Management and Operations Commons^™

Analyzing Operating And Support Costs For Air Force Aircraft, Scott C. Hewitson, Jonathan D. Ritschel, Edward D. White, Gregory Brown

Faculty Publications

Purpose: Recent legislation resulted in an elevation of operating and support (O&S) costs’ relative importance for decision-making in Department of Defense programs. However, a lack of research in O&S hinders a cost analyst’s abilities to provide accurate sustainment estimates. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate when Air Force aircraft O&S costs stabilize and to what degree. Next, a parametric O&S model is developed to predict median O&S costs for use as a new tool for cost analyst practitioners.
Design/Methodology/Approach: Utilizing the Air Force total ownership cost database, 44 programs consisting of 765 observations from 1996 to 2016 …