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  October 2, 2018 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Facing industry pressure, Pentagon backs off contract payment changes

  By: Aaron Mehta and Joe Gould WASHINGTON – Following a wave of criticism from the defense industry and members of Congress, the Pentagon on Monday backed off proposed changes to how companies receive cash flow on their contracts. In a statement released at the unusual time of 7:19 PM, Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said the decision to withdraw the proposed acquisition changes stemmed from a lack of “coordination” inside the department. “Recently, proposed amendments to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) were prematurely released, absent full coordination,” Shanahan's statement read. “As a result, the Department will rescind the proposed amendments. In coordination with industry, the Department will create a revised rule to implement section 831 of the FY2017 NDAA.” "The department will continue to partner closely with Congress and industry to examine all reform opportunities, ensuring we provide the best value to taxpayers and critical capabilities to military personnel who defend this great Nation,” Shanahan said. Unsaid in the statement: that since word of the proposed changes got out, the defense industry has been loud and unanimous in its opposition, and has enlisted its supporters on the Hill to help fight against the plan, put forth by Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord. As part of a broader set of changes to the acquisition rules, Lord hoped to change how companies receive their cash flow based on performance measurements, to act as an incentive for good behavior. In a Sept. 5 interview with Defense News, she laid out the rationale, saying “I believe the lifeblood of most industry is cash flow, so what we will do is regulate the percentage of payments or the amount of profit that can be achieved through what type of performance they demonstrate by the numbers.” However, three major trade groups — The National Defense Industrial Association, Professional Services Council and the Aerospace Industries Association — objected to the proposal, which would slash the payments on work to be performed from 80 percent to 50 percent, with incremental increases for maintaining quality or on-time delivery — and decreases for companies that have committed fraud. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, sent a Sept. 21 letter to Shanahan calling the proposal “fundamentally flawed" and asking that it be rescinded and revisited. “We should not make it harder to do business with the Department of Defense than it is to do business with other parts of government — and that's exactly what this regulation does,” Thornberry told reporters last Tuesday. “We try to streamline acquisition, we try to make it easier to do business with these small companies; and then something like this comes out.” The Pentagon had hoped to implement the rule changes by the end of the year and had planned to hold a public meeting on Oct. 10, before the public comment period ended on Oct. 23. Whether that event will still happen is unclear. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/10/02/facing-industry-pressure-pentagon-backs-off-contract-payment-changes

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  October 1, 2021 | International, Aerospace

  Bell Textron Canada célèbre 35 ans d'excellence au Canada

  Bell Textron Canada Limitée, une filiale de Textron Inc. , est fière de célébrer 35 ans d'activité à Mirabel, Québec, Canada. Fondé en 1986, le centre d'excellence mondial regroupe les activités de fabrication, d'assemblage, d'essais en vol et de...

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  May 16, 2018 | International, Aerospace

  The US Air Force Is Adding Algorithms to Predict When Planes Will Break

  The airlines already use predictive maintenance technology. Now the service's materiel chief says it's a “must-do for us.” The U.S. Air Force has started to use algorithms to predict when its aircraft will break, part of an effort to minimize the time and money they consume in the repair shop. The use of predictive analytics has been blazed by airlines, which monitor their fleets' parts in an effort to replace broken components just before — and crucially, not after — they break. “I believe it is a must-do for us,” said Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, the head of Air Force Materiel Command, the arm of the Air Force that oversees the maintenance of its planes. She spoke Tuesday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington. “We see this as a huge benefit.” If the Air Force could reduce the risk of unexpected breakage — and the attendant need to fly replacement parts and repair crews around the globe — it could reduce costs and boost mission effectiveness. It could also increase the usefulness of the current fleet by reducing the number of aircraft that need to be be held in reserve as backups. It starts with gathering data, such as the temperature of engine parts or the stresses on the airframe. “We are trying to leverage what we already get off of airplanes, as opposed to trying to go in and put instruments in places,” Pawlikowski said. “It turns out there's quite a bit that's there, but it may not be a direct measurement. In order to measure the temperature in this one particular spot, I'm getting information somewhere else.” Artificial intelligence and machine learning can then determine patterns. The general said the Air Force has been learning a lot from Delta, the world's second-largest commercial airline. “Delta has demonstrated the effectiveness of predictive maintenance in dramatically reducing the number of delays to flights due to maintenance,” she said. Over the past three years, Air Mobility Command — the arm of the Air Force that oversees all of its large cargo planes and aerial refueling tankers — has been organizing the data it collects on some of its planes. It has started using the predictive maintenance technology on its massive C-5 airlifters. The Air Force is also using the technology on the B-1 bomber. “The B-1 is an airplane that we actually bought with a whole bunch of data that we weren't using,” Pawlikowski said. “We started to take that data in and start to analyze it....We're very excited about this because we see huge potential to improve aircraft availability and drive down the cost.” She said she “was impressed when I saw some of the data that they were showing me.” The Air Force Lifecycle Management Center, which reports to Pawlikowski, has been funding these trials “by finding the loose change in the seat cushions,” she said. “As we have now shown some things ... we're seeing more and more interest in it and we're looking at increasing the investment in that to bring it further,” Pawlikowski said of the predictive maintenance. Last September, Gen. Carlton “Dewey” Everhart, head of Air Mobility Command, stressed his desire to use predictive maintenance, but warned it would cost money to get the datafrom the companies that make the planes. “In some cases, we'll be working this collaboratively with our industry partners,” Pawlikowski said Tuesday. “In other cases, we'll be doing it completely organically.” Air Mobility Command is also using predictive maintenance technology on the C-130J airlifter. The latest version of the venerable Lockheed Martin cargo plane — the J model — collects reams of data as it flies. In April, the Lockheed announced it was teaming with analytics firm SAS to crunch that data. “Everything we've been doing up to a certain point has been looking in the rear-view mirror with the data,” said Lockheed's Duane Szalwinski, a senior manager with his company's sustainment organization who specializes in analytics. “We're going to be able to look forward.” Lockheed is working on a six-month demonstration for Air Mobility Command; officials hope to be able to predict when certain parts will break before a flight. “If we're able to do that, it kind of changes the game in how you maintain and operate a fleet,” Szalwinski said. The data will give military planners a wealth of information about their aircraft that could help determine the best aircraft to deploy. “All those things you now know you have insights as to what you will need at the next flight, so you act accordingly,” he said. “Once we prove that we understand the probability of failure of these parts ... all things then become possible,” Szalwinski said. “Now it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And if you know when, you can start acting accordingly. It would be a gamechanger in the way you manage a fleet.” Lockheed also wants to use the predictive maintenance tech on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. “The beauty of this is that the toolsets that we're developing, the models, how we clean the data, how we build the models, how we build the algorithms, all of that is not unique to a platform,” Szalwinski said. Still, instituting predictive maintenance practices fleet-wide is not going to happen overnight, particularly as since it will take time to understand the data, Pawlikowski said. Using this technology will require a cultural shift among maintenance crews because they'll be replacing parts before they actually fail, Pawlikowski said. “One of the big benefits is the reduction in the amount of time the airmen on the flightline spends troubleshooting a broken part” because “we will take them off before they break,” she said. https://www.defenseone.com/business/2018/05/us-air-force-adding-algorithms-predict-when-planes-will-break/148234/