The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. William A. LaPlante, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment, Chris Lowman, today released the Regional Sustainment Framework (RSF), which aims to optimize regional Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO).
"The RSF leverages our strong partnerships throughout the global defense ecosystem to deliver enhanced sustainment capabilities in theater," LaPlante said. "Doing so will create a distributed network of MRO facilities that is global in scale, but regionally aligned to the most relevant platforms and systems."
Aligned with the National Defense Strategy (NDS) and the National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS), RSF underpins the Department's effort to develop distributed MRO capabilities closer to the point of need by collaborating with allies and partners, as well as the U.S. and international defense industrial bases, to support the Joint and Combined Force.
The initiative is critical to operations in contested environments where traditional methods of retrograding materiel for repair and maintenance are increasingly untenable. RSF has three primary goals:
- Prevail in a Contested Logistics Environment: Optimize and align weapon system product support strategies to establish a viable distributed MRO ecosystem.
- Enhance Military Readiness: Collaborate with the defense industrial base and allies and partners to build regionally-focused sustainment strategies that increase readiness and deter aggression.
- Strengthen Regional Partnerships: Develop sustainment strategies promoting joint/allied regional MRO to expand repair network capacity across warfighting domains.
"Traditionally, commanders in theater have partnered with host nations and industrial base partners in theater to perform repair on a case-by-case basis," Lowman added. "We can no longer wait for crisis to compel this level of collaboration. Today, we are leading with the development of a global network of MRO capability that is regionally aligned to enhance partnership and joint force readiness in competition so that it is viable in conflict."
RSF showcases the Department's commitment to succeeding through teamwork across the defense enterprise.
The full RSF is available at: https://www.acq.osd.mil/asds/docs/RSF-9MAY24.pdf.