At the Anniston Army Depot (ANAD) in Anniston, Alabama, for example, the Army uses multiple partnerships to maintain, modernize and upgrade the M1 Abrams tank. Under one of these partnerships, ANAD – a DOD CITE for wheeled and tracked combat vehicles (except Bradley fighting vehicles), assault bridging, artillery and small caliber weapons – overhauls and reconfigures the M1A2S, the Saudi version of the M1 Abrams: structural and component repairs are performed at ANAD, after which all parts and components are shipped to the private-sector partner for reassembly.

• Purchasing or direct sales, in which private-sector firms purchase articles or services from an Army installation. This type of partnership can apply to goods or services that end up in products sold to the U.S. government or the governments of U.S. allies. Under agreement with a munitions contractor, specialists at Crane Army Ammunition Activity (CAA) in Crane, Indiana, are using high-pressure water washout to demilitarize projectiles filled with explosive D, and recovering the explosive for demilitarization processing.
• Leasing, under which firms lease facilities and install their own equipment – or lease facilities and depot-owned equipment to produce goods and services. “If a company needs space and we have an empty building,” Dwyer said, “they can come on our posts and lease the building. And they can populate the building with their own tools or equipment. The lease rent that we get helps defray the overhead costs of the organic industrial base. So we have a lot of partnerships that just involve companies coming in and using our excess space.” Arkansas’ Pine Bluff Arsenal (PBA), for example – the Army’s CITE for Chemical and Biological Defense Equipment – currently leases laboratory and office space to a biosciences firm.

 

The Mutual Benefits of Partnership

The Army’s primary goal in sustaining activity among its facilities and workers is readiness: Whatever the prevailing budget environment or the speed with which Soldiers are mobilized, the nation expects its Soldiers, if called, to be properly trained, equipped, and prepared. And the key to this readiness is the organic industrial base.

AMC maintenance depots, manufacturing arsenals and ammunition plants form the core of the OIB, and their master craftsmen and artisans – some of whom have learned and refined their skills over generations of families working at a single installation – are able, through partnerships, to sustain critical skills and continue the professional growth that helps to ensure readiness. “We have some very highly skilled and experienced workers in our organic industrial base,” Dwyer said. “We’d like for labor to be able to use those skills and to sustain workload, so that we don’t have an attrition in that skill base – the organic industrial base exists to provide readiness to our combat forces, but it also enables us to surge very, very quickly to support future wars. Partnering protects AMC’s ability to do that.”

The ongoing use of facilities and people through partnerships has other tangible benefits to the Army: It improves operational efficiencies, lowers the costs of products and services, and accelerates innovation. The revenue generated through these partnerships helps the Army keep its expense rates down and make its depots and arsenals more cost competitive. Since 2010, AMC’s public-private partnerships have generated more than $1.3 billion in revenues while sustaining thousands of jobs. At the same time, inviting private-sector partners to play a role in maintaining and modernizing facilities has saved government dollars.

For private companies, the advantages of the P3 program are numerous, Dwyer said. Among the most obvious is that it saves them from sinking capital into investments the Army has already made. “They don’t have to spend their own money on tooling, or on building new facilities,” he said. “If our tooling and facilities can fit their requirements, then they save that outlay of capital and all the associated costs that go with that. We have a myriad of seven-axis machining centers. We have a foundry and a rotary forge at Watervliet and at Rock Island Arsenal. We have a variety of laser steel cutters and water jet cutters, so that we can cut materials, steel, and high hard steel. We’ve got tool, die, and gage development. Basically anything that you find on the outside that has to do with heavy manufacturing, you’ll find it inside our organic industrial base.”

As Dwyer pointed out, the Army has taken pains to ensure that these capabilities translate seamlessly – that the OIB and private industry are speaking the same language. “Every one of our installations is ISO 9000 qualified and certified,” he said. “All of our organic sites have pursued and are now certified in ISO 9000 2008, which is basically us telling civilian industry we’re using manufacturing skills and processes and quality that equate to what you see in the commercial sector.”

Partnerships enable private industry to access these state-of-the-art technologies, equipment, and facilities, as well as the unique, varied, and award-winning skill set at AMC’s disposal. AMC craftsmen are diverse, deployable, and often capable of things few other American workers can do.