The Defense Logistics Agency’s biggest supply chain issue regarding the Air Force deals with spare parts, because “if [airmen] don’t have all the parts, they can’t fix an engine,” said DLA Director Vice Adm. Mark Harnitchek on Tuesday. Understanding that, he said he ordered his subordinate handling that issue to buy enough to meet the Air Force’s needs. As a result, “parts support to the Air Force is much better than it was,” said Harnitchek at AFA’s Air & Space Conference in National Harbor, Md. Providing logistics support in the current chaotic security environment is much harder than during the Cold War, but DLA must do it with less money, which requires “an absolute insistence on basic business,” he said. Major savings were achieved by shifting from the military-specific JP-8 aviation fuel to commercial jet fuel, which costs less and greatly expands the supplier base, he said. Harnitchek also emphasized the importance of commercial aircraft and ships to DLA and US Transportation Command, noting that commercial carriers have more heavy-lift cargo airplanes and freighters than the Air Force and Navy, respectively. “That’s what takes the nation to war,” he said of the commercial assets.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.