Transforming US Army Supply Chains

Chapter 23

Financial Management Challenges to “Business Modernization”

We don’t know what the lifetime cost of operating a single weapon system is. No one person is accountable. The Program Manager is responsible for the design, development and fielding of the weapon system [then] the system gets thrown over the fence to somebody else to sustain it over its lifetime.

—Diane K. Morales, deputy under secretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness

We plan budgets two to five years out but do not have adequate funding for contingencies that arrive today. We then rely on supplemental funding and pay unfinanced requirements out of current operations…We try to minimize financial risk at the expense of operational risk…This system must ...