What does the Air Force have in common with Air Conditioning in the summer?  Quite a bit, come to find out.  The Air Force Association CEO, Mike Dunn (Lieutenant General, USAF, Retired), sent out an email this morning which does a good job explaining how supporting less-functional legacy systems is costly and time consuming (which ultimately means "even more costly").  Read his note after the 'read more' break.

AFA members, Congressional staff members, civic leaders, and DOCA members, this past month one of Headquarters AFA's staff members was without air conditioning at his home. And it was hot … very hot. We had temperatures over 100 degrees F for about 5 days in a row. For the entire month, almost every day was over 90 degrees. The staff member's experience is similar to what the country faces now … and may face in spades in the future. Let me describe what happened.

The staff member's air conditioner stopped working. In essence, he had no Air(power). First he called an air conditioning expert to his house to see what was wrong. The expert told him that he needed some parts for the system. The parts would take some time to come in as the system was over 21 years old. And as it turned out, almost no one was making parts anymore for such an old system.

The staff member went to his insurance company to see if they would let him retire the old system and replace it with a newer, more capable one. (Sound familiar?) The insurer (think Congress) decided the system still had some uses, and it would be cheaper and better if they tried to get the parts to fix it.

Meanwhile the AC expert went to the web to try to find parts which might do the job. Lots were found; many from overseas suppliers … but when the unit was opened and the technical order reviewed, the original manufacturer clearly stated that parts had to be made by either … the original manufacturer … or an approved sub-manufacturer. And … the original manufacturer no longer made parts for the system.

Finally, parts were located … but, in all it took almost four weeks to get the system operational. True story.

Now think about how the Air Force - dealing with planes, some of which are almost 50 years old - manages with a fleet that averages more than the staff member's AC. But there's a difference here. No body died from the heat. The ground forces were not attacked and harassed from the air. Our troops on the ground were supported. ISR was provided. Space assets provided navigation, communications, and intelligence. But we should worry about what might happen in the future when our Air(power) is even older …