As the cost of DoD Weapon Systems continue to increase, the ability to more accurately predict the Operating and Support (O&S) costs for the various weapon systems has become more vital for long run affordability. The investigation into the O&S arena has been overshadowed by the research and development (R&D) and acquisition fields. This research focuses on the O&S portion of the total life cycle costs, specifically the OSD-CAPE Cost Element Structure (CES) elements and sub-elements. The research investigates seven categories of 52 aircrafts and their cost expenditures within the CES from the years 1996-2016. The first portion of the analysis investigates the descriptive statistics for the 52 aircrafts and their respective categories. The second portion focused on utilizing statistical tests to compare and contrasts the findings from question one to illustrate the similarities and differences by cost expenditures depending on aircraft category. Lastly, we investigate if the elements/sub-elements could be used as metrics to each other through a multivariate correlation analysis. DoD Cost Estimators and stakeholders alike can benefit from this research by utilizing the results as baselines for future analogy based estimates
