A high-demand, deployable training software is the Army's goal

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  November 9, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  UK - MOD sets out vision to diversify supply base

  The Ministry of Defence has today announced plans for modernising its estate and establishing a broader and more diverse supply base. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation's (DIO) new procurement plan outlines a programme of major projects and contacts for the next five financial years. This includes work to construct new buildings, such as housing and accommodation, the refurbishment of current facilities; as well as services such as catering, waste management and cleaning. The plan also sets out ambitions to establish a broader and more diverse supply base, including doing more business with small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). Currently, around 75% of spending on maintenance at defence sites goes directly or indirectly to SMEs, and further diversifying the supply base will help build resilience into projects and provide more opportunities for smaller companies to work on key defence projects. By listing all the major projects and contracts, the procurement plan will make it easier for existing and potential suppliers to plan ahead, by offering advice on bidding for this work and greater transparency on working with the MOD. These measures will help in particular small businesses, who don't always have the skills and prior experience of working with the MOD in such areas. Minister for Defence People and Veterans Tobias Ellwood said: The defence estate is where our brave armed forces live, work and train and so it's crucial we give them the best supplies and facilities possible. Working with industry is critical to delivering this, and our new Procurement Plan ensures the private sector has a head start in bidding for this crucial work. Opportunities outlined in the Procurement Plan include the £4billion Defence Estate Optimisation Programme, the Future Defence Infrastructure Services contracts - which will provide facilities management across the UK's military bases- and the £1.3bn Clyde Infrastructure Programme. The plan also details several prominent works that demonstrate DIO's key role in supporting defence throughout the UK. These include essential maintenance work worth £568 million to support nuclear infrastructure capability at HMNB Clyde, as well as a £58m investment in a modern submarine training facility at the base. Alongside this, there are plans for an £8m investment in Bovington Camp to support the AJAX armoured vehicles which will enter service in 2020. Jacqui Rock, DIO Commercial Director, said: As DIO we recognise that our current and future suppliers are key to our success. We have worked with industry to produce the Procurement Plan and we are committed to building a broader, more diverse supplier base. We believe in being as transparent as possible in our procurements and through this new approach we are encouraging new entrants, including small and medium sized enterprises, to consider the benefits and opportunities that working with DIO can deliver. The Procurement Plan will help achieve the goals set out in our first ever Commercial Strategy. This set out our vision for how we do business and how we will work effectively with our suppliers. The Procurement Plan also sets out how DIO can deliver social and economic benefits throughout its supply chain by working to contribute to the government's aim of recruiting 20,000 apprentices through construction procurement and promoting sustainability through its supply chain. By 2020, DIO has committed to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 30%, a 30% reduction in domestic business flights, a 50% reduction in paper usage and reducing waste going to the landfill to less than 10%. The full DIO Procurement Plan can be found here The DIO Commercial Strategy sets the direction for future DIO Procurement Plans. The full DIO Commercial Strategy can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/news/mod-sets-out-vision-to-diversify-supply-base--2

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  April 24, 2018 | International, Naval

  3-D printer keeps F-35B flying during USS Wasp deployment

  MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan — State-of-the-art parts fabrication is keeping America's most advanced stealth fighter in the air during its first deployment aboard the USS Wasp. When a plastic bumper for a landing-gear door wore out this month on an F-35B Lightning II embarked on the amphibious assault ship, a 3-D printer was used to whip up a new one. The Iwakuni-based jet from Fighter Attack Squadron 121 later flew successfully with the new part, a Marine statement said. Called “additive manufacturing,” the process from Naval Air Systems Command allowed the Marines of Combat Logistics Battalion 31 to create the new bumper and get it approved for use within days, the statement said. Otherwise, they would have had to replace the entire door assembly, which is expensive and time consuming. “While afloat, our motto is ‘fix it forward,'” Chief Warrant Officer 2 Daniel Rodriguez, CLB-31's maintenance officer, said in the statement. “3-D printing is a great tool to make that happen.” The Navy said parts created using the 3-D printer are only a temporary fix, but it kept the jet from being grounded while waiting for a replacement from the United States. Lt. Col Richard Rusnok, commander of VMFA-121, lauded the use of the new technology. “Although our supply personnel and logisticians do an outstanding job getting us parts, being able to rapidly make our own parts is a huge advantage as it cuts down our footprint thus making us more agile in a shipboard or expeditionary environment,” he said in the statement. Marine Sgt. Adrian Willis, a computer and telephone technician who created the bumper, said he was thrilled to be involved in the process. “I think 3-D printing is definitely the future — it's absolutely the direction the Marine Corps needs to be going,” he said in the statement. The printer has been used multiple times during the patrol, the Navy said, including to create a lens cap for a camera on a small, unmanned ground vehicle used by an explosive ordnance disposal team. Templates for the parts will be uploaded to a Marine Corps-wide 3-D printing database to make them accessible to other units. bolinger.james@stripes.com Twitter: @bolingerj2004 https://www.stripes.com/news/3-d-printer-keeps-f-35b-flying-during-uss-wasp-deployment-1.522987

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  August 5, 2019 | International, Naval

  Land Systems Integration Team Is Leader in Model-Based Systems Engineering

  By C. Michaela Judge, Naval Information Warfare Center Atlantic Public Affairs CHARLESTON, S.C. (NNS) -- The Land Systems Integration (LSI) Division at Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Atlantic continues to be an enterprise leader in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) for their work on land systems modernization and integration. MBSE is an engineering approach that utilizes a common, digital tool suite allowing all team members – from engineer to sponsor – to have awareness, line-of-sight and an understanding of the interaction between the various moving parts across the systems engineering and project lifecycle. LSI's Vehicular Technology Transition (VTT) team incorporates the full range of MBSE techniques into their systems engineering projects to support the Marine Corps and has had great success in continuing this approach in their daily work. “What makes LSI and our team specifically successful is the depth of knowledge in implementation of using the MBSE Tool Suite,” said Tim Turner, VTT team lead. “Our engineering work isn't radically different than any other engineering groups across the Command; it's how we're putting the data in the system and making it transparent to everyone that needs to have access to it.” Though engineers have been performing systems engineering in some capacity for decades, using this model-based approach provides an added advantage to deliver effective and timely solutions to the warfighter. “Our MBSE Tool Suite is a set of seamlessly integrated engineering lifecycle management tools that work together as one,” said Jacob Witmer, VTT team Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) project lead. “We use these tools to manage requirements and architectures, plan projects, track changes, manage quality, and provide an enterprise library management system where you catalog, organize, use, reuse, manage, and report on any type of software, technology, or business asset.” In the vehicle transition domain, the VTT team utilized MBSE techniques to solve real-world challenges for the warfighter. Most recently, they used MBSE to conduct global positioning system (GPS) integration work conducted on the Joint-Light Tactical Vehicle, the MGUE Program's lead platform. “When we look at all of the people our team has to work with on this integration project, we have to manage a lot of different data, to include where the trucks are manufactured, where GPS is managed, the performance level of the GPS card, the truck integration and more,” said Witmer. “There are a lot of players, managing a lot of data in a lot of different formats from different geographic parts of the country. That's really what the MBSE Tool Suite is designed to do – manage, connect and link the data to see how they impact each other.” One cost-avoidance benefit of using the MBSE Tool Suite, in time and man-hours, includes the ability to quickly build reports. “We can build 150-page project requirements documents in three minutes because the data is already in the Tool Suite,” said Ryan Longshore, VTT team technical lead. “There is an investment in time and energy upfront in loading the data, but a report that would take 30 to 90 days is done in a matter of minutes and everything from that project is captured in the report.” The team's use of MBSE is not only essential to connecting and maintaining data across a project, but also a necessary resource in developing physical models and solutions in a fraction of the time previously needed to fulfill a warfighter requirement. “Our team works within the Systems Integration Laboratory (SIL) to design and test on multiple vehicular platforms,” said Turner. “The lab allows us to execute MBSE across all team functions, from mission thread to risk analysis or program management.” The team maintains physical models for all of the vehicle platforms they support. When a requirement from a sponsor arrives, the team can use tools within the SIL to design and print a three-dimensional piece of hardware and test it on an existing model before they touch a physical vehicle. The team conducts engineering, mechanical and software-related integration testing and design work all within the laboratory. “It's all about testing upfront, learning upfront, failing faster and learning from it and moving on and improving on the design,” said Turner. As the team designs and tests within the lab, they also update the MBSE Tool Suite is to capture lessons learned, integration challenges and real-time project data for all team members to access. “The beauty of the suite being so integrated is that it doesn't matter what type of systems engineering methodology a project uses, the tools can be tailored to meet a myriad of engineering processes and organizing the data by methodology saves countless hours in digging around trying to find historical artifacts,” said Witmer. The team can now complete an integration project that previously took 18 to 36 months as quickly as six to nine months, without sacrificing quality, thanks to the value of MBSE. With VTT and other teams reaping the benefits of MBSE, NIWC Atlantic created a training and workforce development path to work toward a Command-wide adoption of this method. Communities of interest, industry engagements and training events on MBSE methods are a few of the efforts implemented to date. The VTT uses these training approaches, to a smaller-scale, to continue to encourage MBSE implementation and help employees understand the power of using a model-based approach to apply agility in executing warfighter solutions. “We're seeing the benefits and through MBSE my team has the flexibility to fail fast and learn a lot upfront,” said Turner. The team's success with the MBSE Tool Suite is a Command-wide example of how the transparency and connectivity of engineering data help to provide integration solutions to NIWC Atlantic customers with a high confidence of success. As a part of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command, NIWC Atlantic provides systems engineering and acquisition to deliver information warfare capabilities to the naval, joint and national warfighter through the acquisition, development, integration, production, test, deployment, and sustainment of interoperable command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, cyber and information technology capabilities. https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=110447