[This article was first published in Army Sustainment Professional Bulletin, which was then called Army Logistician, volume 3, number 2 (March–April 1971), pages 20–23. The text, including any biographical note, is reproduced as faithfully as possible to enable searchability. To view any images and charts in the article, refer to the issue itself, available on DVIDS and the bulletin’s archives at asu.army.mil/alog/.]
Complex weapons systems in this technological age, coupled with high costs and personnel limitations, make maintenance the key to readiness.
WARS WERE ONCE WON OR LOST by how well men conducted themselves in battle!
Only a few years ago, human effort and judgment were the prime elements that brought success or failure to a military force after the plans were laid and the enemy was engaged. Now, however, with so many sophisticated weapons and devices, armies have arrived at a level where perfection in materiel readiness is essential. The opportunity for the human element to improvise solutions — in Vietnam, for instance — to compensate for materiel malfunction, is becoming less and less possible. Without question, the most challenging area facing Army logisticians in today’s technological environment is maintenance. Today, around-the-clock readiness is essential to defense, and “maintenance” is the key.
Maintenance Role
The “reliability challenge,” to be successful, must realize that if the problem is attacked as an exact science, it not only can be solved but can be engineered to fit both operational requirements and logistics capabilities. The role of the military in U.S. society is portrayed by the administrative title “Department of Defense.” The military is charged with defending the country from all aggressors under all foreseeable conditions, both nuclear and nonnuclear. United States policy has been to substitute machines for men to the greatest extent possible, while providing the best possible training to the men using them. This policy, together with the known and expected future military capabilities of possible adversaries, has been the driving force and cornerstone of U.S. military materiel developments for thirty years.
Technological Developments
During those three decades, military technological developments have changed the course of history and the U.S. role in world events. The combined threat of ballistic missile nuclear weapons, aircraft, and advanced underwater technology by several nations has served to eliminate our former enviable position as an ocean-separated sanctuary. This situation, together with numerous aid and mutual defense treaties entered into by the United States with its friends and allies, has thrust this country into the role of a worldwide defense force. Growing U.S. commitments and the policy of maximum utilization of tools for its fighting men have resulted in a vast increase in the numbers, variety, effectiveness, and cost of weapons and military support gear.
Cost Demands Reliability
While the U.S. gross military expenditures as a percentage of gross national product decreased continuously from 1959 through 1966, and for the past three years have been less than the 1959 percentage, the annual dollar commitments for national defense during the same time period have increased 73 percent. The need for increased government expenditures in other sectors of the economy and the tremendous increase in the cost of individual weapons and support gear have focused attention on the life cycle cost and reliability of all military equipment.
Lieutenant General Joseph M. Heiser, Jr., Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Department of the Army, once asked members of the Maintenance Advisory Committee, National Security Industrial Association, to get off the high road of theory and get to work in the payoff area — individual systems and items. Many experts support his position. The road to total system reliability will begin only when attention is focused on individual items of equipment. The theory is in hand; the nettle that stings is practical application.
Need Qualified EM
As aircraft and aircraft systems have grown in complexity, mean time between failure (MTBF) has decreased and overhaul hours per flight have shown a disturbing increase. Additionally, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of highly trained maintenance personnel needed for each squadron or company. The personnel situation is particularly alarming because it is difficult to get and keep enlisted men whose education and skill meet the maintenance requirements.
However, as a result of combined attention and effort by government and industry, the trend is being reversed. Also, the hours of maintenance per flight hour have shown marked reduction; however, the skills required to do the job have not decreased. Further attention to design for easy access and change of components in the field without special tools is necessary.
Until just recently, the increasingly complex electronic systems were showing such short MTBFs and requiring so much maintenance time and skill that they were seriously jeopardizing the readiness of the fighting units. However, in the latest generation aircraft and ground electronic systems, characterized by the newest miniaturization and circuit integration technologies, the size of equipment and power dissipation in heat has been reduced. At the same time, maintenance difficulty and time has been reduced and MTBF increased. This has been accomplished through the reduction of discrete parts, the modularization of circuits, and the addition of faultfinding and isolation circuits within the equipment.
BITE Reduces Tests
The value of built-in test equipment (BITE) can be visualized by remembering the problems encountered with the conventional separate test equipment originally used to test the HAWK high power illuminator radar. The bulkiness of test equipment, coupled with serious continuous calibration problems, the resultant weekly checks that required a full day, the frequent damage caused by radar antenna movement, the many miscellaneous cables and connectors, and the need for depot checks all made this system extremely difficult to keep operational. With the addition of BITE, daily test procedures have been reduced and the weekly test shortened from a full day to two and one-half hours.
The Army now field-checks 22 radar performance parameters not previously checked, including circuits formerly checked only at the depot level. This eliminates handling of external test equipment, reduces the test burden on field maintenance test equipment, and most important, increases the confidence level of the radar because of better testing capabilities.
The Army must have this reliability in order to justify the use of the costly, sophisticated weapons necessary to meet the military requirements of today and the years ahead. For those items where it is not yet feasible to have built-in test equipment or quick-change modules, the Army needs simple, reliable, accurate, and complete test equipment for field level maintenance.
Overhaul Problems
On the bad news side, the Army is not doing well in the MTBF and overhaul time. Furthermore, so much of the equipment is used in an integrated supporting manner today, that is, one part of a generator, truck, or gun is down and the entire system is degraded, if not rendered unusable.
A look at power generators currently in use by each of the services shows that there is little or no improvement in the MTBF and the mean time to repair (MTTR) between five to ten years ago and today. The current MTBF of two hundred hours in a peacetime environment, when use of the generator may be eight to ten hours per day, is bad enough, but when the generator is used in a combat zone like Vietnam for twenty-four hours a day, it is a bad situation. The Army’s current MTTR exceeds three hours. Many of the generators in use are of commercial design, and the Army must look to industry to design reliability into this equipment. Better insulation such as epoxy resins, solid rotor systems, and improved switching and overload control are the types of advances that would help increase MTBF in generators. For most systems, there is a need for rapid, inexpensive modular repair capability built into the design so that quick field maintenance can be effected by semiskilled personnel.
Intelligence Data Important
Maintainability in the field depends on intelligence data that indicates true module usage factors. Through this data, provisioning and procurement of modules are achieved. A maintenance structure that will provide for the skills, test gear, and tools necessary at the appropriate maintenance levels can be determined on the basis of replacement frequency. Replacement frequency must be determined by field tests to the extent possible before issue to the troops. In order to justify the module system of maintenance in the field, cost comparisons that will prove that “piece part repair,” including the necessary skills and parts, is more costly than the module replacement system, must be made.
Maintenance is Expensive
Army trucks and other vehicles are another area where maintenance and failure hamper the objectives. In the twelve-year life of a truck, twice the original cost is spent on repair and maintenance. A specific example is the 12-ton stake and platform trailer that was deployed to Southeast Asia in 1968. Reports from Vietnam indicate that the new trailers proved to be failure prone and required more maintenance effort than the older models they were intended to replace. Another specific item reflecting lack of maintenance consideration is the engine for the 6,000-pound forklift. The anticipated time between overhaul (TBO) was 7,500 hours. Experience has forced the Army to reduce the anticipated TBO to 5,000 hours.
Need Help From Industry
Because of the inability of personnel to diagnose failures in the field, large quantities of components that require little or no repair are being removed and returned to depots for overhaul or disposal as beyond repair. This situation is not caused solely by the testing equipment; inadequately trained personnel are also a key factor. Many times maintenance personnel do not know how to use the diagnostic and test equipment. In addition, they must determine whether satisfactory performance is being realized without technical criteria that define satisfactory performance. They are, therefore, inclined to replace components. Industry can help in this area. The designer of the equipment must install key go/no-go operational indicators. He should specify parameters against which to check satisfactory performance and should develop test, measurement, and diagnostic equipment that will perform these measurements.
Another factor that influences maintenance effectiveness and cost involves the determination of the range and the quantity of repair parts, tools, and test and support equipment required to support an item of equipment during its service life. The success of the provisioning actions is measured in operational readiness of equipment.
There is plenty of room for the Army and industry to improve and perfect their provisioning techniques. The Army-industry team is trying to improve and gear its thinking and actions to consider the limitations of 18-year-old soldiers who are rotated after twelve short months in Vietnam and are faced with maintaining a piece of equipment in that environment. In addition, the equipment there is exposed to the severest of operating conditions.
Data Too Technical
Although some progress has been made in the provisioning system, there is still a long way to go. Too many parts have been put in the provisioning manuals for major systems and too few in others, such as construction equipment.
One of the biggest maintenance problems concerns training. The major source of soldier input comes from the draft, and most of these young men have had little or no prior experience. Therefore, the adequacy of technical data — that is, maintenance allocation charts, technical manuals, and repair parts and special tools lists — that are used as the tests in the Army schools and in the field is critical to the success of the mission. Most of the data contained in these documents originate from the designer and producer and are too technical. Information must be presented in simple and clear language that the average 18-year-old high school graduate can understand. The Army recently ran a comprehension test on some of the new technical manuals prepared by contractors and found they defied the comprehension of college graduates with advanced degrees. There is little a high school soldier can do with such documents.
Focus on the Soldier
One of the major reasons the Army-industry team does not have a better grade in the maintenance field is because it has become engrossed in the theory of maintenance management. It has been writing Ph.D. dissertations when it should have been writing grade school primers. The team has concentrated too hard on early support systems and integrated planning approaches for future systems and, in the process, has forgotten to focus on the soldier doing the job in the field. Everything must be geared to his capability and output. More than anything else, simplicity and clarity at the far end of the line should be emphasized.
The Army is no longer a garrison organization expected to move out on about six months’ notice. Today, it is a quick-reaction outfit expected to load in aircraft and move a continent away in a matter of hours. Faced with this, the Army does not have time to “baby” its weapons and equipment.
The Army Materiel Command, of course, is involved in all aspects of maintaining Army equipment in a state of readiness except for the actual physical performance of field maintenance.
Many Priority Areas
To resolve or at least alleviate maintenance problems, the command is giving priority attention to developing and using test, measurement, and diagnostic equipment; simplifying the preparation of technical documentation; designing maintainability into equipment; and improving the data feedback system to insure early highlighting of potential problems and to improve provisioning. These actions are related to specific hardware, and with industry’s cooperation AMC should not only improve equipment readiness but also reduce the maintenance resource requirements for both men and money.
Maintenance truly has a strong role in today’s national power arena because it is a most important key to our overall defense posture. Equipment readiness must not be confused with total combat readiness — ready personnel, equipment with adequate repair parts, ammunition, and fuel — but ready equipment goes a long way toward overall readiness, which is what defense is all about in the first place.
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