A Lofty Vintage

Buckle up. You’re about to take a journey into the Defense Logistics Agency Aviation’s quest to ensure the Air Force meets its goal of flying the B-1B and the B-52 bombers until at least 2040 and sustaining the Navy’s MH-53 helicopter through fiscal 2030.

The quest falls in line with DLA Director Air Force Lt. Gen. Andy Busch’s strategic plan and the vision of “delivering the right solution on time, every time.” 

The B-52 Stratofortress is the elder statesman, a few years into its sixth decade of operational service, and almost as old as the Air Force itself. It’s seen action in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War and in Syria. 

Fast forward roughly 30 years. The B-1B joined the Air Force’s arsenal in 1985, the same year Ronald Reagan was sworn in for a second term, Windows 1.0 was released and the likes of Tears for Fears and Chaka Khan blared over the airwaves. “Back to the Future,” “The Color Purple” and “St. Elmo’s Fire” ruled the big screen.

A year later, on the big screen Maverick and Goose were battling Iceman and Slider for the coveted Top Gun trophy. While the movie made being a fighter jockey seem like the ultimate in coolness, many Navy aviators signed up to fly the MH-53, the Navy’s newest minesweeper.

Although these weapons systems aren’t as romanticized as their supersonic counterparts, they are just as vital to the nation’s warfighters.

Immediate Nuclear and Conventional Global Strike Capability

The sheer magnitude of an Air Force B-52 bomber is breathtaking. The Stratofortress is more than 40 feet high, has a wingspan of 185 feet and is 160 feet long. That’s 25 feet wider and a little less than half the length of a regulation football field.

From 1952 to 1962, Boeing built 744 B-52s in eight different models. Seventy-six B-52H models remain in the Air Force arsenal. They’re assigned to the Air Force Global Strike Command.

DLA Aviation manages 60,439 national stock numbers in the B-52 supply chain, of which 15,807 are unique to the weapon system. An example of a unique NSN is trunnion mounts, a major structural part of the B-52 landing gear.

Alonzo Miller is the B-52 weapon system program manager for DLA Aviation’s Customer Operations Directorate.

“The B-52 presents constant challenges for parts and material availability because it is an older weapon system facing significant challenges driven by diminishing manufacturing sources,” Miller said.

He said DLA Aviation collaborates with the B-52 System Program Office and engineering activities at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, Air Force Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, as well as industrial partners to mitigate sustainment challenges.

Boeing, the bomber’s original equipment manufacturer, still has much of the data rights and original drawings. But because there is less demand for B-52-unique NSNs, it’s a challenge to find vendors or sub-vendors willing to make so few of a specific part, given that the cost of producing a low-volume part is significantly higher. This is known as diminishing manufacturer support.

Miller said in the face of DMS, needed parts can sometimes be acquired from decommissioned B-52s sitting outdoors at the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. Hundreds of surplus B-52s were dismantled at the facility in the 1990s. If needed parts are unavailable via DLA sourcing, DLA will try to source them from AMARG, Miller said.

Additive manufacturing, more commonly known as industrial three-dimensional printing, is also being explored as an additional solution to DMS issues. When Busch established the DLA Nuclear Enterprise Support Office under DLA Logistics Operations, he positioned the agency to be fully responsive to the needs of the Air Force and Navy nuclear communities. Miller said the general’s actions also placed the B-52 on the high priority list.

“He reinvigorated a sense of urgency across the DLA enterprise in trying to significantly improve the B-52 supply chain, to help ensure the B-52’s support of the U.S. nuclear triad,” Miller said, referring to nuclear missiles based on submarines, ground bases and heavy bombers.

Miller said Busch also put a moratorium in place that NSNs coded to nuclear-capable weapons systems will not be disposed of.

DLA Aviation is using all available resources and options to ensure its leg of the B-52 supply chain keeps her flying, and the B-52 remains a bedrock for the U.S. nuclear triad.

Air Force engineering studies suggest that extensive system and structural upgrades already done and planned for the B-52 will extend its lifespan beyond 2040.

Golden Oldie

The B-1B, nicknamed the Bone, is the Air Force’s long-range, multi-role, heavy bomber. It was originally designed and built by now-defunct Rockwell International in the mid-1970s as a replacement for the B-52. Four prototypes were developed before the program was canceled but later brought back to life in the early ’80s. Boeing now owns the rights to the bomber. 

According to the Air Force, there are 62 B-1Bs in its arsenal, assigned to the 7th Operation Group at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, and the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota. The B1-B has been used as a conventional and nuclear strike option, flying more than 12,000 sorties since 2001 in Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Tim Condon is the B-1 weapon system program manager for the Air Force Customer Facing Division in DLA Aviation’s Customer Operations Directorate. 

“I’ve learned a lot about our customer base and how they want to be supported, and building partnerships with not only our customers, but internal to DLA. It’s been very rewarding,” he said.

Condon said DLA Aviation manages roughly 64,000 NSNs for the B-1B airframe.

He said not all of them are active. At any given time, there are active and inactive groupings, depending on what’s going on with the aircraft, and then there’s a group that probably haven’t been active in some time and may not be replaced throughout the aircraft’s lifecycle.

“Then there’s a group that we haven’t replaced, but when we see modifications or maintenance projects where we haven’t touched that part of the aircraft and we’re going to do a replacement, then we start planning for that and they become active items again,” Condon said.

He said roughly 12 B-1Bs go through planned depot maintenance at Tinker Air Force Base each year, with four-to-six being out of service at any given time.

The bomber is concurrently going through a major modification called Integrated Battle Station, which essentially turns the B-1B into a new aircraft, adding full-color displays, moving maps and a new diagnostics system. Air Force personnel are making the upgrades at a Boeing facility near Tinker.

DLA Aviation planned and procur-ed 44 airframe parts to support IBS. They range from cannon plugs to clamps and backshells.

Condon said 11 B-1Bs are scheduled for IBS modification this year with seven currently in depot maintenance. IBS modification for all of the bombers will be completed by May 2018.

DLA Aviation is also in the planning and procuring phase for more than 500 parts to be used for a wing sweep modification beginning in October 2018.

“We’ve done something unique with this one. We split the items in terms of the way we are going to support them. We have a traditional grouping that we are supporting through our normal processes and then we have a group of more complex parts that have tooling, material and engineering issues and we have decided to use Captains of Industry long-term contracts to support them,” Condon said.

One Team, One Fight, Different Mission

While the B-52 and B-1B bombers soar high above, in military jargon, “dropping warheads on foreheads,” the Navy’s MH-53E Sea Dragon is tasked with keeping the world’s sea lanes free of dangers from below.

“The mission of the aircraft is to protect our national security and, foremost, to keep the seas safe for our warfighters,” said Eric Monroe, weapons systems program manager for the H-53 type/model/series. 

Monroe said DLA Aviation’s Navy Customer Facing Division in the Customer Operations Directorate in Richmond, Virginia, is part of the team helping keep the MH-53 helicopter mission-ready.

The MH-53 team also includes Marine Capt. Sean Crilley, deputy weapons system program manager, and Linda Morgan, a logistics analyst. They manage the consumable items for 30 MH-53E and 147 CH-53E aircraft in support of the Naval aviation enterprise.

The Navy’s MH-53E model is similar to the Marine’s CH-53E helicopter but comes with additional capabilities for airborne mine countermeasures, tow sled, minesweeping, vertical on-board delivery and special missions that require a longer range and more precise navigation.

At any given time, a number of these aircraft may be in need of repair or replacement, because of the number of flight hours, recall, excess wear or broken parts, Monroe said.

However, “the overall goal is to get the fleet up to 100 percent mission-ready,” Monroe said.

He said the top three sustainment issues the team is working on for the MH-53 are the main gearbox, main rotor head and the rotary blades’ sleeves and spindles.

“We have sustained this aircraft’s main rotor head longer than its scheduled life of approximately 1,400 flight hours. Some have been given up to four flight extensions, and some of the parts have never been replaced until now,” Crilley said.

The WSPM team is staying ahead of procurement of consumable items by identifying inhibitors. The team participates in weekly bill of materials reviews and team briefings. They also participate in the triannual critical parts review with their military partners and in the biannual Integrated Logistics Support Management Team reviews, which includes Naval Supply Systems Command; Naval Station Norfolk; Fleet Readiness Center East, Cherry Point, North Carolina; Marine Aviation Logistics Squadrons 16, 24, 29, 36; engineers; and industry partners. 

At Norfolk Fleet Type Command, each commander of the type/model/series regulates which aircraft have priority for repairs, based on deployment status. TYCOM Norfolk also regulates flight hours and uses that data, along with the overall aircraft condition, to determine the maintenance schedule for each aircraft.

TYCOM also determines which parts warrant extension. Monroe said that flight time may indicate the part is up for maintenance, but depending on the condition and number of flight hours, the use of the part can be extended.

Monroe said the team is working with FRC East on organically manufacturing the MH-53E sleeve nut, a part on the main rotor head and on the sleeves and spindles mechanism. There are eight sleeve nuts on an aircraft: one on each of the seven sleeves and spindles and one for the main rotor head. It’s about the size of a steering wheel, about 3 inches thick and made of a combination of metals.

“The plating process is the challenge,” Monroe said. “The sleeve nut is made up of three different types of metals, and it requires specific metal-plating techniques. After the nut is made, it is sent to another manufacturer to get one side of the nut plated with a different metal. This situation causes backorders and is one of the areas we are working,” Monroe said.

Crilley said the MH-53 community is taking a hard look at the Marine Corps Reset strategy, which applies an integrated maintenance process to groom, sustain and reconstitute Marine aircraft involved in overseas contingency operations, while increasing cooperation among type/model/series program managers, team leads and team members in support of the MH-53’s future Naval operational commitments. 

This strategy focuses on maximiz-ing flight line availability and reliability of aircraft, reducing depot backlog and out-of-reporting status time, enhancing the visibility of aircraft material condition, and reducing the burden on organization-level Marines, he added.

“Our goal for the H-53E is to provide support and operational commitments to the warfighters and to provide logistical sustainment of the platform through fiscal 2030.”

“We are working for our warfighters and knocking down barriers daily to leave no stone unturned to get them what they need,” Monroe said.

For the last few years, a major focus of the Department of Defense has been to do more with less, in order to save taxpayer dollars.

No one is putting this into practice more than the pilots and crews of the Air Force’s B-52 and B-1B bombers and the Navy’s MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopter — along with the people at DLA Aviation who support them.

Bonnie Koenig contributed to this story.

Editor’s note: See the first installment of this series from DLA Aviation in the July-August 2016 issue of Loglines.