Application of life support cost, provisioning, and repair/discard models to weapon system procurement by small countries

Abstract

In fulfilling their military needs, small countries often have to choose between systems which are produced by foreign defense industries, and therefore, they have little or no influence on development and production decisions. As a consequence, the expenditures to be considered as System Procurement Cost and Operations and Support Costs. This thesis introduces an approach based on System Effectiveness and Life Support Cost (LSC) in the evaluation of alternative systems. It proceeds with a development of a set of general cost equations and a simplified LSC model, called SIMPLE. Two issues related to LSC, Initial Provisioning of Spares and Repair/Discard decisions, are specially treated. Computerized models are used for a numerical example in which the impact of the organizational structure, systems characteristics, and some other factors on LSC and their cost sensitivity are evaluated.