March 30, 2017
WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Subcommittee on Readiness and Management support, questioned Gen. Levy, deputy commandant of Installations and Logistics for the U.S. Marine Corps, on the importance of the Air Force Sustainment Center at the Readiness Subcommittee hearing entitled: Health of the Department of Defense Industrial Base and its Role in Providing Readiness to the Warfighter.
“From our view, the Air Force Sustainment Center has been a success,” said Gen. Levy. “In the four years since [it] was created, we have begun to operate Air Force logistics as one common enterprise. We’ve been able to return $2.4 billion back to our U.S. Air Force… That’s money that goes back to addressing readiness and critical modernization challenges that our Air Force has. From a performance perspective, we have managed to...improve safety and quality on all of our platforms.
“We were able to, for example with the KC-135, go from three sources of repair—two commercial and one organic—to one source of repair—organic. Now every KC-135 in the United States Air Force, about 76 a year, received their program depot maintenance at the Air Force sustainment center at Tinker Air Force Base. All three of those locations—at Hill AFB, Tinker AFB and Robbins AFB—are operated as an enterprise. So if an F-15 comes to Robbins for repair, the engine comes to Tinker and the landing gear goes to Hill. By operating as an enterprise we find efficiencies, we find synergies, we drive up performance and as importantly we drive down costs to our Air Force.”
Witnesses for the hearing were:. Gen. Larry Wyche deputy commanding general of Army Materiel Command; Vice Adm. Paul Grosklags, commander of Naval Air Systems Command; Vice Adm. Thomas Moore, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command; Lt. Gen. Michael G. Dana, deputy commandant of Marine Corps Installations and Logistics; and Lt. Gen. Lee K. Levy, commander of Air Force Sustainment Center.
