Manufacturing has changed considerably since we were pumping out ships faster than the Germans could sink them (see sidebar). Today, the defense industrial base is being asked to produce at a higher rate with more expensive systems. It costs more to build infrastructure that is less flexible, which works against surge capacity and mass affordability. The webinar did discuss great ideas around how to use automation and robotics to make manufacturing more flexible and affordable, but here I want to examine what surge capacity and mass affordability in the U.S. military industrial base mean for maintenance and reliability. 

The reliability trade-off: Rethinking maintenance for mass affordability

Traditional industrial engineering has generally adopted a design for maximum life approach. Design components and machines to be as durable as possible to last as long as possible. What if instead to meet mass affordability needs for surge capacity, we design for affordable replacement? 

Michael Hollis, government program manager, Undersecretary of War for research and engineering at the Department of War, used an example from the Air Force, which uses very high-quality steel for its landing gear. “Could we actually go and use a cheaper steel and replace those landing gear more often?” he asked. “That way you’re making more parts that are more affordable.”

In the case of ramping up production to support military conflicts, is maximum durability always the right reliability objective?

Surge changes the maintenance equation

Dwight Manness, tech area lead for agile manufacturing at Air Force Research Laboratory, connects this idea even more directly with mass affordability.

“Mass affordability, and it’s been talked about a lot, is shifting away from expensive, colossal systems towards platforms that are cheaper and even attritable platforms,” Manness says. If we’re fighting wars of attrition, perhaps our military gear should also be designed for attrition.

Manness also addresses the surge side of the equation, as the military industrial base needs to ramp up production considerably but not indefinitely.

“How can we fluctuate the amount of production so that it continues to be profitable, both for the government and for industry?” Manness says. “Can we make a part of a system purposefully worse to make it more manufacturable? Can we slide it up if we need more capability than it was originally designed for?”

The same questions apply to maintenance for these systems. A production system cannot surge indefinitely if its maintenance organization, spare-parts inventory and repair infrastructure remain sized for peacetime production.

Supply chain reliability

Supply chain is certainly a part of the discussion here too. Nothing is manufacturable without the supply chain base to support it, and the cheap parts that are easy to replace are only valuable if they’re available.

“You cannot talk about capacity or utilization without understanding how your supply base fits into that,” said Todd Szallay, corporate director of advanced manufacturing and operations at Northrop Grumman. “It's not just about vertically integrating within a company; that's very important. But it's also understanding how you scale that then across your supply base.”

Supplier diversity is another angle to consider. Marco Chacin, robotics R&T program lead and roadmap owner at Airbus, noted that aerospace manufacturers have a limited pool of suppliers capable of taking on major production programs. “You inevitably end up with the usual suspects,” he said. When suppliers are supporting multiple programs, surge could easily bring on supply issues upstream, if the full supplier base isn’t fortified. Competition among that small group of suppliers for different programs puts further strain on the supply chain.

A future reliability paradigm for wartime production

So, if we ultimately lower component and machine costs with a shorter expected life, this means more frequent replacement and more dependance on maintenance. Conditioning monitoring also becomes even more important in a system designed for frequent replacement. Predictable replacement is even better, so spares are always ready.

The Department of Defense is already grappling with the cost/reliability/sustainment tradeoff. A 2026 GAO report of operating and support costs for U.S. military weapon systems, so repair parts, maintenance activities, contract services, and personnel, are about 70% of a system’s total lifecycle cost. DOD spends tens of billions of dollars annually to operate and maintain its weapon systems, and GAO found that 14 of 36 weapon systems reviewed for fiscal years 2023 and 2024 had critical operating and support cost growth.

Think back to Hollis’ question about cheaper steel. A cheaper component isn’t necessarily a cheaper system, if it creates an unsustainable maintenance burden. Conversely, a component with a shorter service life may make sense if it is inexpensive, readily available, easy to replace and supported by a maintenance organization capable of keeping pace with production.

Let’s be clear, I don’t think we’re talking about making equipment less reliable, but it’s perhaps changing how we would define the reliability of a component or machine. Should it be defined by component life alone? Or by the reliability of the entire manufacturing system that that component or machine is a part of? For surge readiness and mass affordability, the entire system needs to be affordable and maintainable.