Organic Industrial Base –
For the Academic Year 2023/2024, the Organic Industrial Base (OIB) Industry Study Seminar at the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy considered if U.S. maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) capacities can sustain military forces to deter war and, if necessary, to win in the Indo-Pacific. As the U.S. shifts its strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific in response to increasing great power competition with the PRC, and as the years 2027 through 2030 appear critical, this seminar recognized that the current OIB may lack the capability and capacity to meet the challenge. This seminar proposes that the U.S. OIB reform its structure, conduct, performance, and policy to build a ‘‘Responsive OIB,’’ one that can leverage MRO services abroad and strengthen OIB enterprises at home.
This thesis requires an analytic picture of the current OIB. To accomplish this, the seminar applied the structure, conduct, performance, and policy (SCP-P) framework. This research then applied the Five Readiness Enablers framework, which highlights OIB governance, infrastructure, materiel, finance, and human capital to identify vulnerabilities and risks that may harm readiness to accomplish core competencies. As will be presented, the seminar’s main findings are that the OIB workforce is aging and decreasing, its infrastructure is deteriorating and obsolete, global supply chains remain a strategic and fragile challenge, and current policies do not include adequate use of foreign MRO facilities. Even if the seminar assesses the OIB as effective in peacetime, overall, there is a growing shortfall in possible efficiencies considering potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific in the timeframe 2027-2030.
Through site visits, subject matter expert engagements, research, and analysis, this seminar determined that the U.S.’s strong network of allies and partners (A&P) can be pivotal in deterring and defeating adversaries. A&P also provide opportunities to offset identified readiness
weaknesses in the current OIB. In this context, the seminar examined the Regional Sustainment Framework (RSF), championed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and led by the Honorable Christopher Lowman, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment (ASD(S)). The RSF offers opportunities for the U.S. to work with A&P to forward project MRO services closer to contested theaters, alleviating supply chain risks, bolstering allied interoperability, supplementing U.S. industrial human capital shortfalls, reducing transportation time and costs, and enhancing the U.S. overall sustainment strategies.
To ensure the OIB is ready for future challenges of the Indo-Pacific, this seminar recommends that the Department of Defense (DoD) issue guidance to the military services with an eye toward reforms to OIB locations. These reforms may specify requirements to support the RSF and implement a plan for each service integrating A&P MRO services in the relevant regions, starting with the Indo-Pacific. A&P MRO services are meant to be used in addition to current OIB resources; they do not necessarily replace the use of existing facilities in CONUS. Furthermore, complementing the inherent benefits of RSF, the OIB should address human capital concerns by developing a civilian maintenance reserve force and an OIB artisan fellowship program. Moreover, the RSF can identify areas for infrastructure improvement by pairing MRO stress tests with already-scheduled combatant command and major command (MAJCOM) exercises, by better distributing capital fund investment governance, and by institutionalizing cyber resiliency as a critical OIB function. Finally, this seminar recommends policies and governance reform to integrate multi-national MRO considerations into future weapon systems acquisitions and incentivize regional alignment as a part of future weapon system MRO life cycle sustainment plans.
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