The U.S. Air Force has been continually engaged in deployed operations in Southwest Asia and in other locations since the 1990s. Recent Office of the Secretary of Defense planning guidance directs the services to plan for continued engagement at high levels, although their nature, locations, durations, and intensity may be unknown. This technical report describes the benefits of reallocating certain maintenance activities between mission-generation locations and a repair network to support the C-130 fleet and consolidating repair network activities to centralized repair facilities. The report also provides an initial assessment of maintenance concepts that integrate wing-level and depot-level maintenance processes. The authors found that consolidating wing-level scheduled inspections and component back-shop maintenance capabilities provides efficiency and effectiveness gains to the C-130 maintenance network and that integration of wing-level and depot level activities may provide further gains.

"RAND Project Air Force."

Introduction -- Projecting logistics workloads -- Alternatives for rebalancing C-130 maintenance resources -- Assessment of the effects of integrated maintenance -- Conclusions.