Maturing Weapon Systems for Improved Availability at Lower Costs
Abstract
Now is a critical time for the Army to understand and address the especially difficult R&M (reliability and maintainability) challenges presented by high-tech components. New weapon systems will increasingly depend on such components in order to achieve the technological 'margin of superiority' that U. S. forces have relied upon to overcome quantitatively superior foes. Without effective management of the R&M of these systems, their full designed performance may not be achieved and support costs may greatly exceed projected budgets. The objective of this research is to develop policies and procedures to help the Army reduce the burden caused by the failures of certain high-tech (chiefly digital), high-cost Class IX components. Taken together, these policies and procedures compose an approach to weapon system design and redesign that we term maturation development. Maturation development seeks to improve the detection, reporting, isolating, and removing of component faults; it also identifies and implements changes to component design that improve R&M. Maturation development can be applied both to new systems, such as the proposed Comanche helicopter, and to major modifications (upgrades of fielded systems, such as the Apache helicopter or M1A1 tank.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA282425
Entities
People
- Douglas Mciver
- Hyman Shulman
- John Dumond
- Rick Eden
Organizations
- RAND Corporation