U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) personnel serve and protect the country by utilizing weapon systems to complete military missions. Transaction-Based Logistics is the traditional DOD product support strategy. In 2003, DOD leadership issued Directive 5000.01, making Performance-Based Logistics the preferred product support strategy. The general problem is that DOD leadership is struggling with a death spiral. The specific problem is the effectiveness of Performance-Based Logistics has not been compared to the effectiveness of Transaction-Based Logistics with regard to optimizing total system availability while minimizing cost and logistics footprint. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to determine whether Performance-Based Logistics is more effective than Transaction-Based Logistics. The participants consist of DOD weapon system programs. Military personnel would benefit from resolution of this problem because their leadership would be able to optimize the availability of weapon systems needed to complete the military missions. A t-test for independent samples was utilized to conduct hypothesis testing. The results indicated there is no statistically significant difference in total system availability among weapon system programs that include Performance-Based Logistics (M = 0.71, SD = 0.15) and weapon system programs that include Transaction-Based Logistics (M = 0.65, SD = 0.14), t(20) = 0.89, p = 0.39. Furthermore, the results indicated there was no statistically significant difference in cost among weapon system programs that include Performance-Based Logistics (M = 20223.55, SD = 23963.25) and weapon system programs that include Transaction-Based Logistics ( M = 17943.27, SD = 16785.31), t(20) = 0.26, p = 0.8. A delimitation was implemented to eliminate hypothesis testing on logistics footprint because valid data was not collectable. Based on the results of this study, there is no statistically significant difference between Performance-Based Logistics and Transaction-Based Logistics. Therefore, recommendations for practical application include changing DOD Directive 5000.01 so there is no specific preference toward either Performance-Based Logistics or Transaction-Based Logistics and increasing the implementation of Performance-Based Logistics. Recommendations for future research include examining logistics footprint, analyzing product support strategy at the DOD department level, including other types of product support strategy, and exploring the death spiral.
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