Improving reliability and operational availability of military systems

Achieving high reliability is one of the major objectives in the development of the future combat system (FCS) family of military vehicles. The proposed solution to achieve this objective is a prognostics-based approach characterized by a capability to monitor the status of mission-critical components and forecast the future state of the FCS system. In this paper, two approaches for achieving and maintaining high operational availability of military systems are analyzed and compared: overhaul and prognostics asset management strategies. It is shown that the prognostics approach leads to improved operational availability by anticipating failure and reducing administrative and logistics delays. In addition, the prognostics capability allows intelligent maintenance that is, replacing only those parts whose remaining lifetime reached the critical value. In this case, the improved operational availability is achieved at a significantly lower cost (number of spares) compared to that of the overhaul maintenance strategy. The prognostics approach also leads to a reduced risk of failure during the upcoming missions, since it allows field commanders to select only those platforms whose remaining life exceeds the duration of the upcoming mission