DECEMBER 2021AEROSPACEDEFENSEREVIEW.COM8MISSION READINESS: ACHIEVING EXCELLENCE THROUGH TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONBy Norm Balchunas, Senior Director of Defense and Cybersecurity, Honeywell AerospaceMaintaining 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. 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 upgradesAcross 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-In My Opinion
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