Two behavioural issues were described that contribute to problems in developing an affordable ESP from the bottom-up, both resulting from the incentives placed upon individuals by the ESP management process.
As noted, there has been an ongoing affordability issue with the ESP, which has resulted in a more-or-less across the board reduction in near term available funding. This has then resulted in a process of institutionalised "overbidding" which mirrors the behaviours described in the EPP. In this case, however, there is a tendency to request sufficient funds for a level of equipment availability and maintenance that is supported by "ideal" or recommended requirements for the capability concerned (i.e., as high as can be justified). This is done with the view that after an inevitable blanket reduction in funds, the result should still be sufficient for minimum operational needs and maintenance levels. Although there appears to be a significant affordability issue with ESP, it is by no means clear how big this actually is, given this behaviour, or whether the levels of overbidding or under-resourcing are similar by capability area. The Capability Sponsor, who might be a position to judge this across capability areas have no formal role in trading-off within the ESP over the first four years, so affordability adjustments appear to reduce to a blanket and relatively uniform reduction.
Some discussions also suggested there were "gaming" motivations behind moving support arrangements to long-term availability based contracts. Although these are not "fixed costs" in the sense that they can contractually vary with requirement levels, they are committed to within ranges which are perceived to be relatively narrow. When savings need to be delivered across support expenditure, it is easier to cut harder on spend that is outside these arrangements. This movement of significant levels of the ESP toward availability or similar contractual structures is often referred to as the "silting up" of the ESP. This reflects a view that the proportion of the plan that is more easily varied (and hence vulnerable) has been decreasing over time, and affordability concessions are falling on an ever decreasing base of traditional support costs.