Pentagon has established a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Sustainment to improve our ability to plan, program, budget and execute the Navy’s sustainment mission.  DASN Sustainment will have oversight of sustainment funding across the Navy and will oversee and manage Navy and Marine Corps sustainment and life-cycle management policies.  This will allow the Department to improve and align the complex drivers of maintenance and modernization completion – that in turn will increase our output to the Fleet.  

Navy Chief found “no surprises” in GAO report highlighting readiness deficits faced by the Service as a result of Maintenance challenges. “Every bit of information in that is information we’re very, very aware of. We’ve been talking about the maintenance challenges at the public shipyards for some time, so no surprises there.”

“In terms of the impact the attack submarine force has on the strategic environment, that’s also exacerbated by the fact that we’re facing a declining force level right now. Navy is very focused on this, and so we’ll continue to adapt.“

“All of those things you mentioned in terms of schedule adjustments, the back-and-forth in terms of taking advantage of all of the capacity in both the public and the private sector – that’s something that we talk about very frequently as we try to optimise our way through these challenges.”

The Navy this year released a long-term plan to optimise and modernise its four public shipyards that work on attack submarines. But in the short term, the yard readiness situation is “a very complex and stressed environment.”

The Navy’s shipyard optimisation plan with an estimated $21 billion in planned investment over the next two decades to meet the operational needs of the current underwater fleet, but fails to include the larger fleet planned for the future, according to GAO.

Navy Chief says “We’ve been talking about the maintenance issues in public shipyards for some time so there were no surprises there.“ Response pointed to a looming “declining force level” that involves decommissioning some boats while awaiting the production of new fast-attack submarines. 

These readiness challenges come as operational commanders are asking for more and more attack subs to support their areas of responsibility, and subs are increasingly being requested to support high-end training with carrier strike groups. As demand increases and readiness remains a challenge, the inventory may drop.

The four yards are digging out of maintenance backlogs that built up due to insufficient manpower, unexpected work popping up once a ship got into the yard and other factors. The attack submarine force faced the brunt of the delays, though, because the yards prioritize ballistic-missile submarines [SSBNs] and aircraft carriers above the attack subs [SSNs]. 

Several instances have occurred where an attack sub idled at the public yard because the workforce was focused on a higher-priority ship, or where an SSN couldn’t even get into the yard because there was no capacity to work on it. Contractors have asked to help take on some of the SSN repair work the Navy can’t handle, and there has been discussion on how early to award that work to the private sector versus wait and see if the Navy can handle it itself.

Delays in maintenance have resulted in at least 1,891 lost operational days for the attack submarine fleet and cost the Navy about $1.5 billion to support boats that can’t go to sea, according to a GAO report.

From 2008 to 2018, most of the planned repairs for the Navy’s fleet of about 50 nuclear attack submarines have started late and run long resulting in a combined 10,363 days of maintenance delays and idle time.

The report found that the primary driver affecting attack submarines are delays in completing depot maintenance. For example, of the 10,363 total days of lost time since fiscal year 2008, 82 percent were due to depot maintenance delays.”

While Naval Sea Systems Command has a $21 billion plan to improve the four public shipyards that are responsible for repairing the nuclear fleet, the report indicated the problem of delayed attack boat maintenance is not on track to improve any time soon.

“While the public shipyards have operated above capacity for the past several years, attack submarine maintenance delays are getting longer and idle time is increasing. ‘

“The Navy expects the maintenance backlogs at the public shipyards to continue. We estimate that, as a result of these backlogs, the Navy will incur approximately $266 million in operating and support costs in Fiscal year 2018 constant dollars for idle submarines from Fiscal year 2018 through Fiscal year 2023, as well as additional depot maintenance delays.”

Congressional leaders have called for the Navy to use private shipyards more to clear the backlog of attack boats awaiting repairs. “While demand for our undersea fleet and its unique capabilities continues to rise, delays in maintaining our existing fleet are exacerbating the growing shortfall in our submarine force structure. This report makes clear that the Navy must do more to fully utilise the capacity of our private shipyards to reduce the backlog in submarine repair work.

Attack submarines have suffered repair delays in the Navy’s four public yards that give priority to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and ballistic missile submarines. The service has recently started mitigating the backlog by farming out some of the attack boat work to private shipyards.

While the service is doing more to send work to private yards, the GAO found that there was a lack of consistency in how the Navy exercised those private repair options.

“Although the Navy has shifted about 8 million man-hours in attack submarine maintenance to private shipyards over the past five years, it has done so sporadically, having decided to do so in some cases only after experiencing lengthy periods of idle time,” read the report. “According to private shipyard officials, the sporadic shifts in workload have resulted in repair workload gaps that have disrupted private shipyard workforce, performance, and capital investment—creating costs that are ultimately borne in part by the Navy.”

Navy said the private yards were having difficulty repairing the attack boats. “They’re struggling with the submarines that they have right now. Some of that is because overhauls are a lot harder than new construction so they’re not really proficient in it.”

“We would like to give them work on a semi-regular basis to at least create some efficiency for submarine maintenance… so that when we have peak years at naval shipyards we can choose to source that work out to the private sector.”

The Navy largely concurred with the recommendation of the report to conduct a more thorough review, “of submarine maintenance requirements and impacts across both the public and private shipyards.”

GAO found that chronic and persistent maintenance delays continue to dog the Navy’s fleet of 51 attack submarines, costing taxpayers $1.5 billion for boats that sat idle. GAO assessment determined that between fiscal years 2008 and 2018, the Navy’s attack submarines incurred 10,363 days of idle time and maintenance delays because they can’t get into or out of repair shipyards.

The Navy spends about $9 billion to operate and sustain a fleet of 51 stealthy and silent nuclear-powered Los Angeles-, Seawolf- and Virginia-class boats collecting intelligence and surveillance, striking targets on land and inserting special operations forces.

Over the past decade, the Navy spent more than $1.5 billion to support attack subs that provided no operational capability, despite the increasing demands of combatant commanders worldwide for their services.

“While the Navy would incur these costs regardless of whether the submarine was delayed, idled, or deployed, our estimate of $1.5 billion represents costs incurred from fiscal year 2008 through fiscal year 2018 for attack submarines without receiving any operational capability in return,” GAO determined. 

“While acknowledging the magnitude of these costs, Navy officials stated that there may be some benefits that could be realised from these operating and support costs since crews on idle attack submarines can conduct some limited training.”

GAO investigators cited 14 attack subs that combined to spend 61 months — 1,891 days — idling while waiting to enter shipyards for repairs. Delays inside the yards compound the total length of delays boats can face, too. The most expensive costs were associated with the Seawolf-class boats. 

While GAO credited the Navy with efforts to address the chronic problems with workforce shortages at public depots, the investigators found that leaders still failed to effectively allocate maintenance periods among both public and private shipyards.

In fact, attack submarine maintenance delays have grown longer and boat idle times rose, according to GAO. That concerns lawmakers on Capitol Hill who fear lengthy idle times ripple across the fleet, affecting crew training and endangering morale.

GAO auditors determined that the primary drivers affecting the attack submarine maintenance problem were delays in completing the depot repairs. Of the 10,363 total days of lost time since 2008, for example, investigators estimated that 8,472 — or 82 percent — could be chalked up to public depot maintenance delays alone.

Although the Navy could make better use of private industry manufacturing and repair yards, the brass have yet to complete a comprehensive business case assessment that follows Pentagon guidelines designed to allocate work between the two types of yards.

Private shipyard executives told GAO that they have available capacity to increase repair work over the next five years and the Navy shifted about 8 million man-hours in boat maintenance to them over the previous five years, but “it has done so sporadically.”

Navy has lost more than $1.5 billion and thousands of operational days over the past decade due to attack submarines caught in maintenance delays or sitting idle while awaiting an availability. “The Navy has started to address challenges related to workforce shortages and facilities needs at the public shipyards. However, it has not effectively allocated maintenance periods among public shipyards and private shipyards that may also be available to help minimise attack submarine idle time.”

Public shipyards continue to try to hire new workers to address workforce shortages, but the employees will remain largely inexperienced and require a long stretch of time to achieve full proficiency, according to the report. Navy has conceded it won’t be able to support 50 planned submarine maintenance periods over the next two decades, because of capacity and capability shortfalls at the yards.

Private sector officials told investigators that those sporadic shifts in workload “resulted in repair workload gaps that have disrupted private shipyard workforce, performance, and capital investment — creating costs that are ultimately borne in part by the Navy,” according to the report.

Because the Navy’s underwater force puts a premium on safety, officials refuse to compromise on submarine training and maintenance standards, Navy leaders are focused on delaying deployments to ensure standards are met. That means readiness remains high and boats are in excellent condition compared to the rest of the Navy’s fleet of warships, commanding officers told GAO.

Infrastructure Upgrades and the shipyears in include projects like a Paint, Blast and Rubber Facility designed to consolidate and optimize paint, blast and rubber fabrication in a newly constructed 65 thousand-square-foot facility. The new facility will be low-rise construction, consisting of high and low-bay industrial shop areas, as well as offices and break rooms, training and support spaces. The project is necessary to support the increased Virginia class submarine workload starting in 2023.

The Consolidated Warehouse project will construct a new 30 thousand square-foot addition to the existing warehouse, The project completes the consolidation and modernization of a submarine component processing facility that will enhance the joint ability to receive, inspect, and distribute submarine components for worldwide fleet support. Construction of a super flood basin and extending portal crane rails have also seen contracts awarded.

As part of the conversion, the shipyard performed two hull cuts, separated the ship into three pieces, and added three new hull sections. The conversion work meant an increase in the overall ship length by 76ft. The ship also underwent similar work as part of engineered overhauls conducts of other Los Angeles-class submarines.

“It’s truly a remarkable accomplishment to complete the conversion of a fast-attack submarine into a moored training ship, the closest the shipyard has come in more than 60 years to constructing an all-new vessel.

While Navy reforms continue, they will take a long time to solve the problems GAO identified in the report but there are several initiatives that will clearly be able to help bring shipyard work up to performance standards required for the future. 

1. Common operational administrative & logistics procedures

2. Compatible specification procedures & criteria

3. Interchangeable supplies & equipment components

4. Creation of standardised tactical doctrine with each logistics service

5. Improvement of operational readiness realised by service divisions

6. Conservation of workforce levels, time, money & resources

7. Optimisation of items on work orders utilised in logistics support

8. Enhancement of Plug & Play capacity, reliability & maintenance

9. Specification of requisite product quality obtained for essential missions
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10. Assurance product specs, standards imposed 

Challenges confront defense industry position going forward. But there is also plenty of good news for defense contractors in the near term.

Positives for the industry include “the availability of cash assets, the low level of market concentration of total contract award dollars, the relatively low share of total contract award dollars received by foreign contractors, and the high level of capital expenditures.

The defense industrial base struggles with deteriorating conditions for industrial security and the availability and cost of skilled labor and materials. 

Navy looks are several dimensions including: market competition; cost and availability of skilled labor and critical materials; demand for defense goods and services; investment and productivity in the innovation system; threats to industrial security; supply chain performance; political and regulatory activity; and industrial surge capacity.

"Our ability to counter that is our own industrial base and our ability to provide our warfighters with the greatest capability — the training and the resources they need to continue to win the fights we put them in." 

Threats to information security are a major risk for industrial supply chains. Companies rely on the production, manipulation, transaction and distribution of information, meaning that vulnerabilities can threaten production capabilities, service deliveries and the integrity of rewards for innovation.

“The proliferation of information security vulnerabilities forces industrial supply chain managers to continuously adapt to a dynamic threat. Accordingly, information security threats constitute an enduring source of costs as companies invest in measures to prevent or recover from information system breaches and disasters.”

“Industry supply chains today experience lengthening cash conversion cycles and a declining average rate of inventory turnover as they invest in new inventory to fulfill the rising demand for defense goods and services.

Well performing factors in this dimension include schedule management and cost management, but poor factors include contract failure, financial performance and inventory management.

Shipyards are struggling to adjust to two Virginia-class submarines per year, and Navy is preparing to integrate an 84-foot section into new hulls called the Virginia Payload Module, which will triple the current capacity of Tomahawk missiles to 40 per ship. The service might also expand to three Virginia-class subs in certain years. And, above all, in 2021 the Navy plans to buy its first Columbia-class submarine, a boat more than double the size of a Virginia class.

Between 1997 and 2016, production of submarines dropped by 80 percent, and there were several years where the Navy purchased no new subs. The result was a more than 80 percent drop in the number of suppliers in what’s known as the submarine industrial base, 

The mounting pressure on both a diminished supplier base and a green workforce being trained and expanded in real time as the Navy increases the workload has caused delays for the Virginia-class program, once renowned for delivering boats early and under budget.

Additionally, welding problems on new missile tubes have eaten into the schedule buffer the Navy built in for Columbia. The service needs the variant on patrol in 2031 to avoid dropping below the 10 subs required to maintain a constant strategic deterrent.

Contract delivery for the 10-ship Block V Virginia-class attack submarine has been subject to a lot of talk and little agreement between the service and the two shipbuilders.

“We’re asking a lot of the submarine industrial base right now to continue with Virginia, two to three per year including that payload module, and deliver Columbia. “That’s an industrial base that has a lot on their plate right now. And their workforce is going through a transformation.

Some of the problems, such as the subpar welding on missile tubes from  the Navy thinks it can resolve with improved oversight of contractors.

“You can’t take a lot of the skill sets for granted. “We’ve had some welding issues. We’ve got to be on that. It’s a lot closer oversight as we educate this new team. It’s not just the welders and other skills; it’s: ‘Well, who were the managers of that. What should they be looking out for?’ 

The workforce issues are threatening to mar the Columbia program before it really gets off the starting blocks next year.

The program — which the Navy has said for most of this decade is its top shipbuilding priority — is likely to see its $115 billion price tag fall short of what’s required, because the Navy inadequately accounted for the labor hours necessary to complete the boat.

The discovery of a significant quality control issue at the very outset of fabrication of Columbia injects uncertainty in a program that already has little room for delays.

“The Columbia program is on track, but there is so little margin in that program. You’ve got to build that margin in. And we did: We built that margin in, but a lot of it has been eaten up by one unexpected thing or another. So we’re still on track, but a lot the margin is gone.

“We’ve got to build that margin back, and we’ve got a plan — we’ve set some pretty aggressive goals for that. We’re going to build the lead ship of that class in the same time we built the lead ship of Virginia. And it’s two-and-a-half times the size. But we’ve learned a lot about shipbuilding, so the design will be a lot more complete than Virginia was at the start. There is a tremendous amount of oversight where we think the risks are, the known knowns.

“But there is going to be something in testing, it’s a super complex system. So we just need to be driving hard to build margin. We said in the ‘Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority 2.0’  ‘Deliver it as fast as you can. Whatever Initial Operating Capability we set for ourselves, let’s not take any comfort in that. Let’s just keep retiring risk as fast as we can. Get that thing out to sea as fast as we can.’ Because if we get into that risk retirement mindset, that’s what will happen.

 Navy is months behind schedule getting its latest batch of Virginia-class attack subs under contract, and no resolution appears imminent — leading to mounting concerns that delays on the Virginia will affect the Navy’s top acquisition priority, the Columbia-class submarine

Intended to integrate acoustic upgrades and an 84-foot section for additional strike missile tubes, the delayed contract for the Block V Virginias have instead turned into just the latest warning sign that all is not well in Virginia-land, as schedules have slipped and at least one of the builders is now bleeding profits. Furthermore, it’s unclear what the Navy’s buying profile for Block V will be, which is subject to both contract negotiations and Congressional action.

The concern over Virginia delays, however, are less about Virginia, which is still a strong performing program — especially when compared with other programs such as the Ford-class carrier — but are more driven by the potential for compounding issues bleeding over into the Columbia-class. Both submarines will be drawing on the same workforce and supplier base, which is already showing signs of strain.

The Navy says the delays are part of ongoing negotiations and that the schedule should not be affected further since the Navy has already contracted for long-lead time materials, but with the first Columbia expected to be ordered in 2021, the service is facing the reality that it lacks a clear idea of the future of the Virginia program when it is preparing to launch Columbia.

The delays center on the integration of the Virginia payload module and just how many the Navy intends to buy. Until this year, the public plan was for Virginia Block V to be a 10-ship class, where the first boat would integrate the acoustic upgrades but the follow-on boats would all integrate the VPM, which is designed to triple the Virginia’s Tomahawk payload capacity to 40 per hull. When the Pentagon’s 2020 budget request dropped , the plan changed, with the total buy expanded to 11 hulls with eight VPM boats.

The builder was laying the groundwork for the original plan, which the Navy had already purchased long-lead material toward. The confusion over just how many VPMs the Navy intends to buy has been a major sticking point in the negotiations, The number of VPMs could still end up as either eight or seven, or potentially even fewer.

Complicating matters further is that Congress has yet to weigh in on the fate of the 11th Block V boat, which would mean buying three Virginia’s in one year, and some on Capitol Hill have voiced skepticism that the industrial base can support that.

Navy continues to work closely with the program team and industry on negotiating a Block V Multi-Year procurement contract that will be affordable, executable and supports the industrial base and Navy wants to ensure we are maximizing the use of funding while at the same time striving for an acceptable level of design and program risk.

“Additionally, during this period, the Navy is continuing to fund the shipbuilder for long lead time materials and pre-construction efforts to ensure submarine work continues at the shipyards and with the supplier base.”
With uncertainty looming about the future of the Virginia class, questions remain about whether that will bleed into Columbia, creating schedule risk that Navy leaders have said for years was untenable.

“These yards are integrated. When you start messing with the other program on a short-notice basis, you risk the yards being able to deliver on time and at cost for multiple programs.

“In a sense you risk the worst of both worlds: You risk further perturbations in the Virginia class, and at the same time risk not being able to get Columbia out on time.”

The setbacks seem to be compounding for the Virginia program. Welding issues on missile tubes destined for the Virginia Payload Module and the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program have eaten into the schedule margin for both programs. And issues with the supplier base as well as the labor force have caused schedule delays.

Growing the Virginia-class program from one submarine per year to two submarines per year, which started with the budget in FY11, has put increasing strain on a diminished submarine supplier base, which has put pressure on schedules as the shipyards wait for parts.

Profit loss stemmed from labor force issues that resulted from a year-long delay in the Navy contracting for the carrier George Washington’s mid-life refueling and overhaul. The delay caused contractor to lay off about 1,200 employees, which drew off workforce from the Virginia program because of labor union rules that say that the most recent hires must be laid off first.

Those rules forced contractor to lay off workers who were working on the Virginia program, who in turn were then snapped up by other yards; so new employees then had to be trained for the Virginia work.

Class-wide, Virginia is looking at four-to-seven month delays for delivery, which drives up labor costs.
Getting the Virginia program back on schedule is a top priority. “Especially when you’re a in a serial production line like we are with the Virginia-class. “If you start to have issues with schedule it does start to affect the synchronization of the line.

Congress has sought to ease the strain on the supplier base by offering money to help smaller vendors expand to meet demand and the need to be proactive with any problems that might arise from the competing demands on the industrial base.

Time spent waiting for parts is already starting to take a toll on ship construction schedules. Added to delays created by a green workforce taking more time than a more experienced workforce to complete the same work. 
Without major advances in shipyard tools, Navy runs the risk of not having enough boats to execute its continuous strategic deterrent regime.

1. Separates materiel item into its component parts

2. Makes connections between parts clear

3. Coordinates tasks to be completed, both to each other and to end product

4. Impacts planning and assignment of technical responsibilities

5. Ensures contractors are not constrained in meeting item requirements

6. Assists in tracking status of engineering efforts

7. Assists in tracking status of resource allocations

8. Assists in tracking status of, cost estimates

9. Assists in tracking status of expenditures
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10. Assists in tracking status of technical performance

The Department of Defense operates almost two dozen major depot maintenance activities that possess some of the most extensive repair, testing, and remanufacturing capabilities in the world. 

DoD materiel maintenance program is estimated at nearly 100B. In addition to defining depot maintenance, statues provides guidance on accounting for depot maintenance by listing exceptions to the definition. 

The existing exclusions are confusing. For example, any modification designed to “improve performance” is not considered depot maintenance. The installation of parts for modifications is depot maintenance, but not the acquisition of those parts. 

Current acquisition guidance does not provide any emphasis/direction for core assessments. Major programmes failed to identify core requirements within the required timeframe. Half did not identify core requirements until either the production/deployment phase or the sustainment phase of the acquisition process.

Depot Maintenance Core Capabilities Determination Process, addresses only tasked or fielded systems. It does not cover those systems still in the acquisition process. There also is little, if any, core workload focus on jointly developed systems, resulting in capabilities determinations not up to par. 

Core legislation directs the military services to sustain an organic industrial base to meet future contingency operational requirements. Works to ensure core maintenance requirements are identified in weapon system development and modernisation plans, Depot maintenance workload is prioritised in budgeting, lining up capital investment to support current and emerging core capabilities. 

Some Depot maintenance is performed by contractors with special access programme designation means transferring this work to core results in choices, such as recreating and buying tooling and equipment or extensively training and transferring workforce to the DoD plant location.

Scope of work is an important consideration as well. Should DoD create a specialised public maintenance capability for low-density item? It may make sense to appear to be inefficient in the short-term if it has long-term plans to develop an organic capability to work on composite, low observable components if it expects to acquire more of same fleet type in the future. The unique aspects of a particular item or type of work can uncover gray areas in spelling out core capability and put decision makers in a difficult position.

Depot Maintenance core statute directs DoD to be capable of repairing all Joint Chiefs of Staff–tasked systems, but the military services have the flexibility to make substantive tradeoffs in putting this seemingly straightforward directive into actual practice. Cost, practicality, feasibility, and timing are some of the considerations that factor into the military’s maintenance decisions. 

Some Depot maintenance is performed by DoD-owned, contractor operated facility. Special access programme designation means transferring this work to core would have meant unpopular choices, such as recreating and buying tooling and equipment or extensively training and transferring a government workforce to the DoD depot location.

Refined budgeting processes are example of prototype for compiling core requirements to create a floor for the depot base programme account, assign the appropriate funding priority to the core requirement & inform capital investment priorities.

Reporting of expenditures instead of obligations by DoD depots presents an inaccurate picture of depot maintenance allocations since the amounts differ. For the most part, the allocation percentages for budgeted funds represent obligation amounts obtained from DoD financial accounting systems.

However, in reporting the amount of depot maintenance funds allocated to the private sector, some reporting organisations used expenditures rather than obligations as required by official guidance.

For example, several depots we visited reported their subcontracted depot-level maintenance work as expenditures rather than obligations. Reasons given by depot officials for reporting expenditures rather than obligations include :

Workload against obligated funds may not have been fully performed during the fiscal year, so the depot believed reporting expenditures was a better reflection of the actual workload.

Depot did not know obligations were to be reported instead of expenditures; and many work orders can be associated with a multiyear contract, so the depot believed that reporting expenditures would be a better representation of the costs associated with multiyear contracts for the fiscal year in question.

Depots said producing types of information we suggested would require a massive undertaking and may be of limited value. We disagreed and, on the basis of the response, and assigned the matter for oversight consideration.

Because DoD has limited visibility over the allocation of private/public funds in some interservice agreements and direct sales agreements, inaccurate reporting of the depot maintenance workload allocation may result.
Interservice workload agreements refer to work that is performed by one DoD component for another. Official guidance requires that the service departments establish measures to ensure correct accounting of interservice workloads; however the allocation of these funds may not always be accurately reported. We found instances where a service awarded depot maintenance work to another military service, which then contracted out a portion of that workload to the private sector.

The military service awarding the work, as principal owner of the funds, inaccurately reported this as public workload because it had not inquired whether all the awarded work was performed at the DoD depot.

While we were unable to fully evaluate the extent of inaccurate reporting associated with interservice agreements, until the service departments establish sufficient measures to accurately account for and report their distribution of depot maintenance workload reporting information will continue to be inaccurate.

Limited visibility over direct sales agreements is another reason why the depot maintenance workload allocation may be inaccurately reported. A direct sales agreement involves private vendors contracting back to DoD maintenance facility for labor to be performed by depot employees.

We found that the reporting of the distribution of private/DoD sector workload for direct sales agreements may not be accurate. With a direct sales agreement, there is no requirement for the *private vendor to identify and break out the contract costs, such as materials and other factors of production, and allocate them to expenses performed by the private vendor or the DoD depot.

We found the use of direct sales agreements may have resulted in an overstatement of private-sector funds, and understatement of DoD sector funds. In addition, we found similar instances where work performed by DoD sector under a direct sales agreement with a private vendor may have been misreported as being performed by the private sector.

Although we were unable to fully evaluate the extent to which costs associated with these types of contract agreements were misreported, until private vendors break out direct sales agreement costs by the private and DoD sectors, DoD reporting of funding allocations to maintain a 50/50 workload between private and DoD job sites may remain inaccurate.

Strategic cooperation with contractors is very important, and with the combined fleet support contracts, we enter into a phase where we need to stretch ourselves as a joint team to be innovative to meet the demanding requirements of adequate and affordable support for the transition into a more modern force with current, upgraded and new fleets being part of it.”

We think there’s a lot of headroom in this area. Our services business is an area that obviously we have invested in and we continue to invest. We’re still finding those areas where we can bring that cooperation to bear. We’re looking for growth going forward.” 

While there are too many examples of specific support service work orders that get fixed by the depots, the following descriptions represent a sampling of functional deficits in materiel conditions of the fleet that must be repaired before returning to service.

Ship has two reversible controllable pitch propellers damaged to point where they are not functional. Divers have also discovered at least one of the two propeller hubs was damaged in the grounding. Controllable pitch propellers are highly complex hydraulic systems used to position the propeller blades to change the speed and direction of a ship without changing the rotation of the ship’s shafts.

Ford Aircraft Carrier: problems with voltage regulators on its four Main Turbine Generators. One regulator reportedly malfunctioned badly enough to damage the number two turbine's rotors.

LCS: seawater leak in its hydraulic cooling system and lube oil system flood, also damage to one of its gas turbine engines.

DDG 1000 Destroyer: seawater leak in the propulsion motor drive lube oil auxiliary system for one of the ship’s shafts. During its transit, Destroyer lube oil coolers failed resulting in water leaking into the propulsion system several times – once resulting in loss of power. The seawater lube oil coolers prevent the lubrication of rotating shafts from breaking down due to heat and friction.

This questionnaire asks about the shipyard workforce, and the policies and processes used to run it. We will visit your shipyard after we have received your completed form to review the questionnaire to ensure we understand your responses and to give you an opportunity to submit additional comments.

1. What is the difference between operations/support O&S and operating/maintenance O&M? 

Operating and Support O&S is typically used when talking about the cost estimate for sustainment – operating and support cost.  Operations and Support is used to refer to the sustainment phase of the life cycle – Operations and Support phase.  Operations and Maintenance O&M is most commonly used to refer to a funding appropriation. 

2. What phases of the life cycle offer the most opportunities to influence O&S cost? 

O&S costs are most easily influenced early in the design phase, before the system is built.  The opportunities decrease as the life cycle progresses.  The phases listed from greatest to least influence are: Technology Maturity and Risk Reduction, Engineering and Manufacturing Development, Production and Deployment, Operations and Support.   

3. How does program manager know if program is affordable? 

Program is affordable if the expected yearly costs to acquire and sustain the program are less than or equal to the funding the Service has available for that program.  Programs must work with their service and programming communities to understand how their program fits among the capability portfolio resource priorities.  

 4. How are the O&S Affordability Goal and Cap documented?  Should it be part of the Life Cycle Sustainment Plan LCSP? 

Affordability Goals and Caps are documented in the milestone A and B Acquisition Decision Memos. The goals and caps are also recorded in the Defense Acquisition Management Information Retrieval system.
  
5. What is the difference between Will Cost and Should Cost?  

Will Cost estimate is a historically informed independent cost estimate used to establish budgets.  A Should Cost estimate includes the impact of specific cost control initiatives the program plans to use to keep its cost at or below the Will Cost.   

6.  How does program manager know what areas should be the focus of Should Cost initiatives? 

Should Cost initiatives can focus on any cost drivers impacting the program’s total cost.  Methods program can use to develop O&S Should Cost initiatives include an iterative process of progressively increasing the accuracy and precision of the O&S cost information through assessment of the design factors that influence cost, and analyzing historical costs for similar systems in order to understand cost-driving elements.   

7.  What types of costs fall outside of the program’s control and how should a program deal with these costs if they are significant? 

Examples of costs that fall outside the program’s control include infrastructure factors and regulations. Costs that fall outside of the program’s control should be treated as assumptions or constraints in sustainment planning.  These costs may be partially offset through internally controlled Should Cost initiatives.

8.  Product support manager uses the Integrated Product Support elements and the cost estimators use the CAPE O&S Cost Element Structure, but everything is paid through appropriations.  How do these different structures align and complement one another? 

Understanding how these elements work together is an important aspect of the produce support manager job and will assist in any communication with the cost estimating team.  Mapping the cost estimates into the product support elements allows the product support manager to understand where cost drivers exist and where the focus of Should Cost initiatives should be.  Mapping the product support elements into the CAPE cost element structure allows the cost estimator to assist the budgeters in requesting the right type of funds.  

9.  Does OSD have an O&S model that program manager can use to develop O&S Cost estimates and conduct what-if drills if requirements are not funded? 

CAPE is the OSD organization responsible for cost estimating guidance and does not advocate the use of any specific O&S cost estimating tool because it would be difficult to find a single tool that would be applicable to all the different types of DoD systems. Product Support Managers should work with the program’s cost estimating team to perform cost focused sensitivity analysis, excursions, or other what-if analyses. 

10.  Does OSD have any tools for comparing O&S cost estimates to actuals, which would help in defending budgets in the out years? 
​
The Visibility and Management of Operating and Support Costs databases exist to capture O&S cost actuals.  Product support managers can compare their estimate to these actuals but should work with the cost estimators 

​Readiness recovery objectives are enabled by predictive battlefield tracking. Right now, battlefield tracking is a very isolated set of observations. But if you could aggregate those observations together you would have a much better sense of predicting where something might be going.

Envision a scenario wherein dismounted infantry soldiers are taking heavy enemy fire while clearing buildings amid intense urban combat -- when an overhead drone detects small groups of enemy fighters hidden nearby, between walls, preparing to ambush. 

As the armed soldiers clear rooms and transition from house to house in a firefight, how quickly would they need to know that groups of enemies awaited them around the next corner?

Getting this information to soldiers in seconds can not only decide victory or defeat in a given battle, but save lives. What if AI-enabled computer programs were able to instantly discern specifics regarding the threat such as location, weapons and affiliation by performing real-time analytics on drone feeds and other fast-moving sources of information, instantly sending crucial data to soldiers in combat?

ATR-MCAS is an AI-enabled system of networked, state-of-the-art air and ground vehicles that leverage sensors and edge computing. The vehicles carry sensors enabling them to navigate within areas of interest to identify, classify, and geo-locate entities, obstacles, and potential threats which reduces the cognitive load on Soldiers. 

The system is also capable of aggregating and distributing the target data, which can then be used to make recommendations and predictions based on the combined threat picture provided.

Services are developing AI-based tool for gathering intelligence on potential targets. While previous AI efforts focused on recognizing objects in images., the new project will integrate a variety of data from diverse sources to construct a fuller picture by combine sensor input with operational experience to create an understanding of what’s going on.

We’re doing two things, analyzing the video for object identification and classification and then the second is contextualizing that information. If the aircraft has been spotted before, that information can be added to the fact that you just spotted it now, and you can determine it’s the same one based on speed or other factors.

Mission Data File optimization threat library is the data on board that proactively notifies the pilot of the aircraft of upcoming threats. The problem today is that it takes way too long to actually generate that Mission Data File. We can apply the data aggregation capabilities and AI to make that process an order of magnitude faster so the data are more current.

The process today is heavily manual, largely because the data sources and types are so diverse. “The analyst today would have to go data source by data source and then, within data source, data field by data field, looking, for instance, to see if this database here has this field for an object in the theatre.

Much of the data is highly unstructured, such as comments in text, that software doesn’t work well with. The hope is to automate the process of looking through sources and present the operator with a list of problems, such as potential deficiencies in intelligence, and recommendations

“This project pushes the existing limits of artificial intelligence and machine learning used for image classification and autonomous navigation.” 

“ATR-MCAS is different than existing autonomous system efforts because it is not limited to specific-use cases. It can be used to perform reconnaissance missions across the area of operations, or maintain a fixed position while performing area defense surveillance missions.” ATR-MCAS capabilities also extend to other ground warfare missions such as route reconnaissance, screening missions, or the verification of high-value targets.

Once identified by the autonomous sensors, the basic information about the identified threats are relayed back to the Soldiers through a mobile network. 

Threats are advertised in a common operating picture COP that provides an aggregated view of the battlefield and the information is then processed by an AI-enabled decision support agent, which can make recommendations such as the prioritization of the threats for Soldiers to utilize. Such information gathered will be achieved not by static data standards, but by robust data mediation, which allows for improved interoperability across ground and air systems.

Next-generation headsets are expected to have greater data collection capabilities for training scenarios, and to utilize AI. “That’s a case where a machine is going to be doing a lot of this work in terms of figuring out how you’re doing and helping you to improve your performance. 

This could be anything from helping you with decision options, helping you with information, or helping you pull the right visualizations. The smarter the support stuff gets, the more benefit the user gets out of it.” While current technology can today perform some of these functions, what if this data was provided to individual dismounted soldiers in a matter of seconds? And instantly networked? 

Operating in a matter of milliseconds, AI-empowered computer algorithms could bounce new information off vast databases of previously compiled data to make these distinctions--instantly informing soldiers caught in crossfire.

The Army calls this overall process “Soldier as a System”...the concept of using computer networking and the latest algorithms to seamlessly integrate otherwise disconnected nodes operated by soldiers. Specifically, this means a single electronic architecture will connect night vision goggles, individual weapon sites, wearable computers, and handheld devices showing moving digital maps and time-critical intelligence data. 

Information from all of these otherwise separate soldier technologies, which can also include acoustic and optical sensors or mobile power sources, such as batteries, is naturally interdependent and interwoven in crucial battlefield circumstances. 

An ability to use various applications of autonomy and AI to create instant information-sharing in war, changes the tactical and strategic circumstances confronted by individual soldiers, massively improving prospects for survival.

“The use of autonomy will assist in assimilating data from these various systems and quickly provide useful options to command decision makers including individual soldiers. Over time, more and more new intelligent technologies will be introduced and will continually change the nature of the battlefield and the very nature of the tasks the Soldiers perform.

The headsets will be used to help equipment maintainers. “We can get to the point where I can look at the toolbox, the device itself can do artificial intelligence recognition at the edge, look into the toolbox and identify the tool that I need for the next step in the repair and highlight that tool for me. I pick that tool up, look at the airplane, and now the next step in the checklist for that repair is holographically displayed.”

One such device that technicians put through its paces is a robotic platform that soldiers or Marines can guide by using hand and body movements to enter buildings, tunnels or other areas to navigate and map in either a guided or autonomous mode

Some of those efforts tackled problems that include detecting unmanned aircraft systems, accurately mapping areas and structures, maintaining communications with and awareness of friendly activities, protecting friendly forces from explosives or vehicles, and detecting indications of potentially hostile activity.

“In the future we will protect our soldiers by removing them from the effects of an initial undetected threat. Virtual presence, by remote autonomous systems, is a means which will allow us to realize this. The robot will be hit first.” The robot that could move via troops’ hand and body movements does its mapping and navigation functions using LiDAR and other sensing.

The operator guided it using mixed reality, looking through a head-mounted augmented reality display -- and recognizing a soldier’s hand gestures with help from a “hand-pose detection glove”. The goal was to pair an autonomous ground robot with a soldier-equipped augmented reality to provide situational awareness. 

“Ultimately we will use this information to create capabilities that increase mission success while reducing risk to our military forces in urban operations,” 

The program is aimed at taking the burden off soldiers by carrying water, ammunition, batteries and other heavy items needed to sustain a squad in remote environments.

But, the platform can also be tailored to specific missions such as running remote weapons stations, casualty evacuation and launching unmanned aerial systems or conducting reconnaissance.

Soldier evaluation has truly been a critical part of the CRS-H program from the outset, and has helped compress the time it takes to field a modernized capability that meets the needs of the Soldier. "We develop equipment for Soldiers to use in demanding situations, and there is no substitute for their perspective in operating the system - their input is of utmost value

1. Appealing to a Variety of Training Styles

2. Offering Experiences That Promote Repetition and Retention  

3. Eliminating Risk and Safety Concerns

4. Reducing Training Budget and Providing Scalability

5. Delivering Results to a Wide Range of Industries 

6.  Removing Time and Travel from the Equation

7.  Create Scenarios That Otherwise Are Impossible To Create

8. Focus On A Practical Approach 

9. Encourage Trainees To Learn From Their Mistakes
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10. Allow For Self-Guided Exploration

​Virtual platform has been built to train soldiers looking to develop reconfigurable virtual air and ground trainers as well as for a common synthetic environment that includes complex and real-life terrain.

Developing intelligent and adaptive tools supports the Army’s modernization efforts and provides the Warfighter with additional situational awareness, keeping them safer and enabling them to make smarter and more informed decisions on the battlefield.

Collected data will be used to train the sensors in recognizing and classifying objects in the field which improves the system’s accuracy and usability for future operations. The images collected will be labeled as specific types of objects in order to further train the model in identifying the same or similar objects of interest. Achieving a greater shared awareness at the edge facilitates collaboration between sensors, systems, and Soldiers.

Recently, components of the Synthetic Training Environment, or STE, have taken shape and will consist of One World Terrain — which compiles realistic and accurate virtual maps of territory — as well as training simulation/training management tool and virtual collective trainers. All of this will make up the soldier/squad virtual trainer and the reconfigurable virtual collective trainer.

“Right now, if I’m an Army soldier and I want to train for seizing a building, I get some opposing forces, I get some pop-up targets and things like that, and I rush into the building with real weapons and shoot.” But in a mixed reality world, holograms could be used to simulate enemy forces.

An issue that has plagued VR and AR headsets is latency between user actions and corresponding changes in the simulated environment. It reduces the effectiveness of simulations.

VR technology is going to keep improving because that’s all about the gaming community and the gaming business is growing. 

Augmented reality is a greater concern.

“That’s because you are trying to integrate the live and the virtual world, and there are significant challenges in that. “For instance, if you don’t have your alignment of those two worlds absolute, then … you’re off a lot as you go down range, and we can’t have that.

“So the specific challenges that I’m going after in AR … is that alignment, it’s that tracking, it’s that dynamic occlusion piece.”

The Army would like to have a single piece of kit that could transition from AR to VR, so the service could “get both out of that.

It also wants goggles with more capable passive sensors attached to them.

“The Army doesn’t like active type of sensors because the enemy can see them. We want passive type of sensors. The problem today with passive sensors is you don’t get the distance, you don’t get the range capability … that we require to do unit training.”

What’s the point of virtual training if it doesn’t feel real? The Army is tackling the problem, driving realism into virtual training to enhance effectiveness, but it’s not an easy task — even for the gaming industry.

One of the challenges the service is facing as it embarks on developing a Synthetic Training Environment is “providing a realistic and immersive virtual training experience” that portrays “computer-generated people and objects behind real things and doing so in real time from multiple perspectives as actors and objects move around in the environment.”

This problem is improving “dynamic occlusion,” and the service is working to solve the issue. The dynamic occlusion issue is one with which video gamers are well-acquainted. “When virtual projections within a player’s view of the world are not layered appropriately with real-world objects, the experience feels unnatural,” which is an undesirable attribute for a realistic training experience.

To achieve realism, the system must be able to sense dynamic changes to the mission environment, updating 3D terrain pictures — or meshes — in real time.

“In military scenarios, the problem can adversely affect the learning experience or lead to negative habit transfer if a soldier can’t realistically take cover or if a vehicle crew is hindered from accurately aiming and firing on an enemy position."

The Army plans to mature and demonstrate augmented reality algorithms and techniques to occlude real or virtual dynamic objects in realistic, changing environments. “Occlusion of live, moving objects is challenging — doing so at long distances is even more so.”

The service’s augmented-reality, head-mounted displays for dismounted soldiers are limited to small, indoor environments because the hardware limits the ability to sense the world around them “at a meaningful distance.”

To make it work, a sensor must register and a computer must “see and understand” the live environment including changes. This allows for realistic placement of computer-generated holographic content.

The service anticipates dynamic occlusion range and accuracy to improve over the next year using the developed techniques and algorithms.

There are still fundamental breakthroughs in methods for large-area tracking and in dynamic occlusion algorithms — particularly algorithm optimization for weapon tracking — on the horizon.

More advancement is also needed to achieve the extreme simultaneous localization and mapping SLAM capabilities  to construct and update maps of unknown environments while simultaneously keeping track of an agent’s location within it.

And while the Army works to bring more realism into its virtual constructive environments, achieving more realism in live training is challenging enough. The service is trying to find alternatives to its Instrumentable-Multiple Integrated Laser Engagement System, or I-MILES, a system that was developed for live force-on-force and force-on-target training at Army training locations around the world.

“Although I-MILES has seen enhancements over the years, laser-based systems inherently introduce artificialities into live exercises because of their limited ability to realistically represent lethal effects. A shrub or a cardboard box, for example, provides effective cover from a laser hit but would be useless in a firefight.”

The Army also wants to more accurately depict the effects of direct and indirect fire and train on more emerging longer-range or more sophisticated weapons that are difficult and expensive to depict in live training.

“Our goal with Live is to better replicate the lethality, vulnerability and effects of actual live-fire engagements at all of our Army training centers. “Simultaneously, the consequences of all the actions and the weapons systems in use must be accurately depicted in the virtual environment so soldiers training via simulation at other locations will have the same operational picture in real time.”

Army is jumping to the next level in virtual training.

Augmented reality systems enable troops to do mission planning across a variety of changing environments and adversaries, and customized training scenarios reinforce how to think tactically, to make rapid decisions and to communicate effectively.

The components of the STE have taken shape and will consist of One World Terrain — which compiles realistic and accurate virtual maps of territory — training simulation software, a training management tool and virtual collective trainers. All of this will make up the soldier/squad virtual trainer and the reconfigurable virtual collective trainer.

The idea is to be able to click on any place on a virtual globe and go there. Soldiers can then train virtually in an exact environment in which they can expect to operate in reality. 

The training simulation software will support training simultaneously across many locations and training platforms. The training management tool allows users to build training scenarios through simulation databases
.
The virtual trainers are being designed for dismounted, air and ground formations to train from a squad level through battalion, and ultimately at higher echelons. The trainer for the soldier and squad will support individual and collective task at the smallest formation.

The reconfigurable virtual collective trainers, or RVCT, will represent Army and Marine Corps air and ground systems for training at the unit level and will be used for mission rehearsals at every echelon.

The new trainer takes what was a tethered system and — while it still uses projectors and screens — allows users to move around a base with more flexibility, which is more operationally realistic.

Ultimately, the projectors and screens could be replaced by a headset, which is in keeping with the service’s requirement to bring trainers to an operational unit in the field or at home station. This means the system must be easy to set up and transport.

1. Create a More Engaging Training Experience.

2. Do Scenarios that are Impossible with Static Training

3. More Practical Hands-on Approach

4. Make Serious Mistakes — and Walk Away From Them

5. Encourage Exploration and Trial & Error

6. Boost Learning Retention

7. Appropriately Pace Learning

8. Improve Trainee Performance

9. Reduce Training Cost

10. Speed to Train

​A lot of preparation goes into ensuring Soldiers are battlefield-ready. An essential element of this preparation is using gathered intelligence to properly define the battlefield environment, determine the threat, and then develop proper courses of action. Soldiers need this intelligence for success, and while that won’t change, the way they acquire this information will, as modern technologies and capabilities are rapidly developing to embrace future warfare.

This ability to adapt to multiple performance standards provides increased situational awareness and presents Soldiers with faster decision-making abilities. Additionally, this adaptable design increases Soldier lethality and survivability by enabling Soldiers to find, identify, and track targets on the battlefield more swiftly.

In applications such as ATR, data mediation focuses on shared awareness at the tactical edge, which is critical to obtaining accurate information on the threat or object of interest. Processing image data from many sensors through artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques requires a significant amount of computational power at the tactical edge, providing the Soldier more immediate access to the data.

“Data collection events like this one are important because data is the precursor and an essential ingredient to building an AI/ML classification or prediction model. “The more opportunities we take to collect good, realistic data, the more effective our systems will be in identifying and classifying similar objects in the future.”

Soldiers can now use a virtual training simulator to shoot targets with individual weapons and even call in close-air support. The prototype system is an attempt to satisfy the Army’s need to create a synthetic training environment that dramatically increases the level of realism in training.

"They need a way to get soldiers into the same virtual environments that they have had for tanks and helicopters for decades,.

"When you do that in an immersive, synthetic environment, you can go beyond the live-fire range -- you can put soldiers into urban scenarios or into combat-type scenarios ... so you can stress them at a higher level and gain higher levels of proficiency."

"We can support up to a platoon ... that is something that the Army hasn't asked for. But the technology path that we have chosen allows us to actually do this for a platoon-sized unit over a large area. So we have the capability to do squad training or situational training exercises which we believe will be the next step as the Army goes down this path.”

The new trainer uses very high-quality graphics, similar to high-end games and relies on virtual-reality headsets and instrumented weapons.

"You can pick up a weapon, and the weapon is in that virtual environment," When you activate the stock of that weapon, you have that same sight picture as you would in real life, but you are in a virtual environment."

"The tool package that we put behind them will link them together and make them smart enough to understand where you are in the environment so that you can be realistically replicated in the synthetic environment. "As you ... take a knee, go to the prone, you are doing the same things in that synthetic environment.

Eventually, the sensor technology will be built into the headsets, so there will be no need for tracking sensors.
One of the features the Army is looking for is the ability for soldiers to train for calling in artillery or close-air support.

"You are ... on a hilltop looking down the valley, you've got some threat vehicles few miles away.  "You have A-10s circling overhead; they come down and you control them and call in their attack, so that you can apply close-air support directly on those targets."

The simulator also allows soldiers to engage enemy targets with individual weapons at realistic ranges. If soldiers are using a rifle with an effective range out to 500 meters "you can engage targets out to 500 meters.”

The trainer will also allow units to train for scenarios involving checkpoints that could call for the need to escalate from using non-lethal devices to lethal force.

The Army is now developing the Integrated Visual Augmentation System IVAS, a headset that uses augmented reality to equip soldiers with a heads-up display allowing them to sight their weapon and view key tactical data.
Scheduled to be ready for fielding, IVAS will also allow soldiers to train in synthetic training scenarios such as mission rehearsals before going on a live operation.

Virtual-reality headsets provide an immediate capability" the Army could take advantage of, but the system will be adaptable to work with augmented-reality headsets used with IVAS.

"The final product ... will include a variety of features: a color see-through digital display that makes it possible for the user to access information without taking your eye off the battlefield; thermal and low-light sensors that make it possible to see in the dark, literally; rapid target acquisition and aided target identification; augmented reality and artificial intelligence, to name just a few.”

Soldiers test the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, an advanced goggle that would put mixed reality with navigation, target identification and other capabilities into troops' view.

On the heels on the fielding of night vision goggles with options for thermal and rapid target acquisition software earlier this year, the Army is on track to field a “mixed reality” headset that would add a host data options into the view of every grunt.

The Integrated Visual Augmentation System recently hit its second soldier touchpoint, which has soldiers and Marines from both the conventional and special operations forces running through controlled scenarios with the goggle.

The system melds navigation, targeting, situational awareness and communications into a single device with advanced thermal and night vision.

The recently fielded Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular has Rapid Target Acquisition software and a wireless link to a weapon-mounted camera. That allows users to toggle between the goggle view, weapon-mounted camera view or a picture-in-picture option to see both.

The RTA feature allows for soldiers to shoot from the hip by lining up the view in the goggle and even poke the weapon over barriers or around corners to hit targets without exposing themselves.

The IVAS will link into those existing features but also could feature facial recognition software, target tracking so that the goggle could keep track of multiple threats and even algorithms that would identify threatening postures or behaviors in view.

Virtual reality, or VR, immerses users in a computer generated environment, such as video gaming. Augmented reality, or AR, transposes data or other digitally created images on top of a real-world field of view, such as the yellow first-down marker or the orange strike zone box that TV viewers see when watching football or baseball games.

VR and AR headgear can improve the way troops train for high-end fights against advanced adversaries by providing digitally created enemy forces or other environmental factors that they might encounter in a real battle,.

In the traditional pilot training construct, soliders start with some paper publications or an iPad that has their training documents on it. They go from that into an extremely expensive traditional simulator where they can do the full range of flight maneuvers. The problem with those expensive sims is there’s only a handful of them and they’re constrained on the number of times a trainee can get into them.

But today’s headsets have some drawbacks.

“When you start going to the super high resolution goggles, the field of view gets narrower. To get a wider field of view you’re going to a lower resolution goggle.

“But ideally the technology work will continue to advance and we’ll have a super wide field of view with super high resolution and very advanced frame rates so there’s no jitteriness. We’re just not there yet.”

However, at the rate that technology is progressing in the gaming industry, the Air Force might have the types of VR headsets it wants in the not too distant future.

“We’re very excited in the next couple of years about where this is going, because we’re not far away from headsets that are incredibly high fidelity to where anybody putting on the headset will be” immersed in a virtual environment that looks much more like the real world.

“They may shrink the existing capabilities with the existing field of view, but as they try to bring the field of view to something that’s bigger, they’re going to be forced to go a bit wide.  “We’ll see the devices lighten up, but we may actually see them physically grow to encompass a larger instantaneous horizontal field of view.”

A modified version of Holo Lens augmented reality headsets are being provided to the Army for the Integrated Visual Augmentation System program, which includes a heads-up display. The service intends to use the devices for training purposes and to provide improved situational awareness and data access to troops on the battlefield.

The HoloLens system has see-through lenses. “I can see the real world, but we can now take data and information and display that in the form of 3D holograms that we can lock into your environment,” 

1. Virtual Reality Provides a Safer Training Environment

2. Ability to Create Exposure to Risk, More Realistic Training

3. Virtual Reality Training Allows for Endless Repetition

4. Real Life is Random. Virtual Reality Tools Can Generate That Randomness

5. Virtual Reality Provides a Safe Environment to Test and Evaluate Procedures

6. Immersive VR Training Can Increase Trainee Focus

7. Virtual Reality Training Gives Trainers Better Evaluation Tools

8. Training Can Be Customized for Specific Sites, Scenarios, and Standards

9. Virtual Reality Can Make Training More Efficient
​
10. Virtual Reality Training Research Indicates Higher Retention

​What if DoD had a computer model so supremely detailed, it could reproduce exactly the operations of a complex military system? If the Pentagon ran the system alongside real-world applications, leaders would know when systems were working properly, and when they were going south.

Navy leaders say this notion of a “Digital Twin” is not just an interesting idea, it’s an urgent imperative.

“The Digital Twin concept is critical. To pace the threat, we must have an agile testing methodology, which allows for the complexities presented by new automation and technologies. We need to understand how we test in the future with artificial intelligence.”

Military planners and technology leaders on the industry side agree that with the rise of big data, and the ready availability of massive compute power, Digital Twins could dramatically improve maintenance regimens and lead to more efficient introduction of new and emerging systems.

As the name suggests, a Digital Twin is a computer-based model of a mechanical or electrical system. “You take a machine and make a computerized replica of that machine. For the Navy it solves a lot of critical issues.”

Those issues primarily have to do with maintenance and, by extension, readiness. Digital twins could help by paring back routine maintenance in favor of as-needed repairs.

“Rather than saying a ship must come in at six months, you can maybe keep that ship out there longer, because you are working with known data as opposed to just guessing. That gives us greater mission readiness and it gives us cost reduction. The less often you pull in a ship for maintenance, the less it costs.”

Digital twins also could help the Navy to rapidly prototype new systems, and to ensure those systems align with real-world needs. “The idea is to take the lessons learned from working with digital models and use that information to improve designs of the future fleet.

For this vision to come to fruition, however, industry and military leadership will need to lean heavily on big data processing techniques and emerging artificial intelligence capabilities.

“It’s the organization, structuring, contextualization and analysis of data to produce actionable information and to help us make decisions. Right now, we are at a point where the generation of data is so easy and so cheap that it would be an oversight of us not to take advantage of it.”

While engineers can deliver detailed digital models of complex systems, it’s the artificial intelligence that brings those models to life, allowing them to mimic the operation of real-world counterparts. “It needs the ability to think like a human, to know when something is not working right.”

Digital Twins are already deployed in the network world, where virtual computing allows engineers to easily replicate entire computer networks. If a system is compromised, they need only access the master copy to replace the corrupt version with a pristine iteration.

For the military to implement a mechanical version of this – to model in exact detail a jet engine, for instance, and then make maintenance decisions based on that model – a new approach may be required.

“The technical framework is there for it. Now we need to expand people’s imagination and expand their comfort zone. “If we’re talking about key pieces of aircraft structure, people are going to have some reservations about that. Right now, it’s about gaining trust in the technology.”

“Tool provides an assignment board where you can evaluate depot maintenance technicians skills by using an auto network function”

Once maintenance depots have production lines running at full capacity, hundreds to thousands of products can be created during the workday. Yet those long production runs can come to a screeching halt due to malfunctioning machinery. 

This problem leaves supervisors in a bind as they are scrambling to organize paper work orders to get a technician out on the facility floor. Who is the right worker for the maintenance service job, and are they available for this shift?

Tool provides manufacturers, distributors and other asset-intensive service enterprises with the network application they need to translate maintenance data into field service.

Maintenance and repair services are inevitable tasks that every field unit has to deal with. However, scheduling those tasks, getting in contact with the qualified technician who can do the specific job, and providing techs with the required spare parts can take up precious time and effort that your depot doesn’t have in large supply. Maintenance service departments are still relying on paper documents to be filled out by hand and faxed to their offices. 

Tool changes the maintenance service field by automating all these services with their mobile solutions. Tool is a manufacturing service and repair software designed for depots and distributors so they can turn their maintenance technicians into a mobile workforce. A workforce who can schedule maintenance tasks, update spare parts inventory, obtain instant maintenance change orders, perform inspections and do other tasks whether they are in the office or out in the field.

Technicians are carrying parts, tools and everything else they need to complete the job. Carrying around paper documents becomes aggravating as the paperwork gets shuffled about on office desks or vehicle dashboards if technicians have to travel to the job. Work order management software allows the technician to pull up the service repair information right on their mobile smartphone, laptop or tablet device. They can read the location, order number and work type that must be performed.

The technicians can update the order information to detail the work they provided, parts that were used, and any follow-up repair details. Then they can instantly send this information to the office so that the supervisor can review service performance. The software allows real-time data sharing that can be used to improve repair and maintenance services provided by the technicians as well as monitor inventory levels of spare parts so you can order more when supplies run low.

Every technician has a particular skillset that makes them an expert regarding certain types of machinery and tools. Once you find the right technician to complete the job, you can then drag and drop work orders into each technician’s specific work board. An automated alert is sent immediately to the technician’s mobile device to tell them about the pending work order that needs completed.

Visually Track Technicians to Assign Work Based on Location

You may already have a technician in a specific part of the depot facility when another mechanical emergency arises. The visual schedule display has GPS tracking software integrated into the system as you know where technicians are by viewing the available map.

With this visual schedule display, you can:

Check technician’s work status at the specified location to see how much time they will spend at the worksite.

Pull up maintenance order statuses on the same screen as you can better decide which worker should do the tasks based on location.

Know where workers are instantly when they are moving to their next work location

Arrange work orders into specific categories based on the technician’s availability.

In addition, knowing where workers are can allow the supervisor to increase the level of service that his technicians offer based on how long the worker is at a particular jobsite. They can determine if the work is taking the technician too long to complete on their own, as they can see if there are any additional technicians nearby that could provide additional assistance.

Scheduling and Visual Tracking at Your Fingertips

Tool makes maintenance tasks easier for supervisors so that they can efficiently move their technician workforce to the right locations and send only those employees who are best for the job. Yet this is way more to this integrated software than just maintenance scheduling and creating digital work orders that can be used on mobile devices.

Stay tuned for our next installment that will talk about how Tool can help improve inventory management for maintenance departments by offering spare parts ordering management as well as providing key benefits when performing regular equipment inspections.
​
Tool makes it super simple and inexpensive to upgrade your existing equipment with easily attached component and electrical sensors that monitor critical systems and assets. With tool, you’ll know exactly what’s going on with today’s machines, so you’ll avoid unplanned downtime and dramatically increase productivity and profits.

Tool sensors are placed directly on your machines or components to automatically monitor condition. The sensor data transmits  to an easy-to-install gateway and is  then sent to servers running powerful analytics. Results are transmitted from the server to a user-friendly app, where  you will view real time machine  condition and maintenance advice.

Far beyond the monitoring capabilities and trending packages being touted by new entrants to the field of predictive maintenance and analytics, products ‘listen’ to key assets and components to detect changing health and operating conditions long before the machine controller issues a warning or alarm condition.

Machine control data typically only shows process data, whereas tool actually analyzes the data from vital machine components, such as gearboxes, heaters, pumps and more. 

The prescriptive maintenance solution provides actionable maintenance advice and allows you to schedule maintenance at a convenient time rather than suffer a costly shut down.

Power Analyzer diagnoses everyday electrical problems including costly issues that can result in lengthy downtime such as motor burnout, control and display memory loss, and failing transformers, capacitors and more. 

Power Analyzer uses edge analytics technology to capture, interpret and diagnose the data obtained from electrical components and internal power distribution.   

Easy-to-understand dashboard gauges warn users of pending failure of stator windings, motor bearings and heaters  as well as all common power line  issues such as sag, swell, harmonics, ground faults and imbalances.   

The data is presented in a manner  that it is easily understood by personnel regardless of any electrical engineering experience. Every manufacturer has electrical issues. These issues can and will affect productivity, machine performance and  electrical costs. 

Tool is designed to help diagnose everyday electrical issues and present them in a way that can be easily understood by maintenance and management alike, regardless of experience on electrical components and related issues.

Historic data is available through equipment performance trend lines. And, a streamlined dashboard interface delivers a clear summary of the powerful analytics for all monitored equipment, neatly organized by department and location. 

Tool offers easy-to-understand diagnostic and actionable maintenance advice via text or email messages and handheld or desktop dashboards, in advance of machine or component failure. No manual data  analysis is required. 

The Pump Analyzer monitors operating condition and trend health of pumps and blowers in various industrial applications. The  Pump Analyzer sensors easily attach to the pump exterior and constantly measure vibration plus ambient temperature and pressure. A plug-in connection reliably powers the sensor, unlike competitive units that rely on batteries for power. 

Pump Analyzer proprietary analytics algorithm tracks and compares the collected data against a baseline to determine overall pump condition. Filter status, oil status, pump utilization or pressure level trends are all constantly monitored. Visualization of valuable operating metrics is delivered through easy-to-understand mobile and desktop dashboards

The easy-to-install Component Analyzer constantly tracks the operating conditions trends of rotating components in industrial machinery. Easy-to-understand icons direct users  to view component health trends displaying months of operating history. 

Customizable threshold values allow users to identify preferred maintenance conditions, unhealthy operating conditions, or deteriorated component condition. 

Time Domain data sampling methods enable continuous trend monitoring to spot anomalies and repeatable events that occur under changing process or operating conditions, allowing early detection of developing component conditions issues, and the operating trends that may be causing them.

Traditional Frequency-Domain data and analytics add enhanced diagnosis capabilities for bearing and gearbox faults initially, with other device libraries being added each month. Visualization of key operating and analytic results are conveniently delivered 24/7 via web browser or mobile app in easy-to-understand dashboard gauges, and via email/text alerts. No advanced training or expertise is needed.

In the manufacturing world, improving the utilization of assets and increased  productivity are among the most important goals. Reliable assets reduce downtime,  improve production quality and get product out the door faster.

The most effective approach is to use a predictive maintenance solution that readily installs to your existing equipment and has a powerful analytics software package that will collect data from your monitored equipment in real time, compare the data with established  baselines, assess the condition of the equipment and use analytics to effectively manage maintenance activities.

With tool, you’ll know exactly what’s going on with your machines so  that you can avoid unplanned downtime and dramatically increase productivity and profits. Ask us how we can help implement a predictive Digital Twin maintenance program for you today!

1. Routine maintenance includes cleaning, installing  updates, etc.

2. Repairs to equipment that has stopped performing its assigned function or is performing its function inadequately.

3. Companies lack awareness of when equipment is due for maintenance, upgrade or replacement

4. Downtime is  due to machinery failure/malfunction

5. Poorly maintained equipment results  in lost production  time and lost profits. Unscheduled repairs are costly

6. Installing predictive maintenance equipment helps to determine  the condition of your process to provide actionable intelligence to warn of impending failure if reported issues are not addressed.

7. The ideal predictive  maintenance system  will allow for scheduling  of maintenance prior to equipment failure, which will help to eliminate unplanned downtime, reduce repair  costs and equipment failures and slow asset deterioration.

8. Predictive maintenance program far less expensive than a reactive program 

9. Wearable-solutions all non-invasively upgrade today’s equipment today. 

10. Simple and inexpensive to upgrade your existing  equipment with easy-to-  attach component and  electrical sensors to monitor critical systems and assets.

​Navy is seeing first-hand that data collection and analysis can go a long way in addressing lingering readiness problems, as the “Digital Twin” Office continues to roll out a set of pilot programs meant to introduce the service to the benefits of data science.

While its ultimate goal is to influence acquisition to create a smarter data environment – much the way industry has used big data to better reach its customers, create efficiencies in production and more – the office’s first major action is to create awareness of its mission through a series of Digital Twin pilots that tackle readiness problems in the aviation and surface ship communities that have not been solved with traditional approaches.

The new organisation will assist systems commanders, type commanders, fleet commanders and others in identifying problems that can be solved using data analytics as a tool; facilitating a discussion between sailors and data scientists to create an approach for solving the problem; and then finding ways to apply that new approach to other parts of the Navy where applicable.

One pilot project looks at making surface ship maintenance availabilities more efficient, particularly as the Navy tries to embrace Digital Twin solutions for maintenance, only fixing or replacing components as needed instead of on a fixed schedule.

Supply officers today focus on reactively replacing parts that are consumed from their inventory, instead of proactively predicting what parts will be needed and when, which would be more useful in a Digital Twin maintenance environment.

“We want to look at one of our top surface readiness degraders and say, can we be more predictive of the supply side there, reduce the supply chain time and get better accuracy around how we provide parts for those types of repairs?”

“You might have to replace a blade on an engine, but you don’t necessarily order the bolts with that part. So can we create the relationships so that so whenever blade is replaced usually you have to have to also get this or that component – it’s kind of like e-shopping, if you bought this you may also want this – so can we create that kind of predictive supply system that would say, you just requested to replace the blade on the engine, you might also need these other parts because we find that there’s a high rate of these types of repairs with that as well.

And then it’s over to the user. The machine and the data have presented some courses of action; the user can say no don’t need that, you already checked, or you didn’t check that, maybe you need to do that, let’s go see. And hopefully then you can kind of compress these maintenance cycles a little more and speed up the time.”

Another pilot optimises operations of the ships’ power plants through a “Digital Twin” effort, where a virtual replica of the power plant is created so simulations can be run to understand how it will perform and require maintenance under various conditions.

“We wanted the communities to show that this wasn’t just some tech kind of application, but when you combine the digital and the physical expertise together, you could get outcomes that you otherwise couldn’t get if you tried to solve it on your own.

We wanted to expose the different aspects of the Navy to the tools and techniques, the language – a big part of this is, our users, our commanders have to be able to say, ‘We think there’s a data problem,’ instead of, ‘There’s a problem and let me go solve it in a traditional way.’

It’s a little bit different to say, ‘I think I have a data problem and I think I can get at this if only I had better access to data, or had the ability to analyze it differently, or had a different toolset.”

Office is addressing a major component of the Navy and Marine Corps’ F-18 readiness challenge: “non-mission capable, supply” aircraft that cannot fly because maintainers are awaiting the delivery of the spare parts needed to fix them. Both the maintainers and the supply community have separately tried to address this problem, which has only gotten worse in recent years due to insufficient funding. But the Office is coming at the problem from a new angle.

To begin the process, maintainers at the air station sat down with supply officers and data scientists to talk about the non-mission capable supply problem in a Digital Factory event.

“What we’ve seen at these factories is, in some cases the maintenance guys are like, we can’t solve this problem, it’s really really hard; the supply guys are like, well we can help with that; and the data science guys are like, okay, well what data do you both have and how might we pull it together? And can we automate the process? Can we make it more predictive instead of reactive?

During the Digital Twin Factory event, the maintenance and the supply experts were asked to think about what data they collect, through what processes, and to what end. Data shouldn’t be collected for data’s sake and they were asked to consider how data collection is actually contributing to their mission.

The data scientists then helped them talk through what data could be shared and how, to assist each community in doing their jobs better, and to ultimately reduce the time it takes for an airplane to come into the depot, maintenance to begin, required parts to be identified, the right parts to arrive at the depot, and the airplane to be sent back out for operations.

Ultimately, the maintainers were given a new data set to work with and new processes to implement on a trial basis, and the mean time to repair aircraft is already down. The maintainers have also identified new policies, training areas and additions to their data environment that they think could benefit them going forward.

In addition to getting aircraft back to mission-capable status faster, the pilot is also sparking the right kind of conversation about using data to tackle problems, with maintainers considering how to pull data from other communities and from open-source documents such as historical weather data, as well as questioning what new data they may want to collect going forward.

Navy is starting to understand the power of data analysis to help address tough problems. It’s a bit unclear now how the office will spend its time and manpower after the first pilots wrap up, though it will likely include tackling more project ideas that come in and “We’re assisting commands in holding their own Digital Factory events to brainstorm solutions to problems. We’re going to take lessons learned from these first pilot programs and using them to change the entire data environment the Navy has built for itself.

“We want to solve a problem, we want to show the community there’s value here so they can start thinking of, well I also have this other problem that might be something. And then you could start to pull that back and say, once we start to get that predictive supply piece, do we have the right data environment in order to make that scalable outside of surface readiness to other pieces?

“And then start walking the organisations through that and where they need to partner, and how to have the right contracts in place and the right acquisition strategy to go after those types of data environments. And do we have the right skillsets inside our workforce to be able to manage the data once we start collecting it and analyzing it?”

“Part of it is about the technology and the introduction of new technology, but the really big return, that ultra-boost you get, is out of redesigning your processes and streamlining them, making them simpler and making them focus on what the user really needs. And that’s where you get a big productivity kick.

The digital twin for an asset is unique. Though the assets may have common functionality, they differ in configuration and operating conditions. So it would a big mistake to believe that similar digital twins can be created for assets with similar applications.

Big Bang approach: In the long run, organizations can envision building a digital twin for an entire factory floor. But to reach that end goal, organizations cannot look for a Big Bang approach and start investing in building the digital factory at one go. This approach would be detrimental to the organization.

A better approach would be to identify the criticality of assets and also their data dependency needs for building a digital twin. Based on these two factors, the assets can be combined into groups. Organizations can then follow a phased approach for building digital twins for these groups of assets to reach the end goal of a digital factory.

Sourcing quality data: Many organizations collect operational data via field logbooks and then update the local information management systems — which in turn become the input sources for enterprise management systems. Quality of data thus sourced gets affected by factors like data entry error, data duplication from multiple local systems, etc.

Organizations need to ensure that standardized practices are followed to minimize data entry errors by using standardized data collection templates, collecting more field samples, etc. Organizations can employ data de-duplication techniques to ensure duplication errors are minimized or eliminated entirely.

Lack of common device communication standards: As part  the Digital Twin initiative, organizations have been investing in network devices to gather process data from across the enterprise. Most of these devices suffer from not being configured to speak in a single language, as currently there is no universally accepted communications standard. So these devices have challenges in understanding and communicating with each other.

Navy is facing shortages of fully qualified technical personnel capable of diagnosing and addressing issues while training the next generation of maintainers prior to touching physical systems. In some instances, new systems are brought on-line for which no expertise exists. 

Digital Twin Office wants to develop a system that enables diagnosis and efficient repair through advanced modeling and provide much needed technology direction for maintenance training applied to network enabled equipment. 

The primary aim of Digital Twin Office is to develop a cross-platform maintenance training system using advanced modeling techniques to facilitate the understanding of complex systems and afford powerful analytical tools to enable more efficient repairs. 

Crew typically attend training centers and receive most of their rate-specific training up front, which can last several years. However, by the time crew members reach their first duty assignment their skills may have atrophied or the technology they trained on has become outdated. 

So Navy wants to provide “Ready, Relevant Training” to the Fleet, which will provide a career-long learning continuum where training is delivered at multiple points throughout a career by modern delivery methods to enable faster learning and better knowledge retention.

One manner in which training construct can be delivered to each crew member is through modernization of training systems to accelerate learning, minimize atrophy, and provide on-the-job performance support that improves individual performance, and enhances mission readiness to significantly reduce the cost and time for getting the training to the Fleet, increasing agility in the Navy’s rapidly changing world. 

Specifically, the goal is to provide training content accessible anytime from anywhere, and that content is updated and delivered to the Fleet faster. There will be modern content delivery at the point of need for convenient access to training content and support.

Navy wants to Develop a system architecture and demonstrate the feasibility of specific examples and implementations of Digital Twin technologies applied to Navy and/or Marine Corps maintenance training. Specifically, develop an approach whereby the Digital Twin technology can be used to create content to effectively train multiple expertise levels e.g., novice through expert.

The services are developing a Digital Twin prototype to conduct a proof-of-concept technical feasibility demonstration, and develop a Digital Twin technology infrastructure that amplifies maintenance training. Incorporate into the network system technologies to develop predictive algorithms for machine breakdown/failure and recommendations for maintenance to remediate the failure modes most effectively. 

Specifically demonstrate how the Digital Twin solution i.e., data, interactive 3D models, process visualizations can be used to train multiple expertise levels.

Transition the Digital Twin technology to an operational environment. Develop a plan to transition Digital Twin technology and its associated guidelines and principles to provide much needed technology direction for maintenance training applied to network enabled equipment. In addition to the Navy and Marine Corps market, the technology could have broad applicability across DoD maintenance as well as in manufacturing maintenance, heavy equipment maintenance, and the associated training packages.

1. Allocate resources to include potential mobilised operations

2. Customise depot complex to meet requirements not performed by industry

3. Consolidate workloads to capitalise on similar/common capabilities

4. Distribute workloads to activity with capacity to perform

5. Establish Technical Interfaces between Services to share assignments

6. Identify components of Service plans to match resources with requirements

7. Consider commercial and in-house size/capability constraints

8. Fund Depot operations, construction & modernisation activities

9. Implement uniform cost accounting and information systems
​
10. Accomplish product support goals of administrative 

Maintenance based on schedules and timetables is being replaced with a new approach aimed at getting out in front of maintenance, looking at available Digital Twin sensors to predict where there is going to be failure, and eliminating that before it comes to a head. Better mechanisms to streamline parts supply from industry partners will go a long way in achieving Readiness of the Force.

Extending the lifespans of existing ships using data-driven maintenance efforts is the best strategy for growing the size of the Navy. The key to maintaining ships and enabling the Navy to extend their lifespans is data analytics.

“We have ships with a number of sensors on them, measuring things like reduction gears, shafting components, turbines, generators, water jets, air conditioning plants, high packs, a number of components, and we’re actually pulling data off those ships, in data acquisition systems.

Navy is analyzing data gleaned from smaller ship component operations to determine how often such components need servicing, oil changes, filter changes, other maintenance actions and replacement. 

“That’s one of the things we’re doing to get after utilising the Digital Twin technology we have today to operate the ships we have today more efficiently and more effectively.
​
During previous attempts at incorporating pilot programs, there was the concern that if major efforts like refurbishing tanks were only done when needed, rather than on a predetermined timetable, the Navy could avoid spending time and money on work ahead of need.

However, that also meant that shipyards wouldn’t have a clear work package before a ship showed up at the pier, adding uncertainty and, ultimately, more time and cost into the maintenance availability.

This time around, Navy is looking at condition-based maintenance as a way to address smaller maintenance items in such a way that data analysis points a ship crew to components that are experiencing minor performance issues or otherwise showing signs they are about to fail before the failure actually occurs.

A pilot program using enterprise remote monitoring will occur on an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. Data collected will be sent for analysis, and operators will learn how to use the data to understand how their systems are performing and if maintenance or repairs are needed.

Navy wants to have a system of apps used to collect data from ship components, analyze the data, share it with operators and schedule work. The systems that will be monitoring, for example the turbine; it will tell the operators when a work procedure has to be performed and it will also then tap into the work package side of the house and generate a work package that gets sent to the ship, to the work center, to do the work. And if there’s a part involved, it will be able to pull a part from the supply system.”

Testing is occurring now, but there are some obstacles the Navy has to overcome before large-scale deployment. The Navy is struggling with how to transmit data securely. “The performance of any given asset is something we want to hold close.

So what you have to do is architect this from kind of the get-go with that kind of security. “You can harvest that data and you could potentially discover vulnerabilities, so you have to protect that. That’s We’re bringing that security aspect into the program.”

The Navy doesn’t have enough forces to go everywhere we need to go, and we have a pretty fragile mix of ships, so that when we miss an availability coming out on time, or we don’t build something to the schedule they’re supposed to build to, there are real-world consequences to that.”

The true determining factor of whether a ship’s lifespan can be extended is flexibility of the platform. The Arleigh Burke-class is the Navy’s workhorse today because, during the past 30 years, the Navy has successfully updated its operating systems.

Moving forward, extending the life of the ships in this class means back-fitting many of the older Flight I and Flight II with a scaled-back version of the AN/SPY-6[V] Air and Missile Defense Radar [AMDR] to keep these ships relevant to current and future mission needs.

“If you’re willing to do the maintenance on the ships, from a hull and mechanical perspective, you absolutely can keep them longer. The issue is really not can you keep them 50 years; the issue is can they maintain combat relevance. If they can maintain combat relevance, we know we can keep them longer.”

We have big concerns about declining ability of crews to take care of their own Ships. Maintenance Crews today have fewer opportunities to become proficient at ship maintenance during shore duties, meaning crews going to sea bring with them less knowledge about how the ship and its systems work.

While a complex challenge to address, part of the solution would be ensuring that crews can begin pre-deployment training on time – without delays from ship maintenance availabilities going long – and ensuring that that training time includes an emphasis on maintaining and repairing the ship.

Years of constrained funding that have taken risk on things like tech manuals for Engineering Operational Sequencing System, Planned Maintenance System and resourcing maintenance, to where what has been the risk taker has been compressing that training timeline

Biggest takeaway from training period is the importance of being flexible and "adapt as-you-go" while prioritizing the task at hand. "Really, you have to have an ability to ask yourself … 'What are my priorities? What do I need to be doing at this moment with my hands?' You kind of have to figure out based on what's going on around you, whether I should be focusing on.

“It’s clear what the operational fleet’s demand is for us, which is to make sure the ship can be maintained, and the sailors where possible can do that. So we are focused on training for the sailors, making sure they had the equipment, the spare parts, the technical documentation and more to help the ship’s crews conduct more work themselves.

Crews found all kinds of things to 3D print – wrenches, assembly parts, protective covers to shield expensive equipment from repeated impact, and even a cover for a laser device that was on back order for several months and was instead printed in a single day.

“If you have a cable assembly for your utilities, you can only order the entire assembly – but if you don’t need the entire assembly, you just need one little component, you could print that one component for a few dollars rather than have to order the entire assembly which may cost several thousand dollars spending on what the item is.

There is still an ongoing conversation on the division of labor between sailors on the ships’ crews and the Regional Maintenance Centers, along with the role of contractors.

In a contested operating environment with denied communications, he noted, “you are not going to have the ability to phone home.”

We have a certain amount of maintenance that’s in hands of the crew, we have a certain amount of maintenance that’s in contractor hands, and over the life of the program we’d like to get more of that into sailor hands and less of it in contract hands. “That not only decreases cost but it increases ownership.”

“The key is to increase sailor ownership and decrease the reliance on contractors and original equipment manufacturers. Manning requirements do not support shifting the entire maintenance workload to the crew, as their capacity is limited. But we are committed to maximizing the amount of planned maintenance that we perform by the crew.

Navy is trying to boost its crews ability to perform more maintenance work on the ship without outside assistance. While this wouldn’t make much of a dent in the looming surge in workload, it could cut down on contractor maintenance costs, and it would lead to a more self-sufficient fleet capable of operating in complex environments.

“From talking to crews, one of the frustrating things for them was, it was just kind of the way we set it up, but contractors would come aboard and do the work but the crews would have to hang all the tags … so it was kind of like, rather than having the crew do the work, we would just have the sailors do all the setup and teardown, and then the contractors would step in and do the work and the sailors would watch them do the work. It’s crazy. There’s some maintenance items that are appropriately done by the depot – reset and safety … some smaller day-to-day tasks we just had to get after that.”

It would be nice to get all the open and inspects done before the avail and put the results in the solicitation for you to do the work,” so the work package is accurate and the tank work doesn’t show up as “new work” later on, which impacts cost and schedule.

“By not getting it in the solicitation, it guarantees that you’re going to have growth and new work in the availability. You’ve got it scoped in to the solicitation to do the open and inspect, but not the results of it. What we do there is we have industry provide us hours on what they think may be needed. So it’s one of the additional parts or final parts of the avail that’s not defined.

“The Navy can go do the open and inspect work. We do multiple assist visits to the ships for areas that doesn’t include things like hot work, cutting something open to look, or something that would cause a system to come down, because the ship’s not in the avail.

“We’re conducting a very extensive conditions-based engineering reliability maintenance examination. The Navy, certainly the surface navy, in many cases by default, has done a very heavy reliance on time-based maintenance – so it’s monthly, time to change the oil, and we would do that. Well, that certainly is preventive, but is it the most cost-effective, most efficient and most effective way to do maintenance:”

“So we’re going to take a big swing at, are there ways we can certainly be more effective and efficient? When you have an optimally manned or minimally manned crew, you need to be effective with that time because you want to make sure you’re doing the right maintenance.

If you just say, time-based, you’ve got to do all this, you might have to make some risk decisions on which maintenance to do, but it might not be the right maintenance to do and the right maintenance to forego.

If you had sensors and systems and the ability to say this piece of equipment is more at risk – so do I go do the change oil on my port diesel engine or change the oil on my starboard diesel engine? If we had the metrics and assessment rigor that would say we might be getting ready to experience a casualty on your port engine, then we would say, we wait to do the starboard and I’ll go do the port engine. So that’s sort of the thought process behind the conditions-based maintenance instead of the time-based maintenance.

Where you are constrained with man hours with a smaller crew, you sometimes have to make those decisions, so we’re taking a look at how we can use the assessment rigor to help drive us into making the right maintenance decisions. And then what that may allow us to do as well is examine do we have the right crew complement, numbers and by ratings, designators, skillsets. Do we have the right total numbers, and do we have the right skillsets?”

Every launch. a slew of maintenance checks have to be conducted. “All of those checks that are in the regular routine operations of the ship are what the ship crew does naturally when they’re out to sea, which is why we end up with so many man hours a year”

“It was really about the monthly level and below checks are kind of within the capacity and the capabilities of the crew. And then those checks that went beyond the monthly scope usually were more intrusive and demanded more man hours – not always the case, but typically – and those were, in many cases, planned for those to be contractor-executed checks, because if you were doing them quarterly you could probably schedule them in conjunction with periods of time when the ship would be in port.”

As the fleet operates the ships more, crews will find more efficient ways to schedule maintenance work, trimming down on the number of hours required to do maintenance. The way to make a real dent in total maintenance, though, would be to fully implement the conditions-based maintenance model.

One ship was equipped with thousands sensors that send data off the ship on the status of various shipboard systems. Using that data to make decisions about when to perform maintenance – rather than just doing a daily, weekly or monthly check because a manual says so – would be the most efficient use of the small crew’s time
It's long days, it's busy days … it's not an easy job. "But it's rewarding. Its an organization where crew members have the ability to impact operations at a strategic level. And that's a pretty amazing thing."

1. Exhaust all available means of resolution prior to submitting an Action Report

2. Inform expeditor or aircraft crew chief of Action Report requirement

3. Ensure detail is added to Action Report to alleviate interpretation issues

4. Include tail number of aircraft if Action Report is related to an aircraft

5. Ensure correct Action Report categorisation, severity and classification

6. Review all Action Report submissions to ensure correct priority has been assigned

7. Ensure all info/attachments provided on Action Report are technically accurate/complete

8. Ensure Action Report details provided by initiator explain problem completely

9. Approve Action Reports with record of submittal notification
​
10. Monitor Action status via customer relations