GUEST BLOG: Addressing supply-chain risk and obsolescence in defense

Blog

October 10, 2024

The defense industry stands at a critical juncture, tasked with confronting increased challenges in terms of sustaining operational efficiency and national security amid evolving threats and technological advancements. Central to these situations are supply-chain vulnerabilities and component obsolescence, both of which can undermine mission readiness. To counter these risks, advanced defense software solutions can offer innovative approaches to manage and mitigate supply-chain disruptions and ensure the longevity and effectiveness of defense systems.

Managing supply chains in the defense sector is a formidable task due to the long life cycle of defense equipment and the critical nature of their functions. Composed of complex, costly machinery and advanced technologies, defense systems must be maintained over many years to ensure defense operations remain smooth and investments continue to pay off.

Leading defense software companies are at the forefront of developing solutions that address challenges across several key areas. These include aggregating and analyzing disparate data, often fragmented across different sources or platforms. Advanced software solutions, particularly those leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), are crucial in harmonizing and analyzing this data to predict and mitigate supply chain issues. By integrating product life cycle management (PLM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems with mission-critical software featuring predictive analytics, defense organizations can create an interconnected ecosystem. Such an ecosystem enables comprehensive analysis across engineering disciplines and life cycles, ensuring that systems remain operational and effective over time.

Strengthening defense supply chains

To strengthen defense supply chains for mission success, the industry is moving beyond commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, which are often adapted to meet U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) needs. While COTS solutions offer some customization, they fall short in addressing the longevity and high availability demands of defense systems.

The focus is now on developing specialized solutions that better optimize and enhance the defense supply chain, ensuring mission success. Advanced defense software empowers organizations to comply swiftly with essential defense-specific regulatory mandates, such as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS).

These software tools facilitate supply-chain audits, risk assessments, and life cycle management, ensuring that all components used in defense systems meet stringent regulatory standards while reinforcing supply-chain practices to maintain the readiness and reliability of critical defense infrastructure.

Continuous availability and reliability of components is a critical piece of supply-chain management. Usable software solutions must emphasize the use of modular design and queryable data to enable ongoing monitoring and analysis of alternatives. These solutions drive a crucial shift from traditional document-based logistics to dynamic digital logistics. This transformation is vital to ensure that critical components remain available and reliable over the long term, directly impacting mission success.

In the defense sector, any supply-chain disruption can have serious consequences. To stay prepared, defense organizations can turn to technologies such as digital twins and predictive analytics. Digital twins – which are virtual models of physical systems – enable real-time monitoring and analysis of operational data. This technology enables defense organizations to predict and prevent failures before they occur, markedly enhancing system reliability. A 2023 McKinsey analysis reported that digital twins can reduce development times by as much as 50% and decrease the need for costly physical prototypes, leading to a 25% reduction in quality issues during production.

The importance of software tools that complement digital twins cannot be overstated: These tools analyze data to identify and address vulnerabilities, playing a critical role in ensuring mission success. By enabling the testing of materials before deployment, they ensure that mission-critical systems remain operational despite supply-chain challenges.

Reducing costs, ensuring resilience

Modernizing defense software capabilities, mainly through AI and ML, is also critical in reducing overall costs and ensuring the sustainability of defense operations. These technologies enhance confidence in decision-making data, enabling defense organizations to forecast potential issues and design systems that mitigate these risks effectively.

Digital engineering is pivotal in reducing costs and ensuring resilience in defense systems. By creating authoritative source models, defense organizations can apply and validate changes before implementation, ensuring software components remain current and effective. This comprehensive understanding of defense systems across all disciplines enables companies to procure the right parts and avoid costly failures.

Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) significantly enhances this approach by supporting the creation of digital twins and the implementation of condition-based maintenance strategies. It provides the necessary infrastructure to predict, test, and mitigate supply-chain issues. By enabling rapid prototyping and testing of replacement components in a digital environment, defense organizations can ensure that the eventual physical components remain operational and secure. These systems also can enable more accurate prediction of component failure so that users can plan for proactive design and ongoing maintenance strategies. Additionally, MBSE enables validation of software updates before rollout, ensuring that software systems remain current and effective.

Combating obsolescence

As the defense industry advances, it faces the dual challenge of driving innovation while continuing to sustain critical legacy systems essential to national security. These legacy systems, often operational for decades, provide valuable operational data and design insights that engineering teams can leverage to develop more advanced systems.

Creating digital representations of legacy systems enables defense organizations to trace design decisions, analyze historical test results, and use this data to innovate. Modernizing these systems through digitization is not just about preservation: By addressing obsolescence issues and supply chain vulnerabilities through digital engineering, defense organizations can reduce costs and enhance the performance of future systems.

Emerging trends – including the increased adoption of AI and ML, the standardization of data points, the integration of cloud computing, and the development of predictive algorithms – are set to transform supply-chain management and strategies for managing the life cycle of outdated components over the next decade. To navigate these changes effectively, modernizing outdated provisioning processes and incorporating model-based capabilities into their PLM will address current and upcoming supply-chain vulnerabilities.

Ensuring system longevity

Advanced defense software plays a crucial role in predicting when parts or systems may become obsolete. For instance, if adversaries’ technological advancements compromise a system’s security, a robust digital engineering environment enables rapid updates and deployment of enhanced capabilities. This approach not only strengthens system performance but also ensures that systems remain secure against evolving threats.

Adopting a comprehensive strategy that integrates advanced technologies, MBSE, and interoperable data is essential to effectively mitigate obsolescence in defense systems. MBSE and digital engineering support this approach by providing a structured framework for capturing, analyzing, and managing system data throughout its life cycle. By leveraging these advanced methodologies, defense organizations can enhance system longevity, improve performance, and maintain operational readiness. By storing complete data instances, such as those provided by quality information framework (QIF) documents, within product line engineering (PLE) libraries, defense organizations can ensure rapid system updates in response to evolving threats. This approach leverages MBSE and digital engineering to modernize provisioning processes and embrace model-based capabilities.

The path forward involves embracing innovation while strategically managing legacy systems, ensuring the defense sector remains agile and prepared for future challenges. This approach will enable the industry to maintain its edge and effectively respond to evolving threats.

Katie Fisher is the Chief Engineer, Model-Based Systems Engineering and Software Integrations, for STC, an Arcfield company. Andrew Bice is the Director, Logistics Programs, for STC, an Arcfield company.