RE: Repair costs and false economies (was Re: Battle blimps)

IIRC one of the things about present day Mercs in Africa or South
America is 
that the bring a preventive maintenance mentality.  Just being able to
do PM on 
rifles and MGs can increase the effectiveness of a "local" unit.

Michael Brown

-----Original Message-----
From:	Michael Llaneza
Sent:	Friday, April 19, 2002 3:50 PM
To:	gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject:	Repair costs and false economies (was Re: Battle blimps)

Peacetime repairs count as "training". The savings in peacetime by
outsourcing your repair work is going to be outweighed in wartime by
having important pieces of equipment sidelined for repairs that can't be
done in the field due to a shortage of trained and experienced. If a
component is out of service, the whole assembly is out of service until
the component is repaired. Your serviceability rates start dropping as
operation go on, and you start running out of available units. So you
have to have more units available to keep an acceptable number in
operation. And you wind up spending a lot more than doing the repairs
yourself would have.

Not that a civilian budget specialist is likely to look that far ahead.

And this brings up interesting prospects for mercenaries ina
 science-fiction setting: repair and logistical specialists. The loss
rate among 'tail' units is lower, so the mercs like it, and experienced
specialists in the supply chain can make the difference in a campaign.

As the Slammer's say, "How much does losing cost you ?"

Glenn M Wilson wrote:

>
>>
>
>I can accept that in many cases.  It is cheaper in some situations to
buy
>the repair service then to constantly retrain certain technical
personnel
>beyond a minimum number when (in peacetime at least,) you can send it
>FedEx to the maker.