At Coras, many of our team have worked both above - and below-the-line in sustainment programs. One lesson we see repeatedly is that sustainment programs rarely unravel in one dramatic moment. More often, they weaken through a handful of persistent issues that appear manageable in isolation but interact badly under delivery pressure.
This matters for primes and SMEs alike because many of the real risks are present from day one. Programs rarely fail because the risks were invisible. They fail because everyone assumed there would be time to deal with them later.
The first, and often most damaging, issue is configuration baseline inaccuracy. If the configuration record does not match the platform, the warehouse, or the maintenance baseline, downstream decisions deteriorate quickly. Wrong spares are demanded, engineering judgement becomes less reliable, and planned maintenance begins sliding into reactive recovery. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has found that control of the configuration baseline is central to long-term supportability and that deficiencies increase risk to availability outcomes. In sustainment, a bad baseline is not a paperwork problem. It is the gift that keeps on taking.
Close behind it is poor data quality in supply and sustainment systems. This is often dismissed as administrative housekeeping when it is really a delivery issue. Bad data creates false confidence, distorting stock posture, masking true demand, and delaying recognition that a support system is drifting. You can run a chaotic sustainment system on bad data, but you cannot run a disciplined one.
Third is unmanaged obsolescence. This often sits quietly until urgent defects, cannibalisation, redesign, or long-lead procurement begin stacking up. Obsolescence is frequently treated as tomorrow’s problem, right up until it sends today’s schedule sideways.
Fourth is OEM and technical-data dependency. RAND’s work in the US Air Force context shows that if technical data rights are not secured early enough, future sustainment choices narrow and dependence on the OEM grows.
This is not uniquely an American lesson. Defence’s Technical Data and Intellectual Property Framework treats technical data as a key enabler of capability outcomes, and ANAO found in the LHD case that future sustainment requirements, including access to important intellectual property, were not sufficiently developed. On complex platforms with long service lives and mixed OEM support arrangements, supportability by permission is rarely a comfortable place to end up.
Fifth is workforce fragility. Sustainment is experience-heavy work. When the workforce is thin, overly specialised, or unstable, programs pay through slower maintenance, weaker planning, and reliance on a handful of key people. GAO analysis has shown how shortages in trained maintenance personnel affect readiness outcomes across US services. In Australia, ANAO has also identified workforce shortages as a contributing factor in naval sustainment challenges.
Sixth is mobilisation optimism. This is less about abstract optimism bias and more about underestimating what it takes to establish control in the first 60 days. Teams often assume the inherited baseline is cleaner than it is, the data more usable, OEM interfaces simpler, and backlogs more manageable than they truly are. Sustainment contracts usually inherit complexity, and complexity becomes expensive when discovered late.
Unless the support system is stabilised early, routine obligations begin piling up before the contract team has found its rhythm.
So, what does good look like in the first 60 days after contract award? It looks like disciplined mobilisation:
- Confirm the configuration baseline
- Reconcile the spares and master data driving demand, inventory, and reporting
- Identify components with the highest obsolescence exposure
- Map OEM and technical-data dependencies early
- Lock in workforce roles carrying critical knowledge and establish honest performance reporting
A simple test for the next program is this:
Can you trust your baseline? Can you trust your data? Do you know where obsolescence will bite first? Do you know which sustainment choices depend on OEM permission? Do you have the people to execute, not just govern? If the answer to any of those is no, the delivery risk is already present.
At Coras, our experience across sustainment programs has shown that the problems that hurt most are usually the ones everyone agreed could wait - until they couldn’t.