Let's not overlook the obvious. It isn’t just about how the military buys things. It’s about how the military does things, and I’m talking about logistics.

The Air Force released a report yesterday, called “America’s Air Force: A Call to the Future.”

Now, let’s set the stage a bit.  The Air Force is the military service most reliant on expensive, high tech weapons systems.  While these systems are expensive to buy, they are even more expensive to keep running.  Typically, two-thirds of weapons systems costs across the life cycle are in the operation and sustainment of those systems, not the purchase.

That two-thirds is logistics . . . an expansive view of logistics, how we field, maintain, and sustain systems, but logistics nonetheless.

According to the New York Times, the Air Force report makes the point that “the country may soon be unable to afford the military it has without making significant changes to the way it does business.”

The constraint of austerity can be a great forcing function, but the Air Force needs to be careful not to put blinders on.  Doing business isn’t just about how the Air Force buys things.  It includes how the Air Force does things.

The Times quotes Maj. Gen. David W. Allvin, one of the authors of the report, “To boil this down, we have to buy things very differently and develop and employ our people differently.  We have to behave more like an innovative 21st-century company.”

Let’s talk about that.  Let’s talk about how the Air Force can behave like an innovative 21st-century company.  Let’s foot stomp that an innovative company pays attention to all of the issues that matter, including the two-thirds of the pie that is consuming weapons systems budgets, not just the one-third of the budget that goes to the acquisition of new systems.

So, a piece of advice to services providers in the defense business:  if you want to make some money in a time of austerity and declining budgets, show the Air Force how to be smarter in what it does with the two-thirds of the weapons systems life cycle budget that isn’t acquisition.

Follow the money, not the headlines.  Like the bank robber Willie Sutton said, “Go where the money is...and go there often.”

And let’s see how the Air Force reacts.

Opinions, anyone?