FORT BELVOIR, Va. –
Today the Defense Logistics Agency provides logistics services, commodities and repair parts to the Defense Department and other entities. Logistics services and commodities were in the agency’s original charter, repair parts weren’t. Although DLA accepted responsibility for some items used to return equipment to a functional state after forming as the Defense Supply Agency in 1961, it rejected others and even returned some to the services. When the agency began to amass repair parts through consumable item transfers, however, it devised new methods for managing them. Today, three agency supply chains across two major subordinate commands use these methods to save the services time and money.
The need to provide military forces with repair parts go back to the Revolutionary War. When a wagon in George Washington’s army lost a wheel, the driver attached a spare or a wheelwright fashioned a new one. Similarly, sailors replaced rigging and masts at sea. Even so, replacements were infrequent enough that neither service identified repair parts as requiring special management during its years as an independent department. In World War II, for example, the Army’s five-class supply system covered food and water, items issued to individuals and units, petroleum products, items without allowances, and ammunition.
Little changed when Congress created DOD in 1947. DOD adopted the Army’s classification system but used it more for marking containers than determining requirements or planning operations. DOD structured its single managers using organizational approaches to create commands operated by individual services to procure items for the entire department. The first assignments were based on broad commodity definitions. Later assignments shifted to using federal supply classes. Only in the last three assignments did the department group items based on their relation to complex systems. DSA assumed single manager responsibilities for construction and automotive supplies, and it established an electronics supply center. Most items procured by the automotive and electronics centers were repair parts.
| Class of Supply |
Items Covered |
DLA Responsibility |
| I |
Subsistence |
DLA provides both food and water |
| II |
Clothing, electronics, individual weapons |
DLA provides clothing and textiles |
| III |
Petroleum, oil and lubricants |
DLA provides bulk and packaged |
| IV |
Barrier and construction materiel |
DLA provides |
| V |
Ammunition |
DLA does not provide |
| VI |
Personal demand items (e.g., hygiene products) |
DLA does not provide |
| VII |
Major-end items (e.g., trucks, ships, planes) |
DLA does not provide |
| VIII |
Medical materiel (e.g., blood, drugs, x-ray machines) |
DLA provides |
| IX |
Repair parts |
DLA provides |
| X |
Non-military items |
DLA does not provide |
With DSA already providing cataloging, reutilization and other logistics services, it appeared to be one its way to its present-day mission. However, DSA’s focus on repair parts lost momentum almost immediately. DOD had never established a single manager for aviation parts. Unlike trucks and radios, aircraft flown by the Air Force, Navy and Army had few common items. Nonetheless, the Government Accountability Office (then called the General Accounting Office), whose analysts thought an aviation parts supply center would standardize systems, and Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan, who thought aircraft spares had grown too expensive, demanded something be done.
Asked by the assistant secretary of defense for installations and logistics if an aviation-focused supply center was viable, DSA examined 150,000 aeronautical parts in 11 federal supply classes. When results indicated that integration wasn’t economical, a board led by the secretary asked the agency to expand the study. Adding 17 FSCs, DSA confirmed that parts for aircraft engines, engine components, instruments and propellors were “technical in nature,” “subject to numerous engineering changes,” dependent on “reparable programming and maintenance scheduling,” and “not susceptible to stock fund budgeting.” The only exception was FSC 2620, aircraft tires and tubes, which the assistant secretary consolidated under agency management.
By the time DSA had completed its second aviation study in 1964, it had stopped managing most automotive parts. The agency closed the Defense Automotive Supply Center a year and a half after taking over the Detroit activity, transferring wholesale responsibilities to the Defense Construction Supply Center in Columbus, Ohio, and retail ones to the newly established Army Materiel Command. While every service used trucks, most orders came from the Army.
With DASC’s closure, the Defense Electronics Supply Center was DSA’s only activity providing parts. DESC parts supported communication systems. Since the military focused more intently on weapons systems, DSA established a weapons systems support program. Starting May 7, 1964, it covered 17 weapons and registered consistent stock availability above 95%.
While DSA’s weapons systems support program increased availability, it didn’t decrease costs or expand the defense industrial base. In 1967, Paul R. Ignatius, then assistant secretary of defense for installations and logistics, asked the agency to review aeronautical parts a third time. The GAO had just reported that 69% of repair part purchases for aircraft were uncompetitive, and Ignatius thought DSA could convert existing management efforts into a consolidated supply center. The agency pushed back, stating that it was already managing the aviation parts that could be integrated.
Ignatius didn’t stop there. He also expanded DOD’s supply system from five to 10 classes. While still used for marking containers, classes were now also used for determining how many days of supply each unit needed for an operation. Other benefits included storage segregation and cataloging accuracy.
Repair parts received special attention because equipment was growing increasingly complex. Systems had components, some that were consumable and replaceable, others that required maintenance rather than replacement. In 1967, DSA provided few of the former and even fewer of the latter.
Change came as a consequence of DOD directing the agency to examine all military consumables. Assignments from the assistant secretary of defense for installations and logistics increased the agency’s share of these items from 37% in 1962 to 56% two decades later. Because many consumables were repair parts, the newly renamed Defense Logistics Agency sought to involve itself in equipment design. One project was the Army’s new tank. DLA drew on its good standing with service leaders to become involved in the M1 Abrams’s design long enough before production to influence parts selection. Another project was the F-16 Fighting Falcon. DLA entered the design phase a year and a half before production and was providing parts for the plane upon its fielding in the late 1970s. The agency that had thrice argued against an aviation supply center was now providing aviation repair parts.
DLA didn’t participate in system designs in the 1980s and 1990s despite considerable consumable item growth. In 1982, after directing the services to transfer management responsibilities for 206,000 consumables to the agency, DOD centered the agency on established systems and the services on new ones. With Defense Management Review Decision 926 in 1989, nearly all consumables not provided by original equipment manufacturers fell under agency management.
A consumable item focus made DLA’s weapons system support program increasingly popular. By February 1984, the Army had 216 systems in the program. By December 1990, it had 417. Other services were using the program as well, with Navy entrants numbering 205, Air Force 214 and Marine Corps 248. Overall, DLA provided 1,028,787 items for 1,084 systems, which represented 52% of everything it managed.
To adapt to its expanded role, DLA focused field activities in Richmond and Columbus on weapons systems and its field activity in Philadelphia on troop and general support. Although a DLA decision, this reorientation was driven by the 1993 Base Realignment and Closure round merging the Defense Electronics Supply Center with the Defense Construction Supply Center and the Defense Personnel Support Center with the Defense Industrial Supply Center. DLA used the BRAC to reorganize commands around the weapons systems they supported, not the items they managed.
Reforming supply centers meant overcoming or avoiding concerns about managing items with different characteristics. The agency overcame these concerns in Ohio by capable acquisition professionals and prior DESC efficiency measures. It avoided them in Philadelphia by managing industrial hardware as a self-contained unit.
The 2005 BRAC then introduced DLA to depot-level repairables, parts that leave units for overhaul, upgrading or rebuilding. DLRs were not repair parts but often had the same suppliers and could therefore be covered by the same contracts. This also made repair part management at Defense Supply Center Columbus and Defense Supply Center Richmond more efficient.
The 2010 “We Are DLA” campaign cemented these orientations. Initiated by Navy Vice Adm. Alan Thompson, the agency’s 16th director, the campaign aligned components to an agency identity. As part of the process, supply centers were renamed for the supply chains they supported. Thus, Defense Supply Center Columbus became DLA Land and Maritime, and Defense Supply Center Richmond became DLA Aviation. Defense Supply Center Philadelphia, which managed repair parts in its industrial hardware supply chain, became DLA Troop Support.
Thompson launched the We Are DLA campaign during operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom as repair parts became increasingly important. They became especially so when the Army and Marine Corps started using mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles. DLA Land and Maritime bought parts for these commercial systems early and en masse.
Managing repair parts still poses some challenges. One problem harkens back to system design. Success with the Abrams tank and F-16 in the late 1970s was not repeated a quarter century later when DOD began designing the joint strike fighter. It took three decades for DLA to assume roles in F-35 Lightning II cataloging and distribution, and the agency is beginning to assume provision responsibilities for the aircraft. Forecasting can also be an exacting task. Current DLA Director Army Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly has challenged his service counterparts to increase their repair part predictability to 80%.
Repair part management at DLA is a story of change and adaptability. Although the agency once believed items that return equipment to readiness couldn’t be integrated, it nevertheless continued searching for ways to make their procurement efficient. By reorientating supply centers in the 1960s and 1990s, involving the agency in weapons system design, devising a weapons system support program, and renaming subordinate commands after the supply chains they supported, DLA has continuously taken proactive measures to ensure warfighter readiness.