The LCSP Evolves
The LCSP documents and communicates the Program Manager's plan for formulating, implementing and executing the sustainment strategy so that the system's design and its Product Support Package are integrated and contribute to meeting the Warfighter's mission requirements. The LCSP is a living document describing the approach and resources necessary to develop and integrate product support requirements into the system’s design, development, testing and evaluation, fielding and operations.
Life-cycle sustainment planning and execution must seamlessly span a system's entire life-cycle evolving over time and must be tailored to meet program needs using a "rolling wave" planning approach. As the program matures, the LCSP is updated to reflect increasing levels of detail as they become available so that it remains current and relevant. The detail and focus will vary depending on the life-cycle phase but in all cases the information should be in sufficient depth to ensure the acquisition, design, sustainment, and user communities have a shared early common understanding of the sustainment requirements, approach, and associated risks.
This section focuses on the information a typical program LCSP should contain for each life-cycle phase. It is structured towards a typical program and may not be fully appropriate for a specific program (e.g. a 95% Commercial Off The Self (COTS) program.) The individual phase discussions also assume that the weapon system design is maturing as expected for each respective milestone review. The information contained in this section is not meant to be a fixed check list for programs to blindly follow. The LCSP must be tailored to meet the unique program needs keeping in mind that the intent of the LCSP is to encourage programs to "think, not write" in communicating their plan across the enterprise.
The latest thinking and alternative examples for each LCSP section can be found in the outline section of this web site.
