What's wrong with "Off The Shelf"?

[ShotOne]

The phrase OTS comes up in debates here about all sorts of equipment, very often applied in a derogatory manner. This has always puzzled me. It wouldn't occur to most of us to purchase anything other than OTS; the only person I know who had a car built to spec (a TVR Tuscan) it was a complete disaster and sat immobile under a thick layer of dust for several years. The OTS airliners I've flown for the last twenty something years have all worked fine. The only instance of an "off-piste" spec, for an unusual toilet fit, caused years of problems. Surely there's huge opportunity for big savings. Why is OTS a swear-word in military aviation?

[dukiematic]

An inbred arrogance that says "we are so totally different, unique, and yes SPECIAL". I did an MOD office IT installation project 15 years ago and the level of customisation of standard Microsoft products was eye-watering. And it didn't work, was late, and cost a bomb. No doubt experts will be able to argue otherwise. COTS (commercial off the shelf) is a 4 letter word. Civil ATC was as bad, only now they buy COTS and then modify the hell out of it- making it expensive, unreliable (as it doesn't do what it was designed to do) and unsupportable. The same thinking applies across the board. It's a cultural thing...

[NutLoose]

Because some stuff such as avionics is especially hardened for military use.

Though the bog valve in the VC-10 was a squash ball that BAe were charging the RAF something like £80 a pop for.

Didn't the Nimrod AEW 3 suffer a similar fate, as there was no fixed price on the contract, so a lot of money was spent trying to compress down the software for it onto the hard drive in the system, where the simple expediency of increasing the size of the drive would have cured it? but of course BAe wouldn't be getting paid then.

[NutLoose]

Ohh and by the way, not everything is off the shelf in civi street, take the golf shelters at Woodford :E

http://thumbsnap.com/sc/I6sRIft5.jpg

[Wensleydale]

Didn't the Nimrod AEW 3 suffer a similar fate, as there was no fixed price on the contract, so a lot of money was spent trying to compress down the software for it onto the hard drive in the system, where the simple expediency of increasing the size of the drive would have cured it? but of course BAe wouldn't be getting paid then.


Nimrod AEW was not a viable concept for many reasons - it was bought because the Government of the day could not afford to upset the British Unions and therefore could not buy the much preferred AWACS option at the time. The cost plus contract that was given also meant that the more the company got things wrong then the more money they made. In the end - "jobs for the boys" cost the Country nearly £1Bn in 1980s prices. (Jeremy please note).


On a different subject - if you buy "off the shelf" then you have to ensure that the build standard of the components used is up to scratch and that they will be available throughout the lifetime of the product. If you replace kit using COTS then you change the drawing for each individual aircraft and you may end up with a mixed fleet and each aircraft different - very complicated for certification and the safety case when you update kit.

[brokenlink]

Nutloose, you are correct about the squash ball for the VCR-10 toilet flush but the ARC IPT Supply Manager kept them in his locked desk drawer at Wyton lest some sports mad type half inch them! They were Dunl@ps finest after all.

[NutLoose]

Yep some bright spark changed the spec to a hard ball that took ages to warm up..... Ermm to fit in the bog cough cough.. Mind you the plastic flap guide thingies were cracking windscreen scrapers, they apparently worked quite well on the VC-10 too.

[Saintsman]

The other problem with COTS is that they are often different to what has been used previously and a fortune is spent on changing it to fit SOPs, rather than changing the way it was always done to something that is probably more efficient.

[PDR1]

Nothing inherently wrong with COTS provided the decision is fully informed. It has some inherent limitations:

1. A COTS product was developed to meet some else's requirement, and you may never get to see the detailed requirement it was developed to meet.

2. You don't own the design of a COTS product, so if they modify it you have to accept the changes if you want any more spares

3. A COTS product was developed to align with someone else's operating and support procedures - if you do bay maintenance and they didn't you either have to adopt their procedures or pay for the extra development of bay test equipment, procedures, spares etc

4. If you choose a COTS product you must take it as-is. If it falls short of your requirement you just accept the shortfall because it's a mature product at the wrong end of the product lifecycle and any changes will be hideously expensive, especially once you've requalified the changes. "Modified COTS" is also known as "Suicide Acquisition"

5. A COTS product is already fully mature at the start of *your* design/integration process, so it will start to see obsolescence problems sooner than a developmental item.

6. A COTS product will require a *custom* integration, and all the integration will ahve to be done on your side of the interface (hardware AND software)

7. Always remember that choosing COTS is a design solution - not a system requirement. It's depressing how many times a project starts saying "we need to use a COTS solution" when they cannot possibly know that at that stage of the project.

If all the above issues and risks can be identified, quantified and managed then COTS approach may well be a viable solution.

PDR

[Jimlad1]

COTS is great if it does exactly what you want it to do. For the sake of argument, lets suggest we want to buy a dune buggy that comes with with a 8.9mm machine gun and a specific engine and a specific comms system.

If we want it to work in isolation then thats great - we can buy it. But if we want to add a UK weapon (strip out the machine gun as we don't have said calibre, and put the GPMG on it), and we want it to have a secure radio that we use already, rather than buy lots of kit with different radios, and we want the engine to run on the same fuel type as we already use, and by the way we need it to be airportable and we'd also like to use it to go on amphibs etc.

The moment you start looking about you realise COTS reflects the opening point of negotiations, not the finished product. What it is then about is modifying and integrating it to be something that actually useful to your military, and not a botch job collection of random kit that doesnt actually work together. That would cost far more and acheive far less.

[Wensleydale]

If all the above issues and risks can be identified, quantified and managed then COTS approach may well be a viable solution.


...unless its the NATO Mid-Term upgrade for the E-3A.

[ImageGear]

COTS - Often confused with "One size fits all" - It never does, even COTS is configurable off the shelf and consequently will contain code or modules which can be enabled or disabled. Often clients pay mega bucks for a wire link or the simple enabling of code already written and installed. Check out any phone or laptop...multiple versions from basic all the way up to all singing and dancing..15 versions but only one or two pieces of hardware...all enabled by hidden configuration or inaccessible links.

Airlines customise/optimise extensively to specific requirements and national standards. Interiors, Comms, etc.

The old adage....

Vanity = I can squeeze the supplier to get my solution at a "COTS" price.

Sanity = I may have to customise a few things to get it to work as required

Reality = I cannot make it work without it becoming virtually bespoke.

Whoops: Budget blown.

Litigation, Nightmare :E

Imagegear

[glad rag]

Perhaps because it can't be dragged out beyond 30 years and still be labelled as "cutting edged"...

[ImageGear]

Agreed - then there's also the punter who has attempted to create a new widget three times, each with a different supplier and failed spectacularly - perhaps the task was just too "before it's time" :ok:

Imagegear

[Rigga]

So whats the news with the Lakota/EC145 usage by the US Army - suitable or not?
This is/was the largest publicised COTS purchase that I know of...

[ShotOne]

It's worth looking a bit closer at some of these objections; "the product is mature from the start....". Translation: "it works right away". How is this a bad thing? It certainly doesn't follow that it becomes obsolete any quicker.

"Airlines customise/optimise extensively.." Actually mostly not the case other than for cabin detail and galley fit. Even there, the only time in my own experience a big change was demanded, it was a shambles. Cathay originally demanded their 747-400 with analogue instruments for commonality. That was swiftly canned when Boeing told them how much more it would cost!

What would an iPad look like built to a military specification? Obviously it would have to withstand nuclear attack and work underwater and would probably be about the size of a piano.

[tucumseh]

Some good observations. Common sense says many requirements cannot be satisfied by COTS. Others clearly can. The trick is to avoid years of tendering only to find out that no-one makes a commercial product that can withstand +50 to -45C, is nuclear hardened with support guaranteed for 15 years. Very often, beancounters aren't actually interested in getting "value for money", the main motivation being to place obstacles in the way to delay expenditure. One obvious argument is that some technical and performance requirements are mandated upon MoD by, for example, the Home Office, who would refuse to release the necessary specification to the likes of Halfords - and even MoD itself! I recall just before the Personal Role Radio contract was awarded, a certain unit wanted the capability for an imminent deployment. An enthusiastic project officer bought them £35-a-pair kiddies walkie talkies from Argos. Well, they didn't last the journey to the airport. Sounds hilarious, but not if you're dug in a ditch 48 hours later with no comms.

[PDR1]

It's worth looking a bit closer at some of these objections; "the product is mature from the start....". Translation: "it works right away". How is this a bad thing? It certainly doesn't follow that it becomes obsolete any quicker.


The components and technologies in products are only in production for finite periods of time. A mature product will use components/technologies that were available when it was being designed, and they therefore have a much higher probability of needing some obsolescence mitigation or modification in *your* product lifecycle than something which is currently still developmental.

This isn't theory - it's a piece of engineering science which is matched by observation every day.

PDR

[Pontius Navigator]

An example of a modification of a perfectly acceptable COTS solution from history was the Belgian FN which was procured to replace the Lee Enfield.

The Army thought to fully automatic burst would encourage profligate expenditure of ammunition. The SLR had that feature removed. Obviously had to pay more for less.

[Pontius Navigator]

OTOH some OTS, as opposed to COTS was evident on the Vulcan and later Nimrod, that was the pillar lamp as fitted to the Lancaster and stamped GVI. Of course it could have been that Avro had a shed load left over from Anson/Lancaster/Lincoln etc

[A and C]

The best thing the military could buy off the shelf would be airworthiness oversight, if EASA 145 is good enough for all the airlines in Europe it should be good enough for the UK military.

[ShotOne]

Most of your posts, PDR, seem to be very logical but it simply doesn't follow that an expensive procurement process is necessarily linked to technical advance. On the contrary, there are instances of the procurement process taking so long that the equipment is obsolete before it even enters service!

Nobody is suggesting that buying kids toys is a good idea, as in the walkie-talkie example. But there are many robust and capable handheld radios in widespread use. Insisting that ours be designed to order would seem to be a good example of wasteful procurement.

[ImageGear]

In the case of "big procurement" one typically aims for a requirement/technology capability target, some 3, 4 or even 10 years beyond conceptual design phase.

Suppliers will have to base their design on a projected level of technical development which will not initially be understood, and to complicate matters, the original business case may subsequently change beyond all expectations to accommodate new threats, requirements, etc.

In my experience, Clients generally tie down the window of acceptability to a very small area consequently it becomes very difficult to pass.

COTS rapidly becomes unworkable for anything except the smallest projects.

Imagegear

[tucumseh]

But there are many robust and capable handheld radios in widespread use. Insisting that ours be designed to order would seem to be a good example of wasteful procurement. Agreed, but as long as one differentiates between Commercial and Military off the shelf. Another factor is interoperability. And Joe Bloggs Backstreet Comms Ltd isn't likely to understand a typical MoD SIMOPS, Transec or Comsec requirement, never mind have the wherewithal to implement a cunning plan to demonstrate interoperability with various allies. (Not that many co-operate with us, or that we ever seek true interoperability!) A good example of a perfectly valid reason for a made to measure radio is the 1980s multi-mode fitted to RN Sea Kings, Lynx and Merlins. (And Nimrod R after the RAF nicked them). Eye-wateringly expensive due to the harmonic rejection spec and non-standard frequencies. Most companies would laugh at the former.

[PDR1]

Most of your posts, PDR, seem to be very logical but it simply doesn't follow that an expensive procurement process is necessarily linked to technical advance. On the contrary, there are instances of the procurement process taking so long that the equipment is obsolete before it even enters service!


Who said anything about an "expensive procurement process"? I'm simply talking about the trade-off decision to meet a particular need with off-the-shelf vs developmental items. Nor am I suggesting that COTS (or more often "MOTS") is inherently a "bad" idea. I'm just pointing out that when looking at things to integrate into an aircraft system there are risks and issues which are often not full appreciated, especially by project managers and procurement authorities (hence the final line of my main post "If all the above issues and risks can be identified, quantified and managed then COTS approach may well be a viable solution").

You can find examples all over the place - possibly one of the most obvious being when the UK decided not to buy the "OTS" P-40 (which was totally unsuited to our mission) and instead contracted for the development of the P-51 (so it could be designed AROUND our mission).

If you are really, really lucky you may find a piece of OTS equipment that meets every single line of your requirement spec. In theory it can happen, but in >30years in the military aircraft industry I've never seen it. So when you buy COTS/MOTS you either trade the requirements it *doesn't* meet or you have it modified until it does. Modified COTS is just fundamentally a bad idea which is bound to be expensive, risky and unsupportable - it can be done and sometimes you strike it lucky but it's rare. Traded requirements should always restrict some aspect of the mission or increase some aspect of the ownership risk/cost (assuming the requirements were properly established) - otherwise the requirement didn't need to be there. These things are self-evident.


Nobody is suggesting that buying kids toys is a good idea, as in the walkie-talkie example. But there are many robust and capable handheld radios in widespread use. Insisting that ours be designed to order would seem to be a good example of wasteful procurement.

In the walkie-talkie example - if there are OTS items that meet the requirement then you can obviously buy it. Walkie talkies don't have much of an integration need at the technical level. But of course these days they will all include microprocessor-based systems, and these microprocessors will be obsolescent within 5 years (you won't be able to buy any spares). The manufacturer may offer an upgrade to a new processor, but that will need different test systems and test code, and will invalidate (say) the EMC or APEX qualification. It also means that you will have a mixture of configurations in service so you either have to bin the old ones or manage the different spare parts, repair procedures, test systems etc.

Have you tried getting a spare screen or battery for (say) a five-year-old smartphone? Have you tried to replace the processor in a 5-year-old laptop?

You will get similar problems with developmental kit, but it will be longer before it happens because the components used will be the latest at the time of procurement, not "already several years old" at that time.

James V Jones (Texan former tank officer who became one of the gurus in through-life engineering) used to lecture on this sort of thing, and he said that Rand had analysed procurement histories of all US government procurements <above some value that I can't remember> and one of their findings was that they couldn't find a SINGLE "modified COTS" procurement which ended up being cheaper than the developmental alternative. I don't have the study reference (it may be in the boxes of study notes in my loft, but I'm not looking for it!), but thousands of people attended those lectures over the years, so there should be others who remember it.

PDR

[SirToppamHat]

The thing I have observed is the apparent inability of the 'system' to adapt traditional procurement models to the reality of COTS/MOTS procurement. We are still spending an inordinate amount of time gathering User Requirements and converting these to System Requirements before putting out ITNs or ITTs, marking bids, selecting the preferred bidder, awarding contracts and then Testing and Evaluating the delivered 'solution. Very slow and cumbersome in the extreme.

To my way of thinking, in some areas we'd be better off submitting an invitation to industry to deliver a particular capability and see what comes in. For most people the most complex and significant technical thing we buy is a car. The URD is not 127 pages long, and does not contain statements such as 'must be able to go forward and reverse' or 'must have a means of making the vehicle change direction whilst in motion', because these are assumed capabilities. That's not to say that we don't have any requirements, but these tend to be mature and based on capabilities we know are available. Personally, mine now include Cruise Control, Climate Control and enough seats/space to move the kids to and from school/uni. There are about 6 realistic options and I pick the one that offers the best balance between cost and capability or perhaps the best one I can afford that is available - I find it had to believe that this model can't work more efficiently than it does in procurement.

[MACH2NUMBER]

I agree with PDR1
In my experience trying to manage a large new, IT heavy, aviation project, it is obsolescence of COTS software that will come back to bite you. Literally hundreds of separate but interdependent software products may be required.
If you own the overall product then you need an in-house organisation to track obsolescence and manage the impacts this does not come cheap.
IMHO best buy the entire product, with the software maintenance task,and let industry do the dirty work of keeping it all together and functioning.

[tucumseh]

STH

Very slow and cumbersome in the extreme. As I said earlier, very often this slowing down is a political decision to delay expenditure. Otherwise, you are spot on. One of the practical problems is the URD is often physically impossible to attain (never mind sustain) and after some years fannying about the project manager is forced to issue a clarification paper telling London (a) what is possible, (b) what is affordable within the endorsed funding, and (c) what they'll get. A solution emerges.


M2N

If you own the overall product then you need an in-house organisation to track obsolescence and manage the impacts
Unsurprisingly, mandated policy until the department responsible for management and oversight was disbanded without replacement in June 1993. In July 1996, two generations later in posting terms, EFA (Typhoon) convened an urgent meeting at which one of their very expensive consultants declared that they had uncovered a phenomenon called electronic component obsolescence, and would wish to open dialogue with attendees in an effort to work out how to deal with it. We gave him the mandated Def Stan and left. It doesn't take long for corporate knowledge to disappear.

this does not come cheap.Which is why MoD stopped doing it! But this ignored the fact that the consequential cost was measured in lost aircraft and lives. The same solution emerges.....

[tucumseh]

-re the walkie-talkie example (which you've got to admit is quite funny) there is a key integration issue, with the man. It is what the Army refer(red?) to as the left shoulder problem, whereby a slack handful of kit is allocated a spot on the PLCE left shoulder harness/strap. Aforementioned PRR, LCAD, PRC349 (in turn, stressing the antenna) and so on. The PRR battery compartment, as well as the Argos kiddie toys, leaked like a sieve, which tends to make electronics fizz. ("What, you wanted it splashproof?") As the trials included a jaunt round the Warminster obstacle course, including watery holes and ditches, a few questions were asked about why the product selected even passed, never mind "won". Well, actually, it didn't, coming a resounding last in many trials elements. A possible explanation emerged when, the next day, a picture of Lord Willie Bach appeared in the press, having just had a "winning" PRR thrust into his mits by a sharp company marketing chap. By no means the strangest procurement selection tale!

[riff_raff]

Contrary to what many might believe, every commercial passenger jet produced is actually a custom product. For example, every 737 that Boeing produces is custom built to customer requirements, and is assigned its own end item number. No true COTS product available in this regard.

[bobward]

I have no experience of military procurement. However, I did spend many years in the offshore industry, part of which being managing contracts for various services.

The most important thing we found was that the scope of work for the service had to be accurate, measurable and apply to the job in hand. From reading earlier posts, and past comments on procurement, in a lot of cases the people buying didn't do this.

For example, the engines on the Navy's new frigates were COTS items, absolutely fit for purpose for cruise ships, but not the right thing for warships. Who wrote the scope of work / specification, then who let the items be bought and installed and didn't o r wasn't allowed to say 'Hang on a minute....'

Waiting for incoming on this ......

[Chugalug2]

riff raff:-
Contrary to what many might believe, every commercial passenger jet produced is actually a custom product.
Exactly right! I was once employed by a charter airline that flew "pre-owned" BAC 1-11's. Our fleet included 200, 300, 400, and 500 series aircraft, but within those different series were different designations, ie 207, 301, 401, 414, 509, 518, etc, each one indicating an original airline's bespoke model (no doubt the cognoscenti will guess the airline in question ;-). The variations could even extend to the performance parameters, ie the 500's had "new" or "old " wing leading edges and thus differing ODMs.

These discussions often degenerate into using cars as examples of generic "off the shelf". I'm not sure that can be true either. I once bought a UK spec VW Polo in Berlin (when such practice saved considerable sums of money, as perhaps it may well do again in a few years time). I could specify any engine and any trim that I wished, and had to avoid the temptation to stray from the very restricted range then on offer within the UK (with eventual sale/trade-in in mind). In other words, the shelf has now many more possibilities than it perhaps once did...

[ShotOne]

Let's be clear what we're saying. Nobody is suggesting that airliners are literally plucked off the shelf like a tin of baked beans. But when an airline wants 200 people taking to Spain fifty times a week they don't invite a contractor to commence a design process.

PS, chugalug, I don't hold up the 50's/60's UK airlines as a model for optimal procurement.

[MACH2NUMBER]

Airliners these days have an extremely short lifespan compared to military platforms. The risk of software obsolescence, due to COTS products, is therefore considerably less than a military platform using COTS,which often has to survive for up to 50 years. Look at many ISTAR platforms like AWACS for example.

[Easy Street]

an airline wants 200 people taking to Spain fifty times a week

A nice simple statement of requirement, indeed. Replace "Spain" with "countries of possible foreign policy interest between 2020 and 2060" and it starts to get a bit trickier. This highlights another problem with military procurement - the requirement often draws heavily upon intelligence and futurology, disciplines which make business forecasting appear a paragon of accuracy.

If we could be better at knowing precisely what we need our kit to do, we might be better at accepting OTS stuff that is "good enough" for the purpose. Unfortunately we have not proven very good at forecasting events over the years and I don't see any particular reason why that should change, so we'll probably just keep pushing the boundaries to insure against all those Rumsfeldian "unknowns".

[Pontius Navigator]

Actually I think in a way they do. Boeing asked industry is they wanted an SST or a wide-body. Airline companies want sub-sonic and had their requirement fed in hence 787

[SirToppamHat]

One member of MOD's Governance Team expressed surprise regarding a project with which I was involved recently, because the life was in the order of 20 years. It was/is quite heavily IT focused, though relatively specialist in nature. He was reassured that there was expected to be a need for a 'Tech Refresh' at or about the 10-year point. Ten years is about the maximum he would expect an 'IT Capability' to last in service.

[onetrack]

Wars and superior military capabilities are all about inventing and possessing and producing cutting edge technology. You don't get that off-the-shelf.

In WW2, it was only the newest and latest virtually unproven designs that guaranteed a winning edge.
Unfortunately, many paid the ultimate price when that new technology or design had flaws that produced early and unexpected failures. That's the price of winning wars.

OTS technology works just fine for commercial applications and peacetime military activities, but it won't win wars. It will help when non-critical equipment is involved.
I can recall when a U.S. military study found 187 different makes and models of road vehicles were utilised by the military during WW2, resulting in a plethora of different parts and vastly increased logistical requirements.
As a result, it was determined that reducing the numbers of makes and models and utilising common componentry - and proven OTS componentry - was advantageous.
However, very rarely is a road vehicle a critical item, unlike aviation items.

[tucumseh]

onetrack, excellent points.

Some very highly paid people in MoD (so the wrong people!) constantly wrestle with these problems but occasionally the likes of the Public Accounts Committee ask a good question that demands a back to basics assessment. This happened in 1999 when they issued a report "Modifying Defence Equipment". There were 6 test cases, only one of which delivered to time, cost and performance. Senior staff didn't know how to reply, because the procedures and regulations governing the subject had been cancelled, and money chopped.

But a short paper was submitted from the viewpoint of the one successful programme, breaking down the acquisition process into functions. Two things stood out. First, there were two key posts whose roles kept cropping up through-life. Every project needed them, constantly, but as a matter of policy they had been disestablished without being replaced. The one successful test case had, purely by chance, a programme manager who had carried out these roles in a previous life. The failures identified in the other five were directly attributable to this work not being done. Nothing was done because, as ever, for senior staff to endorse the recommendations would mean criticising their own past decisions.

The second was more an observation. The author thought Service personnel very pragmatic and tolerant of procurement problems (witnessed by many of the above posts) and opined that, when one broke down the serious moans and groans, the key was getting Ranging, Scaling, Documentation and Packaging right first time. (So much else falls out of this). It then pointed out that, unsurprisingly, one the the first things the abandoned Service HQ role (above) does is raise an RSD&P form. A simple form, the only real thought being the Maintenance Policy Statement, and a whole process kicks off. But, by disbanding one post and throwing the forms in the back of a 6x4, everything ground to a halt. Support staff throughout MoD and Industry suddenly had no tasking, this was construed as nothing to do, and posts were cut never to be replaced. You had stupid things happen, like very complex equipment bought, but no spares, test equipment, training or tech pubs. (Recognise this, front line?) Radios bought, with no antenna, because the postholder paid to spot such howlers no longer had a job.

Shortly before I retired I saw the effect of the last first hand. When they know you're going, you get the trouble shooting jobs which require you to upset people. (The MAA should learn this lesson). A unit, shortly to deploy, had been given their new comms kit, but no antennae. "Not in the URD" apparently, but it is rather implied when you buy a radio, as you have to test and trial it before acceptance. Or so you'd think. I was standing with the long haired CO and he took a call on his mobile. His Yeoman of Signals, on a day off, was at a boot sale. He'd spotted a Rhode and Schwartz broadband HF antenna, in good nick, for two grand. If he flashed his credit card, would mess funds cover it? No said the CO, but he personally would pay. (He knew he was going to lose men without it, another thing lost on the BCs). The next day YofS pitched up, took 10 minutes to erect the antenna, and all was well. A good example of COTS, because the Mil Spec was the same as the Civ spec. They returned 6 months later, no losses.

[gasax]

Interesting arguments.

My own take on things is that too much of the argument for specialised equipment is based upon the dysfunctional procurement processes and overly extended operational lives.

Wars are won with cutting edge equipment? Possibly, there is no doubt that conflict gives innovation and advancement a real kick - but how does that square with keeping equipment in service for 30 years. Obviously after 5 years most of this stuff belongs in a museum.

Buying equipment which is not yet developed is a hugely risky prospect - and leads to 'concrete' radar systems and the like - which obviously are not going to be any use.

Speccing the equipment is obviously critical and the military has a hugely unfortunate tendency to make it all far to too difficult. The best example I can think of is the coffee machine on a certain US aircraft, capable of operating at +6,-3g, massive temperature margins and can withstand a 27g impact. Not surprisingly an extraordinarily expensive coffee maker - based on a completely flawed premise. Nearer home look at military LandRovers - different really just for the sake of being different.

Far too much of this seems to be driven by the idea that the equipment must last 25 years. During a conflict nothing lasts that long - it is obsolete in 2 years. But is has too in peacetime because it takes the procurement process 3 to 5 years to buy anything. As noted in many of the posts above nothing IT can be made that future proof, accept that and change it out every 5 years - just like the rest of the world does!

[PDR1]

Let's be clear what we're saying. Nobody is suggesting that airliners are literally plucked off the shelf like a tin of baked beans. But when an airline wants 200 people taking to Spain fifty times a week they don't invite a contractor to commence a design process.

That was the argument that led to the modified Nimrods (AEW and MRA4) because "everyone knew it was bleedin' obvious" that modifying an existing design would be quicker and cheaper than designing a bespoke aeroplane. So the RMPA team directed that only designs based on existing airframes could be offered - despite at least two of the main contenders pleading to be allowed to offer a blank sheet of paper design. The AEW case is slightly different - that was the MoD trying to play the role of Prime when they had neither the culture nor the competence to undertake it.

Of course the reality was quite the opposite; both cost more money and took longer than designing from scratch and neither delivered because force-fitting the upgrades into the extant aircraft imposed so many constraints.

We have to remember that >95% of the things which "everybody knows because it's bleedin' obvious" are actually completely untrue.

"Common sense" is rarely either, in my experience.

PDR

[safetypee]

PDR, :ok:
Re MRA 4, off-the-shelf commercial EFIS were selected; well proven and a European supplier. The FMS was similar, UK manufacturer of a proven operating system and known aircraft interface.
However, it isn't easy to interface an Airbus tailored EFIS and a Boeing biased FMS, and expect a split dual system (flight deck and cabin) to work in the same way as an airliner. So then you need three CDUs and another EFIS display to handle the 'cobbled' aircraft systems and the additional tactical requirement ... ... then you are surprised that it doesn't fit within the older style of flight deck geometry.

[tucumseh]

The AEW case is slightly different - that was the MoD trying to play the role of Prime when they had neither the culture nor the competence to undertake it.

If I could slightly qualify that. MoD had the competence, but didn't deploy it to the Nimrod team. In 1985 my boss, who as a youngster had designed the front end of the Searchwater radar, bet me the programme would be cancelled by 1987, and stated why. He won, and I forked out my fiver. (OK, I bought him a drink). You are right to raise Nimrods. I still think a public inquiry into the MRA4 would rattle a few cages and force change for the better. Isn't going to happen, for political reasons.

[hoodie]

Re MRA 4, off-the-shelf commercial EFIS were selected

Chinook Mk3 also.

That went well...

[NutLoose]

MRA 4

I thought a lot of the problems with the MRA 4 was to do with trying to get computer designed wings to fit on hand built fuselages and sticking engines that hadn't been designed to operate down long ducts, down long ducts.
They would have been better building new Nimrod fuselages, but computer designed, it would have probably worked out cheaper.
I remember reading an article that when building the Nimrod wings the first time around, you needed someone in the wing, in case f emergency there was a cupboard next to the aircraft with a stone cutter jobbie in to slice through the wing if you needed to get him out!

[MAINJAFAD]

Nutloose

I was talking to a guy long before the MRA 4 was cancelled who was involved with the initial work on integrating the wings on to the hand built fuselages. That issue was known at the start and the contractors came up with a plan to overcome it. Of course this plan would only work if the MOD delivered the airframes which been selected and surveyed before the CAD work had been done, which of course they didn't.

[ShotOne]

I can't believe the Nimrod (AEW or MR4, take your pick)is being used as an example to oppose the argument for OTS! "Better to have designed a bespoke aircraft"...Really?? For a production run that was never going to be more than a few dozen at most that could easily have resulted in nearly as big a shambles as what actually happened.

[PDR1]

MRA4 didn't have "computer designed wings" - it certainly had wings designed in CAD rather than by drawing with quill pens on stretched velum, but the outcomes would have been similar by either method. There were some problems with the wing design, but that wasn't one of them

As for the engines - it wasn't so much the long ducts as the close proximity of the engines that was the problem. No one had ever run turbofans with that high bypass ratio that close together, and so when the detailed design analysis was done they discovered that they "fought" each other for intake air, severely reducing thrust at higher power settings. This SHOULD have been discovered during the "Risk Reduction contract" phase of the procurement process - MoD's own written process said as much. The RR phase is an initial contract to explore any areas of high technical risk and mature them ahead of the main design process so that the overall risk exposure us smaller - it's a rational approach to managing technical risk, and it was legally mandated at the time.

But this contract was coming up towards the end of an increasingly unpopular conservative government which was desperate to place some government orders to buy a handful of votes. Two projects were purchased "prematurely" as a result - the order for Apache attack helicopters and the MRA4 contract. The then MinD (Micky Portaloo) didn't want to place a teensy-weensy £120m 18-month risk-reduction contract just so that his successor could get the credit for placing the £2.1bn main development contract, so he went hardball with a single "fixed price" development and production contract. BAES then compounded error by accepting the contract (rather than refusing to play ball as they subsequently did with the QEC contract), and so a fixed-price non-de-risked project was initiated which both sides knew full well would never be able to run to the defined schedule even if there were no snags. And of course there WERE snags - mistakes, requirements creep (well, "gallop" would be closer to the mark), political interference etc etc.

And the rest is history...

PDR

[PDR1]

You are right to raise Nimrods. I still think a public inquiry into the MRA4 would rattle a few cages and force change for the better. Isn't going to happen, for political reasons.

You cannot have a *public* enquiry into a military programme, but you can have an enquiry. In fact they did - the NAO conducted several (eg Major Projects Report 2003) and as a result determined that the £800m cost over-run was due in equal part to errors in the MoD/RAF/Treasury and in the contracted companies.

PDR

[tucumseh]

This SHOULD have been discovered during the "Risk Reduction contract" phase of the procurement process - MoD's own written process said as much. The RR phase is an initial contract to explore any areas of high technical risk and mature them ahead of the main design process so that the overall risk exposure us smaller - it's a rational approach to managing technical risk, and it was legally mandated at the time.

This is spot on. In fact, the sister programme of MRA4, which led in many respects on avionics (Sea King AEW RSU), let a 4-phase risk reduction programme in 1994. Progress and results were advised to Nimrod, as it was known they hadn't bothered - or certainly not in that domain - but were ignored by all except the small section responsible for new Kinloss facilities.

While you may be correct about the inquiry, the matter is clearly in the public interest, because MoD/Government has now admitted the aircraft could never be made airworthy (and the evidence reveals this was known at the time). The airworthiness of aircraft is, by definition, in the public interest; so I maintain a public inquiry, or at least a review such as Haddon-Cave's or Lord Philip's, would be beneficial because the evidence submitted would immediately be in the public domain (as it was in 2010/11). The previous inquiries you mention had these facts concealed from them, so are contaminated. As a result of their reports, certain former Ministers wanted action taken against BAeS, but when presented with the evidence to Lord Philip in March 2011, took a step back as it became clear the greater culpability was within MoD.

[Pontius Navigator]

A crude example of refurb over new build is in the home maintenance area. A builder will always select new timber over old - known quantity and quality and no work involved in removing nails, screws etc etc. That was effectively a Nimrod fuselage.

[Chugalug2]

tuc:-
A good example of COTS, because the Mil Spec was the same as the Civ spec.

and that's the point, isn't it? If you can get what is needed off the shelf, particularly for short term identifiable needs as has recently so often been the case, then get it! If you can't, then get something designed instead (but then do it properly as tuc suggests, rather than procuring massive numbers of left handed boots!). The problem seems to me not about COTS but about the MOD. It doesn't work for Air Safety, so why should it work for Army radios?

[PDR1]

There was once a time when I was part of a team assessing tenders for "commercial" turbofan engines to be used in a British large military aircraft upgrade programme. Any similarity to projects discussed above are purely coincidental. My particular area on that programme was the through-life support aspects. Each of the tenderers were offering tweaked versions of the "guaranteed availability" support contracts which they had with their commercial customers. Under these contracts if an engine fault or failure caused a mission delay or cancellation the engine supplier would pay a financial penalty - quite a large one. This was an off-the-shelf engine with an off-the-shelf support package. But I had to explain that being paid money wouldn't fix it - the military mission was different. That was the event which I crystalised in a section of a dissertation I did many years later (which I'll post seperately) Two of the suppliers actually grasped the point, but each then said they would need an initial £5m(ish) for non-recurring engineering to explore and scope the development of a bespoke support package. They also pointed out that the *standard* support package was contingent on achieving the specified utilisation rates - bounded at between 25% and 60% of elapsed time. These are typical in the commercial world, but the military mission amounted to a few hundreds of hours per aircraft per year.

That's the problem with off-the-shelf procurements - they're developed to match SOMEONE ELSE'S requirement, and if your's is different it will cost you.

PDR

[Lyneham Lad]

This chap will sort out all of MoD procurement problems:-
Defence equipment chief tells officials: You’re too old (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/defence-equipment-chief-tells-officials-you-re-too-old-h5jn5vcqc?shareToken=e2d1e6ea690c8c6aa60d98bcf51557f9)

[PDR1]

This is the excerpt I mentioned above - it comes from my dissertation after research into the engineering consequences of availability/capability contracting in the UK defence sector. This bit is from the introduction to my conclusions:

There is a fundamental difference between equipment acquisition and availability/capability contracting. In an equipment acquisition programme the user is paying the contractor to deliver something that is fit for purpose, but it largely can be tested prior to using it on the Mission to confirm that the contractor delivered what was required. In an availability/capability programme the contractor is being paid to be an active part of the Mission, or at the very least the ability to sustain Mission Capability. One of the stated objectives of moving to Availability/Capability contracting is to transfer risk to the contractor, and with that risk goes responsibility.

But in the military scenario the full risk can never be transferred to a contractor. There is a traditional proverb, usually assumed to relate to the fate of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth*:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of the horse, the rider was lost;
For want of the rider, the battle was lost;
For want of the battle, the Kingdom was lost;
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Although this proverb is usually cited to emphasise the need to attend to details, to the ILS community it illustrates the chain of causation between component failure and mission loss. If there had been an effective LSA programme the end effects of the nail failure mode would have been analysed in a FMECA, together with a probability of occurrence predicted in reliability analysis and verified through analogy or demonstration. The RCM analysis would have determined whether preventive inspections or lifing of the horse-shoe subsystem components were warranted and the maintainability analysis would have established the required inspection and rectification procedures together with the skills, equipment, spares, consumables and facilities required to achieve them. The level of repair analysis would then have ensured that the appropriate support policies were implemented to reflect the tolerable resource burden for the mission criticality of the horse. In short; King Richard’s horse would have been returned to serviceability (or replaced) within the time required to prevent a Mission failure. Rather than cry: “A horse, a horse; my Kingdom for a horse!”, supportability engineers would point out that he should have cried:

“A capable system, a capable system, my Kingdom for an increased investment in early-phase LSA during the procurement process to assure the most cost-effectively sustainable through-life Capability at Readiness!!”

But admittedly this does not have the same ring to it and would be difficult to render into iambic pentameter.

All of these analyses are based on probabilities and trade-offs between the cost and consequence of Mission Failure, and only the Mission Owner (the one who has the original political or economic need for the Mission) can own this risk. If King Richard’s personal transport had been provided by way of a “Horse Availability Service” it is doubtful that the KPI penalties resulting from the first-line mission availability failure would be regarded as an adequate compensation for the Plantagenet dynasty’s permanent loss of the English throne. This could be seen as a general characteristic of military missions that is rarely (if ever) present in non-military missions, and it is the reason why the Author would suggest the “blind” application of commercial models to military systems is probably naïve.

So it is not sufficient to have penalty clauses defined in a contract; the owner of the Mission needs to have confidence in the viability of the proposed solution together with faith in abilities and trust in the diligence of the organisation that an availability/capability contract will be awarded to. Availability/capability contracts are partnerships based on mutual trust and shared, common objectives, and developing that trust requires extensive collaboration in the planning stages. The current contracting environment inhibits this collaboration until after a contract is awarded, and imposes an adversarial environment until that point. This can only be seen as less than ideal.

* Although this is unlikely since King Richard’s horse was actually stuck in deep mud rather than rendered unserviceable through the loss of a shoe, and some versions of the proverb are known to predate him

PDR

[PDR1]

This chap will sort out all of MoD procurement problems:-
Defence equipment chief tells officials: You’re too old (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/defence-equipment-chief-tells-officials-you-re-too-old-h5jn5vcqc?shareToken=e2d1e6ea690c8c6aa60d98bcf51557f9)
From gardening leave, if he continues in that vein. He's not only wrong, but his remarks (if they are as reported) break the law and should cause his dismissal.

PDR

[tucumseh]

So that means Bernard Gray is gone? Seven years after his report for Labour, and being told to put his money where his mouth is by the Coalition. Now replaced by a complete ******** who, by his words, disagrees with Gray, Haddon-Cave and the reasons behind the formation of the MAA. Those in DE&S won't know if they're full-bored or countersunk (and most of Douglas's recruits won't know what that means).

[Chugalug2]

Shot one:-
PS, chugalug, I don't hold up the 50's/60's UK airlines as a model for optimal procurement.

Well neither do I, it was merely a personal anecdote to confirm riff raff's point that commercial aircraft were bespoke then and that they are bespoke now.

As I've said above, COTS has its place just as bespoke design military equipment has. If both are done well then our Armed Forces can be as well equipped as they can reasonably expect within the financial constraints that the country is faced with. The operable word of course is "If". Such a small word, such a big ask...

[ShotOne]

Let's be clear on terminology, chugalug. The aircraft you're describing as "bespoke" are of established and proven design, lots of them flying around, readily available spares and predictable purchase cost. On that basis I have no problem with "bespoke". But I just don't buy the line that we face a binary choice between a tortuous modification process and having something designed and built from scratch. To do so for 20 or so Nimrods would have been bonkers. Are some people still living in the days when we ordered aircraft by the thousand, and are our requirements really so unique?

[Heathrow Harry]

But there are a lot of jobs in specialising kit

and even more jobs in the manufacturer when you leave the Armed Forces or the MoD.......

as usual the last 20% of the spec costs 80% of the effort and the hassle - it's a judgement if that 20% is worth it

[Chugalug2]

ShotOne:-
I just don't buy the line that we face a binary choice between a tortuous modification process and having something designed and built from scratch
I'm not sure that anyone is suggesting that, are they? The Hercules CMk1 was a good example of an RAF "Bespoke" aircraft. A bog standard Airframe and Engine package (though we wanted to hang Tynes on them!) was packed full of UK Avionics (not very successfully, though that's another story). It was also a very good example of us knowing better than the lead operator, the USAF, who specified ESF and FiiS for the fuel system. We didn't, and had to replank the wings and later retrofit ESF after 10 men had died. As I say, it is not COTS that is the problem but the MOD...

[tucumseh]

choice between a tortuous modification process and having something designed and built from scratchIt often isn't the choice, but knowing how to manage it. Risk Management = Avoid the avoidable, manage the unavoidable.

Nimrod RMPA/2000/MRA4 kicked off in the late 80s with the development of a few piecemeal modifications. In 1995, CDP threw a large spanner in the works by decreeing that programmes shall avoid contracts that require MoD to provide Government Furnished Equipment. Of course, the first items on the Nimrod GFE list, to be provided to BAeS, were a fleet of serviceable and airworthy Nimrod Mk1s, for conversion. (The former ill-defined, because the latter was not policy). I wonder how many MoD departments promptly turned their back on RMPA, interpreting this policy as "new buy only"? I know the RN did on ASaC Mk7, immediately withdrawing all support and demanding new build, which would have required a 200% hike in funding, a long slip in ISD and reopening closed production lines; not to mention re-manufacturing tooling and trying to find skilled labour. It was a matter of pure luck if project offices in PE had staff who'd done these other jobs before and knew how to circumvent CDP's attacks on his own programmes. CDP was encouraged to at least say his policy applied to forthcoming endorsements, but he ruled it was retrospective. (He was by no means daft, and most thought it a poorly concealed cost cutting measure). From that day forth, your biggest enemy was your own 4 Star. Did I mention full-bored and countersunk?

[EAP86]

Before history gets too rewritten in this thread, I believe the initial concept for the MRA4 was limited to new, more fuel efficient GE engines, modern avionics/glass cockpit and new Missions Systems in the back. Amongst the (intended) major benefits were lower aircrew and groundcrew retraining costs, use of existing infrastructure and logistics chains.

That concept went into the negotiations with MOD and the new, unnecessary wing/engine combination emerged, in response I understand to phrases such as "must have Rolls Royce engines" and "what about wing fatigue?" BAES had eliminated fatigue as an issue and documented its reasoning at the very start of the process.

EAP

[Bigbux]

Hi PDR

I'd love to read more, I'm guessing this was for a technical degree rather than a legal or commercial subject?

So it is not sufficient to have penalty clauses defined in a contract; the owner of the Mission needs to have confidence in the viability of the proposed solution together with faith in abilities and trust in the diligence of the organisation that an availability/capability contract will be awarded to. Availability/capability contracts are partnerships based on mutual trust and shared, common objectives, and developing that trust requires extensive collaboration in the planning stages. The current contracting environment inhibits this collaboration until after a contract is awarded, and imposes an adversarial environment until that point.

If I were designing a contract for development and I read the above in the brief my initial thoughts would be:

A penalty clause is not designed to guarantee availability/performance. It is an incentive to the supplier to show some interest, and part fund the fix required by the user. Effective penalty clauses are usually combined with a number of other risk measuring/reducing mechanisms in a contract - such as KPIs/escalation/geared incentives etc.

Any responsible project owner would be expected to conduct rigorous due diligence into all of the major risk areas of their project. In the commercial world, evidence that dd has been carried out is usually a pre-requisite to secure funding.

If you are competing a requirement (say, for a new engine/aircraft/armoured vehicle) then VfM would be difficult to achieve if you simply paid each supplier a large sum to collate reliability data. You would probably want to make confidence levels in reliability a significant element in your evaluation criteria. (Hence, P8 purchase makes a great deal of sense; see also Boeing's pitch for the T 38 replacement - they have manufactured 2 production aircraft (not prototypes)). The risk has been managed by the contractor (still owned by the operator though).

If the project has to award to a single chosen contractor without competition - then funding reliability could reduce risk - but you have to make sure you ask for relevant data - just look at the Type 45 engine saga. "Nothing to do with us" say BAe, "MoD is operating its ships in warm climates and that's not what they told us they wanted to do". No supplier risk - and no financial liability.

Finally, "mutual trust" and "partnering" are loose, woolly phrases bandied around in the forlorn hope that an inadequate contract will protect the MoD from poor performance. There are many non-commercial specialists involved in MoD procurement, most are intelligent and capable within their specialist areas, but a little bit of legal and commercial training followed up with some real experience would serve them and the Country well. Sadly, it does not always happen: hence a contract is viewed as adversarial; development contract methodologies are largely unknown, and industry is still occasionally allowed to run rings around bright, professional people operating well outside of their competences.

[hoodie]

... but a little bit of legal and commercial training followed up with some real experience would serve them and the Country well.

Unfortunately that's precisely what too many of them HAVE had. A little bit.

Hence the rings being run. (And that's often not malicious, but self-protection by Industry)

[PDR1]

Hi PDR

I'd love to read more, I'm guessing this was for a technical degree rather than a legal or commercial subject?


Well there's 54,000 words of it (226 pages with 14 jokes to keep the reader sane). It's an MSc dissertation, but its topic focuses around the interaction between the commercial and engineering processes in the UK defence sector. In fact at one point it was subtitled "Looking for a way to undertake a sound engineering process in a commercial environment that is explicitly designed to prohibit it" but my supervisor made me delete it. Some parts of it are confidential, but I could pass you a redacted copy of you're having trouble sleeping.

One of the interesting and controversial findings was that competition doesn't work. I don't know why this was so controversial, because the Audit Office had already found just this when looking at defence procurement - the programmes that were on time, on budget and delivering to expectation were generally single-sourced partnered procurements, whereas those which were late, over budget or failing to deliver were generally competed procurements (neither is 100% true, but the strong trend is clear in the NAO reports). In fact most of the problems on those programmes have roots that can be traced to a perceived commercial need to maintain "competitive tension" when it had no contribution to the Mission; that conflict just added complexity for its own sake and measurement of parameters no one actually cared about.


If I were designing a contract for development and I read the above in the brief my initial thoughts would be:

A penalty clause is not designed to guarantee availability/performance. It is an incentive to the supplier to show some interest, and part fund the fix required by the user. Effective penalty clauses are usually combined with a number of other risk measuring/reducing mechanisms in a contract - such as KPIs/escalation/geared incentives etc.


The point of that particular section is to illustrate the difference between military and commercial contracting. It is extremely rare in commercial contracting to have a non-performance which cannot be both measured and resolved in purely financial terms. The military mission is different, so a purely commercial model won't necessarily be appropriate.


Any responsible project owner would be expected to conduct rigorous due diligence into all of the major risk areas of their project. In the commercial world, evidence that dd has been carried out is usually a pre-requisite to secure funding.


In the UK defence sector it's not always possible. In some cases due to the technical risk or mission uncertainity and in others simply due to time and cost. For example a few years ago the MoD ran a competition (using the "competitive dialogue" process) to contract out its Air Traffic Management systems in a project called "Marshall". There were three downselected tenderers looking to take on, manage, update and/or replace a vast range of equipment on 106 MoD sites. Huge volumes of site survey data (drawings, specs, equipment lists, maintenance records, photos etc) were provided to the tenderers, but most of it was many years old and it was "unwarranted". Each tenderer was permitted a single "due diligence visit" comprising no more than 3 people per company for one or two days to each site. These visits were made together - tenderers had to seek information and ask questions in the presence of their competitors "to ensure a level playing field", so of course many questions went unasked. No further visits or questions were permitted, and on the basis of that the bidder would be expected to take on a £1.7bn risk with a 22 year maturity date. That's why one of the bidders pulled out before the second dialogue phase and the one that ultimately won the contract is now haemorrhaging money and looking to re-negotiate the deal.


If you are competing a requirement (say, for a new engine/aircraft/armoured vehicle) then VfM would be difficult to achieve if you simply paid each supplier a large sum to collate reliability data. You would probably want to make confidence levels in reliability a significant element in your evaluation criteria.


Good plan. How? Reliability predictions are meaningless and reliability measurement is extremely difficulty and expensive to measure for anything but very large fleets.


If the project has to award to a single chosen contractor without competition - then funding reliability could reduce risk - but you have to make sure you ask for relevant data


You're assuming the data exist. Reliability data only exist for off the shelf items which are currently fielded in large quantities for long periods in applications and environments which are identical to the one you're interested in. If any of these aspects are different the reliability data are meaningless. And in any event no mission owner is actually INTERESTED in reliability - they are interested in mission capability, mission success and mission affordability. In some cases this will have a dependency on Mission Reliability (the probability that the system will complete the required mission) whilst in others it will have a dependency on Logistic Reliability (the amount of stuff that will break which I need to expend resources to fix). Which of these dominates depends on the nature of the mission, and is unique to each instance. There are also cases where low reliability is unimportant provided the system has excellent maintainability - it can happily fail every hour if making it serviceable take 5 seconds with no skills, tools or spares.

Finally, "mutual trust" and "partnering" are loose, woolly phrases bandied around in the forlorn hope that an inadequate contract will protect the MoD from poor performance.


Again, experience says otherwise. There are several MoD programmes which succeed precisely because integrated industry/military teams operate with common objectives towards a common goal, with a simple KPI structure that is directly related to the mission rather than commercial dogma. And these are the ones which the audit office says deliverd on time, on budget with clear VfM benefits.


There are many non-commercial specialists involved in MoD procurement, most are intelligent and capable within their specialist areas, but a little bit of legal and commercial training followed up with some real experience would serve them and the Country well. Sadly, it does not always happen: hence a contract is viewed as adversarial; development contract methodologies are largely unknown, and industry is still occasionally allowed to run rings around bright, professional people operating well outside of their competences.

Well that's one view. my own experience is that the "commercial specialists" usually cause the problems - insisting on KPIs being allocated to every line item in a 500 page contract with each being measured and sentenced every month, requiring large staffs of people solely to collect data for sentencing when it serves no other purpose. I've seen these people insist that it's "mandatory" to spend £500k/yr for five years measuring and reporting performance stats for an item whose worst-case delivery failure would cost the front-line command an extra 4 maintenance man-hours per squadron per year. I think such commercial expertise is something we can all do without, actually!

PDR

[TwoDeadDogs]

on the plus side, the RAF did buy King Airs and Bell 212s, which are probably about the best OTS aircraft you could buy, provided, of course, you don't mess with them....I wonder if the new Beech T6C purchase will avoid the Tucano bad habits...

[tartare]

While not quite military (unless launching IMINT or other birds) I do love the story about the flight deck air-conditioning filter on one of the shuttles being cobbled together from a Toyota one (unbeknown to anyone at the time).
I'll see if I can find it...

[Heathrow Harry]

I seem to remember the USAF had to source spares from RadioShack a few years back.........

[Planemike]

Army Air Corps Beavers were pretty much off the shelf and proved to be a reliable machine. I suspect some may still be flying around but not with the AAC.

[TelsBoy]

OTS works with some things like training a/c, gliders, stuff that doesn't need to be flung into a warzone and stay in serice for 30 years.

The requirements of warfare can be too complex and ever-changing to support fully-COTS solutions hence the need for "bespoke". It's a difficult balance.

There again there are countless examples of perfectly suitable COTS systems, aircraft etc. that were/are perfectly suitable until the MoD got their clunking leaden fists involved where they didn't need to.

[racedo]

In WW2, it was only the newest and latest virtually unproven designs that guaranteed a winning edge.
Unfortunately, many paid the ultimate price when that new technology or design had flaws that produced early and unexpected failures. That's the price of winning wars

Er No

Germany kit was better than Allied kit, just they had a manufacturing and people resource issue................. losing 10 T34s for every German tank sound like a bad ratio until you have 2000 T34's and they have 100 tanks.

Russian Tanks were no way superior but they just had a hell of a lot more of them.

[racedo]

My own take on things is that too much of the argument for specialised equipment is based upon the dysfunctional procurement processes and overly extended operational lives.

Late 80's kept bumping into military types buying Gortex and other gear in outdoor shops who intended to use them.
Now could be argued about useful life but have a Bergaus jacket bought at that time that still used couple of times a year.

[tucumseh]

Late 80's kept bumping into military types buying Gortex and other gear in outdoor shops who intended to use them.The precise date escapes me but it was a January, 2002 or 2003, and the need for Army troops to buy their own kit was formally raised at 3 Star level, and a (slightly tongue in cheek, but serious) proposal put forward that they be repaid against production of a receipt. Until that point, many had bought items of personal preference, instead of using issued kit.. But the BOWMAN programme had made an assumption that troops would buy certain kit, and so had not made provision for another version in the first place. This was step change in MoD penny pinching. The item used in the test case cost about £25 from Silvermans, who were doing a roaring trade. No reply received!

edit: 16 January 2002.

[gasax]

I'm not really surprised by many of these postings. People's thinking is typically conditioned by their environment but try and step back.

Warfare could be said to be somewhat competitive :\ what sane person would enter any competitive arrangement with equipment that is 20 plus years old and expect to win? Things are like that because of the total dysfunctionality of MOD procurement.

When the MOD add in 'commercial' specialists they are not people who have delivered effective procurement programs, they are 'people like us' in other words civil servants or military personnel with inadequate training and no experience - unsurprisingly the budget is the first victim and delivery the second.

Anyone with half an eye on history could cite any number of examples where old equipment completely failed against a comparable opponent. For the sake of all concerned we had better hope that conflicts remain very asymmetrical, because otherwise we will get seriously embarrassed.

[racedo]

When the MOD add in 'commercial' specialists they are not people who have delivered effective procurement programs, they are 'people like us' in other words civil servants or military personnel with inadequate training and no experience - unsurprisingly the budget is the first victim and delivery the second.

A work colleague for a short period worked in Aerospace industry (yup its deliberately wide) and came across a Purchasing / Logistical issue.
Inherited a services issue where told can't be made better blah blah blah................. red rag to bull issue and with half the staff and 99% availability of key spares a year later he asked them if he had made them believers

[tartare]

Have oft heard a story that certain highly trained, mad-staring gentlemen from Hereford and similar places worldwide preferred COTS footwear i.e. Timberland boots?
Might be bollocks... or have been true many years ago before current Gucci-gear military boots were invented.

[tucumseh]

A work colleague for a short period worked in Aerospace industry (yup its deliberately wide) and came across a Purchasing / Logistical issue.
Inherited a services issue where told can't be made better blah blah blah................. red rag to bull issue and with half the staff and 99% availability of key spares a year later he asked them if he had made them believers

MoD used to have posts in Service HQs which could best be described as Availability, Reliability and Maintainability Troubleshooters. Disestablished in January 1988 and never replaced. Worth their weight in gold. At the time we couldn't understand why, but with hindsight the decision makers knew the 3rd line workshops were being privatised, so MoD would no longer have people being trained to do this; and, indeed, very few are now employed at the grade. That doesn't excuse just ignoring the need for the work to be done.

[racedo]

Have oft heard a story that certain highly trained, mad-staring gentlemen from Hereford and similar places worldwide preferred COTS footwear i.e. Timberland boots?
Might be bollocks... or have been true many years ago before current Gucci-gear military boots were invented.

Tis true from what have seen.

Some of the gear shops in Betws / Capel / Llanberis only employed people who used the mountains extensively, field testing equipment in action.

Mate at the time came across someone he had known when he was in, working there and while he stated "No official Military discount applied" if someone was in and had some proof a decent discount was provided. Only thing they asked in return was to come back in and tell them how the gear worked................ he said seemed to work well.

[riff_raff]

Consider what a disaster the USAF KC-767 tanker program turned into. The original intention was converting the 767 commercial aircraft into a tanker would save money. But that did not turn out to be the case.

[pr00ne]

TwoDeadDogs,

"on the plus side the RAF did buy King Airs and Bell 212's..."

Er, I don't think the RAF did anything of the sort. The MoD bought a capability from a consortium who then went out and bought said aircraft. They are owned and serviced by the contractor and flown by the RAF on a MOCO deal, (military operated contractor owned)

[Bigbux]

Hi PDR

thanks for the reply. You raise some really interesting points and its nice to see that some hard data has been generated in favour of co-operation. Ultimately, (after requirements gathering) a contract is only ever a start point and after 5 years or so, it becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Some of the examples you describe really are at the difficult end - an F-35 programme for instance, as opposed to generating a refurbished KC135. I'm going to ponder further on your post :)

[chopper2004]

on the plus side, the RAF did buy King Airs and Bell 212s, which are probably about the best OTS aircraft you could buy, provided, of course, you don't mess with them....I wonder if the new Beech T6C purchase will avoid the Tucano bad habits...

Actually Bell 412 FB or Now CObham Helicopter Services for the DHFS M/E SARTU part of the contract and for 84 Sqn use - COMR - Commercially Owned Military Registered ,

Bell 212 went to AAC for use in Brunei and then Belize and MW for training

cheers

[Lynxman]

Actually Bell 412 FB or Now CObham Helicopter Services for the DHFS M/E SARTU part of the contract and for 84 Sqn use - COMR - Commercially Owned Military Registered ,

Bell 212 went to AAC for use in Brunei and then Belize and MW for training

cheers

It's not MOCO or COMR, the correct term is MRCOA - Military Registered Civil Owned Aircraft.

[Cyberhacker]

Speccing the equipment is obviously critical and the military has a hugely unfortunate tendency to make it all far to too difficult. The best example I can think of is the coffee machine on a certain US aircraft, capable of operating at +6,-3g, massive temperature margins and can withstand a 27g impact.

Indeed... a few years back, I was involved with the Pilot Cooling Unit for JSF pilots (which pumps coolant through the flight suit).

The unit had an EMC susceptibility requirement that was laughable... power levels 1/4 of the spec would have killed the pilot...

[PDR1]

Hi PDR

thanks for the reply. You raise some really interesting points and its nice to see that some hard data has been generated in favour of co-operation. Ultimately, (after requirements gathering) a contract is only ever a start point and after 5 years or so, it becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Some of the examples you describe really are at the difficult end - an F-35 programme for instance, as opposed to generating a refurbished KC135. I'm going to ponder further on your post :)

I tend to get a bit passionate about this one (which is how the dissertation ended up at 54,000 words!) and it kinda suited my general outlook on life to challenge the assumption that competition is always a "good thing", although that wasn't where I intended to go when I started it.

One of my core findings was that, in an availability/capability contract, if you observe that the KPIs drive the behaviours it follows that the KPIs influence system performance - ergo they are actually PART of the system. It therefore follows that KPI Design is an engineering activity which needs as much science, rigour and care as (say) the design of the low-observability solution. In hindsight this is glaringly obvious, but when initially suggested to people (both in the MoD and in Industry) it was treated as heresy. The initial response was that KPIs were a purely commercial issue and engineers should stay away from them...

PDR

[Minnie Burner]

Historically, the RAF's least 'effective' combat aircraft have been acquired through formal OR and procurement. Conversely, those aircraft the RAF had "no operational requirement" for but fell 'off the shelf' into service have been among the most effective.
Discuss...

[PDR1]

Hmmm... Spitfire, Hurrican, Tempest, Typhoon, Hunter, Tornado, Harrier II, Hawk - all these came from ORs didn't they?

PDR

[Minnie Burner]

The first four were pretty much private ventures with constantly changing AM specs following them around. You could have mentioned the Fairey Battle, that was what the boys in the front line really wanted.
The Hunter was rejected, twice. "Swept-winged nonsense". And we had to buy Sabres whilst the AM procrastinated.
I'll grant you #6 but not #7. The GR5 was not the GR5 of first choice but was the off the shelf version.
Hawk? I did say combat aircraft. And didn't it replace an OR'd twin jet at 'short' notice?

[NutLoose]

Well they did arm the Hawk as an air defence last resort sidewinder armed variant did they not ?

[Evalu8ter]

"on the plus side the RAF did buy King Airs......"

"Er, I don't think the RAF did anything of the sort."

Hmm, 14 Sqn might take a different view....

[Ogre]

those aircraft the RAF had "no operational requirement" for but fell 'off the shelf' into service have been among the most effective.

I assume Buccaneer was one of those, a sort of RN "hand me down" to fill the gap left by TSR2? Perhaps Phantom was another, but in those days we took what we were given and made it work

[wonderboysteve]

I'm not sure the phrases 'RAF Phantom' and 'Off the shelf' have any business being near each other.

[PDR1]

I'm not sure the phrases 'RAF Phantom' and 'Off the shelf' have any business being near each other.
Indeed - the RAF OTS Phantom was i9nconceivable because it had been Spayed.

[I'll fetch my coat]

PDR

[Minnie Burner]

The Buc and F-4 both found ample space in the TSR2/B111 void, though the Speying of both had little to do with the RAF.