The US Air Force (USAF) has evolved a policy for theacquisition of fighter jet engines (FJE). In the 1970s and1980s that policy placed a premium on FJEperformance primarily measured by the metric:thrust/engine weight. In the 1990s, the USAF policychanged from an emphasis on performance to reducedlife-cycle cost with a premium on sustainment. Thispaper reports the results of a study of how the USAFand Corporation Alpha (Alpha) have adapted theirprocesses, practices, and policies to design, develop,manufacture, test, and sustain a family of FJEs. Eachmember of the family of FJEs is sequentially linkedrelative to insertion of technology designed to reducesustainment costs.In addition to the technology linkages, thedevelopment of the family of FJEs selected for this casestudy is also tracked relative to US Department ofDefense and USAF policy and industry design, build,and maintain processes, methods, and tools. This paperdiscerns the complex, highly integrated manner thatcharacterizes the interaction between (1) technology, (2)policy, and (3) manufacturing and sustainment tools toproduce a family of FJEs with improving sustainmentqualities and non-degrading performance.The metric Unscheduled Engine Removals (UER) per1000 Effective Flight Hours (UER/1000EFH) is used tocompare the sustainability of each member of theselected family of FJEs. Our results are based on dataobtained through a series of field interviews of USAFand civilian government personnel and Alpha personnel.The US government extensive database containingUER information is the primary source of MRO trendsfor the FJEs of this study. Our analysis shows that thefamily of FJEs sustainability, as measured by the UERmetric, has not improved beyond 6 10 EFH for eachsucceeding generation in the selected FJE family. Weconjecture that upstream policy, technology insertion,and manufacturing and sustainment tools are not theprimary determinants of sustainability; the manner inwhich the FJE is used has the greatest influence onsustainability of FJEs.
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