEAM repaired 1,980 components and completed 462 in-service repairs on more than 20 different types of aircraft located throughout the world, both ashore and aboard ship -- components and aircraft that otherwise would have been required to make the long and costly trip to a CONUS depot.

This year, the Naval Inventory Control Point in Philadelphia will continue its support of Naval Aviation readiness through effective inventory reduction and judicious acquisition programs. We are proud they are part of our TEAM in support of Naval Aviation. In 1998, NAVICP invested more than $98 million to increase weapon reliability that resulted in funding 17 proposals supporting 11 weapon platforms. The success of these efforts will result in even more parts getting to the Fleet and fewer backorders.