featured project ARCHIVE

FIGHTING THE CORROSION THAT EATS AWAY AT READINESS

The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, USD(AT&L)—the DoD Corrosion Executive—sought ways to fight the corrosion that costs DoD up to $20 billion annually and impedes performance, hinders readiness, and detracts from safety. To quantify improvements in preventing corrosion and to begin the process of expanding a mitigation strategy, USD(AT&L) first needed to capture corrosion cost information.

To do so, we developed an innovative cost identification method and data structure, which examines corrosion from the service level down to the weapon system and subsystem. Where necessary, we applied unique statistical methods to bridge any significant gaps in available data. Thus far, using 2004 data, we’ve employed the method to baseline the corrosion in Navy ships and Army ground vehicles. We found the following:

• The total cost of corrosion for Navy ships was $2.44 billion (in 2004).Of these costs, 42 percent can be attributed to 5 (of 550) work breakdown structure areas:  tanks and enclosures, bilge cleaning and gas freeing, painting, drydocking and undocking, and deck covering. The Naval Sea Systems Command now has developed a detailed plan of action to attack four of the primary corrosion cost drivers.
  
  
• The total cost of corrosion for Army vehicles was $2 billion, and corrosion-related labor dwarfs all other corrosion costs. Four vehicles are in the top 20 in both total corrosion costs and cost per vehicle: the M1A1 and M1A2 combat tanks, tactical cargo truck, and armored TOW carrier utility truck.

We are now applying our method to Army rotary wing aircraft, Marine Corps ground vehicles, and the DoD facilities infrastructure. Using our cost databases, DoD will be able to allocate resources to target critical corrosion areas and causes, improving performance and increasing readiness.