Mission Readiness: Achieving Excellence Through Technology Innovation

Maintaining mission readiness is a complex, ever-changing task. It involves measuring personnel capabilities, equipment status, supply levels, and more. Excellence in mission readiness can go beyond a functional state of preparedness to an ultimate state of predictiveness, performance, and precision.

A readiness strategy, with excellence as a goal, can give your force the capability to predict issues, optimize performance, and operate with new levels of accuracy. This kind of strategy requires understanding and implementation of a few critical steps.

The role of predictive insights
From data comes insight, and military forces are a wealth of data. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to use this data on equipment levels, maintenance schedules, inventories, and procurements pipelines to improve mission readiness.

Most of the data available to military planners is descriptive. It accurately illustrates what is in place and where. To understand readiness in a world of diverse conditions, military forces need more connected data sets and predictive analytics. Event processing at the edge or in the cloud, is driving new data policy rules so that that forces can execute on data in real or near real-time.  Enabling critical insight into operations, maintenance, enemy status, and future conditions drive us into faster evolutions of the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act) Loop, required to offset our adversaries implementing autonomous operations.

"Ground proximity warning systems, traffic control, and awareness systems can help extend awareness beyond their line of sight."

With predictive analytics in place, data can be more efficiently used to track equipment, plan for logistical efficiency, and enable greater accuracy in accomplishing mission tasks. Readiness is far more than just improved maintenance and equipment upgrades; it is a culture change. Today’s military demands digital procedures that increase efficiency and savings. 

The importance of upgrades

 Across the Department of Defense, mission-capable rates have decreased with budget cuts and financial restrictions such as delayed and shortened budget cycles. Often, this makes it difficult to find a budget for upgrading equipment – such as turboshaft engines and HUMS systems. 

But to sustain their missions, aircraft require the specific and on-time supply of spare parts and upgrades to their capabilities. Military aircraft perform under incredibly demanding conditions every time they take to the sky, and small upgrades can have major impacts.

Therefore, modernization strategies should be a critical part of mission readiness. Upgrades are essential for advancing the capabilities of people in the field and their equipment to ensure the accomplishment of mission objectives.

Executing tracking and monitoring right
Closely related to the issue of upgrading equipment is the idea of tracking and monitoring it. Without the ability to effectively track an aircraft’s location and readiness status, leaders will struggle to assess readiness quickly. One form of monitoring that can provide enormous benefit is connected maintenance. Connected maintenance enables ground crews to identify components that will require maintenance or replacement before the aircraft lands and to ensure that spare parts are available if needed.

Capturing and analyzing aircraft data on usage and wear enables crews to more efficiently inspect systems, leading to more rapid and streamlined maintenance processes. This ensures weapons systems are more mission ready. Data analytics provide military leaders with the intelligence needed to quickly view the current operational status and location of equipment. With accurate data, defense leaders can make the correct decisions about transporting equipment or putting vehicles into a service center for necessary maintenance updates.

The mainstay of readiness
Maintaining situational awareness is essential for mission readiness and success. Loss of situational awareness not only endangers aircraft and crew but can also cause accidents or issues that take equipment or personnel out of readiness. Ground proximity warning systems, traffic control, and awareness systems can help extend awareness beyond their line of sight.

Static weather forecasts are a good start, but modern connectivity and radar allow for a constantly updated view of what lies ahead. It is even possible to give pilots suggested route alternatives or recommendations while in flight, helping them avoid weather hazards.

Depending on the type of actuation system, valuable hours in preparedness may be spent on tests, maintenance, and repairs. Thus, the quality of the actuator influences readiness just as much as it influences the ability to achieve precise movements. The reliability of engines has a direct and obvious correlation with readiness. Issues with engines not only endanger crews and missions but can lead to lengthy maintenance downtime. As missions take place in varied environments, the ability of an engine to do its job in extreme heat, cold and other weather conditions is another aspect of readiness.

In addition to uptime, though, engine power and efficiency are an important part of mission readiness. Technological innovations can enable pilots to fly farther, faster, and more efficiently. Better engines thus form a better foundation for all mission preparations and readiness. For example, Honeywell is finalising a new and improved T55 engine, for the U.S. Army’s Chinook helicopters. The latest upgrades include advanced compressor technology, which results in more horsepower and range to continue to support the evolving heavy lift needs of the Chinook.

Ultimately, today’s technology is improving military capabilities by enabling greater mission readiness. Through cutting-edge solutions and hardware, military forces can gain a positive advantage in mission readiness while boosting the potential for mission success.