What's wrong with "Off The Shelf"?
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What's wrong with "Off The Shelf"?
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?
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We're SO SPECIAL- and not just Mil types either...
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...
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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.
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.
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Ohh and by the way, not everything is off the shelf in civi street, take the golf shelters at Woodford 
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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.
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.
Last edited by brokenlink; 14th Oct 2016 at 18:27. Reason: Spilling mishtook
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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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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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.
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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
Imagegear
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
Imagegear
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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.
"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.
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.
This isn't theory - it's a piece of engineering science which is matched by observation every day.
PDR
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
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.
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.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
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