MATERIEL SYSTEMS ANALYSIS

Abstract

This program element funds Department of the Army (DA) civilians at the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA) to conduct responsive and effective materiel systems analysis in support of senior Army decision making for equipping the U.S. Army. AMSAA conducts systems and engineering analyses to support Army decisions in technology; materiel acquisitions; and the design, development, fielding, and sustaining of Army weapon systems. As part of this mission, AMSAA develops and certifies systems performance data used in Army studies, and develops systems performance methodology and Modeling and Simulation (M&S). AMSAA is the Army's center for item/system level performance analysis and certified data. In support of its materiel systems analysis mission, AMSAA analyzes the performance and combat effectiveness of conceptual, developmental, and fielded systems. Unique models and methodologies have been developed to predict critical performance variables, such as weapon accuracy, target acquisition, rate of fire, probability of inflicting catastrophic damage, and system reliability. AMSAA generates performance and effectiveness measures and ensures their standard use across major Army and Joint studies. AMSAA conducts and supports various systems analyses, such as: Analyses of Alternatives, system cost/performance tradeoffs, early science and technology tradeoffs, weapons mix analyses, system risk assessments, analytical support for Test and Evaluation, and requirements analyses. These analyses are used by the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, Army Materiel Command, Training and Doctrine Command, Army Test and Evaluation Command, Program Executive Officers/Project Managers, DA staff/Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology, and Department of Defense (DoD) leadership in making acquisition, procurement, and logistics decisions in order to provide quality equipment and procedures to the Soldier. AMSAA's M&S capabilities support the development, linkage, and accreditation of live, virtual, and constructive simulations, and provide unique tools that support systems analysis of individual systems and the combined-arms environment. AMSAA maintains a significant number of models and simulations, most of which were developed in-house to address specific analytical voids. This M&S infrastructure provides a hierarchical modeling process that is unique to AMSAA and allows for a comprehensive performance and effectiveness prediction capability that can be utilized to make trade-off and investment decisions prior to extensive and expensive hardware testing of proposed systems/technologies for Current and Future Force efforts. AMSAA is the Army's executive agent for the verification, validation, and accreditation of item/system level performance models. In this role, AMSAA assists model developers with the development and execution of verification and validation plans to ensure new models and simulations provide credible information/results for decision making. As the Army's Executive Agent for reliability and maintainability standardization improvement, AMSAA develops and implements reliability and maintainability acquisition reform initiatives. AMSAA develops and applies engineering approaches that assess the reliability of Army materiel and also provides recommendations on ways to improve reliability, thereby reducing the logistics footprint, reducing life cycle costs, and extending failure-free periods for deployed equipment. AMSAA's electronic and mechanical Physics of Failure (PoF) program pioneered the Army's involvement in utilizing computer-aided engineering tools in the analysis of root-cause failure mechanisms at the component level during the system design process. AMSAA's reliability engineering and PoF tools/analyses have been used extensively to support the design improvement of developmental and fielded systems used in Current Operations resulting in improved reliability, reduced Operational and Support costs, and reduced logistics expenditures and footprint. AMSAA in conjunction with the Army Evaluation Center has formed the Center for Reliability Growth (CRG), which is developing critical tools, methodology, policies, formal guidance, and educational materials need to help acquisition programs to achieve their required reliability during the acquisition process. The reliability improvements achieved for major weapon systems will translate into billions of dollars in operating and support cost savings across the life cycle. AMSAA's unique analytical capabilities are supporting the Army Evaluation Center to assess and determine the essential analytical requirements to enhance Army evaluations and reduce extensive testing. AMSAA's support in this area improves evaluation products and result in better materiel solutions to the Warfighter. AMSAA assists various ACAT systems' evaluations and provides quick response analyses in suppor

Document Details

• Document Type: R2 Budgetary Justification
• Publication Date: Oct 01, 2012
• Source ID: 0605706A_6_2040_PB_2012
• Service Agency Name: Army

Entities

Organizations

• United States Army

Tags

Communities of Interest

• Human Systems
• Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

• Acquisition
• Asymmetric Warfare
• Combat Vehicles
• Department Of Defense
• Engineering
• Explosive Devices
• Failure Mode And Effect Analysis
• Improvised Explosive Devices
• Life Cycles
• Reliability
• Reliability Engineering
• Simulations
• Systems Analysis
• Test And Evaluation
• Vehicles
• Warfare
• Weapons

Fields of Study

• Engineering

Readers

• Life Cycle Cost Analysis
• Military Science and Technology Research and Modernization.

Technology Areas

• Microelectronics