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Ignoring past lessons

The decision to align aircraft maintenance units into fighter, bomber and combat search-and-rescue flying squadrons by November ignores lessons of history and experience.

The Air Force has operated under five wing organizational structures for operations and maintenance/logistics.

Initially, from 1947 to 1962, wings included an operations and logistics group, with sortie-generating maintainers assigned to flying squadrons and all others assigned to logistics groups. The results: low aircraft mission-capable rates, low flying time for aircrews, problems managing shared wing resources and no single overseer to manage aircraft fleet health.

From 1962 to 1978, wing organization centralized around “job control.” Maintainers were assigned to logistics or maintenance groups, but were organized by functions, with any maintainer working any aircraft and any pilot flying any aircraft. Initially a success, this structure eventually resulted in low mission-capable and flying-utilization rates.

This all changed in 1978, when Gen. Bill Creech took over Tactical Air Command. With a deep belief in the operations/maintenance team concept, and an understanding that people take better care of things that “belong to them,” wing organization returned to what were essentially operations and maintenance groups.

Sortie-generating maintainers were divided into aircraft maintenance units and were co-located with and dedicated to supporting a particular flying squadron. Backshop maintainers were assigned to functional squadrons within the maintenance organization, but, where possible, the dedicated team concept was extended within these units. This resulted in about 90 percent of the deploying aviation package working together on a daily basis.

The success was staggering: Mission-capable and utilization rates skyrocketed, aircrew proficiency greatly improved, annual flying programs were routinely completed “early,” and a single maintenance group commander could oversee shared wing resources, with responsibility and authority to focus on fleet health. The triumphant prosecution of Desert Shield/Storm under this structure showed its true worth.

Despite this success, a decision was made in February 1991 to adopt a new wing structure, the “objective wing,” which mimicked the operations and logistics groups of 1947. Predictably, mission-capable rates and aircraft fleet health deteriorated, effective aircrew training became more difficult and lack of standardization became the norm.

In 2002, the new “combat wing organization” re-established maintenance groups and placed all maintainers within them. With a single group commander invested with the responsibility to oversee fleet health, manage shared wing resources, standardize maintenance practices and ensure the ops/maintenance team concept was retained, the results have been unsurprising. Mission-capable, utilization, aircrew proficiency and aircraft availability rates have all greatly improved.

So we’re now going to return to an organizational structure that has twice shown it is inferior to the current structure?

The fatal oversight in Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael Moseley’s directive is the notion that somehow sortie-generating maintainers are not in the “operations” chain of command, but that maintenance squadrons and groups all report to the wing commander.

Flying and fixing are complicated things. Having a flying squadron commander responsible for both flying and maintaining creates a span of control that’s too large.

At a time when our Air Force is waging two wars, has the oldest average aircraft inventory in its history, and has an organizational structure that is tailor-made for operating in an expeditionary environment, it makes little sense to turn back to a structure proven to be less productive.

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The writer, a retired Air Force colonel and former maintenance group commander, is an adjunct distance learning faculty member with Air Command and Staff College. His e-mail address is kenlynn001@aol.com.

TALK BACK: Just winging it, or justified change?