Shrinking the Mountain of Metal: The Potential of Three Advanced Technologies

Abstract

Military operations create large amounts of damaged equipment, referred to as mountains of metal. Traditional and current strategies for shrinking the mountain include shipping much equipment to U.S. depots for repair and overhaul. Three advanced technologies, three-dimensional laser scanning, additive manufacturing, and product lifecycle management, can potentially save costs by relocating and accelerating repair operations. Published forecasts of the evolution of these technologies formed the basis for scenarios of their application to shrinking the mountain at U.S. depots, in-theater support facilities, and at forward stations: current use, near-future use, and distant future use. Knowledge Value Added modeling was applied to four technology adoption scenarios (traditional and the three listed) to the Army's up armor HMMWV fleet to estimate returns on investment for each scenario, costs, and potential savings. Cost savings potential of $1.8 billion in the up armor HMMWV fleet and over $21 billion in operations similar in scale to those in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated. Conclusions include a recommendation to accelerate the adoption and use of these advanced technologies for equipment repair to shrink the mountain of metal.