Welcome to Maintenance Policy & Programs

Mission Statement: The principal missions of the Office of the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Maintenance Policy and Programs [ADUSD(L&MR)MPP] are to:

• Serve as the principal advisor for policies and procedures for maintenance support of major weapon systems and military equipment.
  
  
• Provide the functional expertise for centralized maintenance policy and management oversight for all weapon systems and military equipment maintenance programs and related resources within the Department of Defense.
  
  
• Establish and maintain maintenance policies and programs that are managerially and technologically sound and adequately resourced to maintain the desired levels of weapon systems and military equipment readiness to accomplish the Department's missions.

Maintenance Policy and Programs functions also include:

• Promoting Congressional understanding of DoD maintenance requirements and programs.
  
  
• Responding to provisions of law and of executive direction relating to weapon systems and military equipment maintenance by converting these requirements into coherent, effective policies and programs.
  
  
• Providing strong leadership for the execution of maintenance programs by the Military Services and Defense Agencies.
  
  
• Directing focused studies of new technologies and management approaches that offer significant potential to improve the productivity and effectiveness of DoD maintenance activities.

Maintenance of DoD's weapon systems and military equipment is a critical element in the readiness and sustainability of combat forces. The distribution of maintenance workloads among the public and private sectors is instrumental in maintaining a robust and viable industrial base. DoD's maintenance operations support a wide range of weapon systems including about 280 ships, 14,000 aircraft/helicopters, 900 strategic missiles, and 30,000 combat vehicles.

DoD maintenance is accomplished by two different but complementary components — depot-level and field-level maintenance activities. The two components are distinguished largely by their relative capabilities, flexibility, agility, and capacity.

Depot-level maintenance entails materiel maintenance requiring the major repair, overhaul, or complete rebuilding of weapon systems, end items, parts, assemblies, and subassemblies; manufacture of parts; technical assistance; and testing. Each military service manages and operates its own organic depot-level maintenance infrastructure. The bulk of the workload — about three quarters — is associated with ships and aircraft. Aircraft work amounts to more than half of the overall total while ship work accounts for about a third. The remaining work includes missile, combat vehicle, tactical vehicle, and other ground equipment system workloads. For FY2007, The DoD spent over $30 billion for depot-level maintenance and repair work. Approximately 54 percent of the Department's FY 2007 depot-level workload was accomplished in organic facilities; the remainder was done in the private sector — by commercial firms.

Field-level maintenance is comprised of two sub-levels that perform shop-type work as well as on-equipment maintenance activities at maintenance levels other than depot:

• Intermediate or shop-type work includes: limited repair of commodity-oriented assemblies and end items (e.g., electronic “black boxes” and mechanical components); job shop, bay, and production line operations for special requirements; repair of subassemblies such as circuit boards; software maintenance; and fabrication or manufacture of repair parts, assemblies, and components.
  
  
• Organizational (or on-equipment) maintenance is normally performed by an operating unit on a day-to-day basis to support operations of its assigned weapon systems and equipment. Organizational maintenance encompasses a number of categories, such as inspections, servicing, handling, preventive maintenance, and corrective maintenance. Although no set of financial management systems captures the total cost of field-level maintenance, it is currently estimated to be in the range of $54 billion annually.

Nearly 650,000 maintainers (active duty and Reserve Component military and DoD civilians) are involved in DoD maintenance operations. Of this total, the Department estimates that about 7 percent are federal civilian employees assigned to depot-level activities. The remaining 93 percent accomplish field-level maintenance. In addition, several thousand private sector firms are engaged in performing maintenance — mostly depot-level — of DoD materiel.

This web site serves as a repository for selected DoD maintenance information and data. Included are policy documents, plans and reports, historical trends and projections, public and private sector workload information, and links to defense and contractor web sites.

This web site serves as a repository for selected DoD maintenance information and data. Included are policy documents, plans and reports, historical trends and projections, public and private sector workload information, and links to defense and contractor Web sites.