It is widely accepted that the current situation does not work, due to the technical obstacles, the wide range of stakeholders involved and the fact that every integration is different. This is now being confronted by international efforts to improve the process of weapons integration onto fixed and rotary wing aircraft and for weaponisation of unmanned air vehicles. The 4th annual Air Weapons Integration will address the issues currently at the forefront of the drive to improve the weapons integration process · Is weapon interoperability between and within platforms really possible? Can this be rolled out internationally? · How can the acquisition cycle be improved to reduce these delays and cost over runs that have been inherent in past and current programmes? · Is it possible to avoid the missed deadlines, overruns and budget overspends that have been commonplace during weapons integration projects?
The 2009 Conference on Air Weapons Integration on 26th and 27th February will be Chaired by DefenceIntegration.org. We look now to thelast time we Chaired this Conference in March 2006 to review theindustry at that point and will report back to our Readers and Memberson progress.
Find more information online at; www.iqpc.co.uk including booking details.
As Chair of the 2006 Defence IQ Air Weapons Integration Conference I had an overview of many of the issues regarding Integration projects with national militaries and their suppliers. This publication is my best opportunity to collate and make public my own conclusions and those reported to me by attendees who might otherwise not wish to associate their professions with potentially contentious points. Unfortunately, those points of contention can sometimes feature amongst the most salient. A fine line has to be tread between causing unintended embarrassment and promoting the cause of progress by addressing the contentious points directly. For example, during the interactive panel session of the Conference on the second day, the speakers gathered
Engineer – whose daily working life is a constant training in the rational balancing of probabilities versus consequences.
From a higher level this is just one of the criticisms that the taxpayer could have with the current state of integration projects. One course of action would be to ensure that only experienced Engineers perform the risk analysis and keep some blue water between them and the senior management who may end up reporting the risk analysis to their program boards. But this in turn indicates a more fundamental flaw in the methodology of integration itself particularly when considered along with the points concerning duplication and confusion over ownership: Such flaws are indicative of a lack of thorough planning in the structure of integration programs. My comments may appear critical but would anyone really sit down with a blank sheet of paper and devise the torturous route of integration currently employed – so many competing and overlapping programs within single organisations? Clearly, these existing structures are theproduct of internal bureaucracy and a regimented approach with an absence of thorough project planning inherent to all very large projects conducted corporately.
together and in discussion with the floor concluded that the main obstacles to progression in Air Weapons Integration were;
1. Regimented processes.
2. Duplication of processes by
It should be clear though ironic that whilst governments create project planning tools like Princell (for the UK) they fail to profit from their use internally. The anti-thesis is that external and independent
competing bodies within a single organisation.
3. Confusion over ownership of the integration process.
4. The question of whether to appoint an overriding, independent Integration body
Perhaps the most serious point was that of regimented processes. The repetition of risk analyses to find remote possibilities and assigning them a probability of one - thus delaying projects at the taxpayer’s expense. Nobody really addressed the reason of why this happens but it could easily be explained by risk analysis falling management under the auspices of management rather than experienced engineers. As an example of this a risk analysis was divulged that was a series of conditions so unlikely it seemed massively improbable but was afforded a probability of 1 because the outcome was the potential loss of a plane – irrespective of the massive improbability. A qualified, certified and experienced Engineer in that kind of bureaucracy would have known that any unlikely event followed by another which depends on the first is the product of those two improbabilities and therefore highly unlikely indeed. It seems odd that such large value projects can be beset by problems covered as a matter of course in all accredited engineering degree schemes. Such cases favour an independent body overseeing the process that could at least throw light in such dark recesses and provide visibility to external auditing bodies. An integration body would be well advised to check the basic maths and engineering assumptions in the processes which would stand out to an experienced
integration programs cost money and introduce an additional tier of bureaucracy without necessarily bringing the appropriate engineering expertise to the table. True, but seen as we’re spending it anyway perhaps value could be obtained in commissioning a study in to constructing an objective review process - one that had processes which were actually planned like any corporate project with a value approaching or exceeding $100m - the typical cost of any single integration project.
The four points given above were reportedly not minor and probably constitute the major part of the problem of the substantial cost of integration. As a supporting case one attendee reported to me that in some of their recent armament projects the cost of the armaments was 20% with the balance being the cost of integration. The very scale of the problem highlights the importance of holding a Conference on Air Weapons Integration in the first place and makes for an interesting plot to determine which pressure wins out in the market during the intervening period before the next such Conference. Will we see the beginnings of long overdue reforms to the process of Air Weapons Integration or might we see the emergence of a ‘wildcard work-around’ such as an independent integration body based on sound and established corporate style project planning?
See you in February, 2009 and we’ll find out.
Dr. Anthony Mc Donagh-Smith
Executive Director & General Secretary, SAE-UK.org
