Plug and play – not plug and pray

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Originally published in G4 Defence 

Following the swingeing cuts suffered by the armed forces as a result of the Strategic Defence and Security Review last autumn, and the subsequent cuts in equipment and personnel budgets more recently announced, the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence has come under the attack of scathing reviews in the popular press – and some rather more pointed criticism from the Houses of Parliament and their appointed fiscal watchdog, the National Audit Office. While nobody – not even the Ministry itself – would contend that all these criticisms are unjustified, there are some signs that procurement reform and so-called ‘smart acquisition’ policies are under way. Some of these deserve a wider exposure than they have had hitherto.

In the previous issue of G4 Defence we examined the pros and cons of the Urgent Operational Requirement (UOR) process, concluding that it is, in fact, better than many potential alternative systems and on the whole is a good method of addressing some of the weaknesses in the so-called ‘core’ procurement system. Although the UOR speaks to satisfying the requirements of the theatre commander, and is therefore A Good Thing, it does little to assuage some of the concerns about the core system, nor does it answer the potential future legacy problems that will have to be faced by logisticians and planners as they seek to assimilate equipment acquired under UORs into front line inventories and rear echelon storage.

One aspect of procurement reform revolves around the development of the so-called ‘intelligent customer.’ This appellation should not necessarily be taken as a veiled criticism – i.e. that the customer hitherto has been unintelligent in the pejorative meaning of the word. Rather, it should be taken as an indication that the military customer has, in many cases, taken on board the message that there are significant benefits accruing from adopting different methods of doing business – especially those that draw hard-earned lessons and the best practices from established processes and technological approaches already proven in the non-military field – and taking a cold, hard look at the fundamentals of the requirement, rather than building on the basis of “next verse, very much the same as the first.”

Given that the military customer lives and breathes in an extremely conservative environment by comparison with the rest of society, and that this environment is one in which one of the fundamental issues at stake is the potential death and injury of members of the armed forces and, let’s face it, members of the society the armed forces exist to protect and defend, the extent to which the customer has become ‘intelligent’ in recent years is, perhaps, surprising. Although it is largely ignored by those critics of the Ministry whose views are based on populist and inadequate understanding of the issues, changes in the underlying attitude to systems and equipment procurement are starting to effect the way in which the entire defence community – supplier and user both – is looking at the future specification, development and procurement of defence equipment.

Let us restate what should be an underlying principle of state procurement using public funds. Equipment and services should be procured in open and fair competition, meeting design and operational characteristics fully thought through and openly communicated by the user, with capacity within the specification to cater for future developments, as far as they can be accurately predicted at the time; equipment should be fit for purpose and ‘gold-plating’ the specification to cater for apocalyptic but very rarely expected events should be kept to a minimum.

It seems to this writer that one of the aspects of procurement to which lip service, rather than concentrated attention, is often paid is that of “open and fair competition.” The blame – if, indeed, blame is the right word to describe a situation that has grown out of all recognition over time – lies equally with both sides of the procurement equation. The user side of the community has been less than careful in ensuring that open competition is a dominant theme of the requirements creation process, though this, to a degree, is a function of the industrial base and the sovereign capability existing in the country. After all, if you are in the market for an aircraft carrier – and you wish to support the national technology and manufacturing base – how many competitors are there you can approach?

The supply side of the equation bears considerable responsibility for the evolution of this situation too, however. A recent presentation on standards at an international military training conference by a uniformed officer – speaking entirely on his own behalf – closed with the memorable words “we love standards – that’s why we have so many of them!” This writer also well remembers the response some years ago to a question posed to a major UK supplier regarding why they had not adopted a more open architecture in their bid for a particular programme. “Unless an open architecture and the appropriate standards are mandated by the Ministry, it is not in our commercial interests to do anything other than promote our own proprietary system and thus develop the prospect of future work in the same vein.”

Although that is, perhaps, an understandable attitude from a commercial enterprise whose objective is maintenance and growth of shareholder value, it does little to address the slightly more philosophical – but absolutely fundamental – issue of ensuring best value for money in the long term for capabilities, equipment and services procured with public funds. The onus, therefore, must be on the user to create a procurement system in which industrial and military behaviour addresses the public interest in a better and more holistic fashion than has been the case hitherto.

Enter stage left the ‘intelligent customer.’ Within the UK MoD there have been quiet but nonetheless very significant moves in at least one area of future procurement that address this very issue and may do more to ensure open and fair competition than anything else in coming years.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of what the MoD has done in adopting the Generic Vehicle Architecture (GVA) and Def-Stan 23-09. Systemically innovative and with a potential far-reaching impact on future procurement, these initiatives essentially mandate an Interoperable Open Architecture (IOA) that systems integrators must adopt in design, development and manufacture of (to start with) military vehicles.

Put simply, this means that designers and developers of vehicles must adopt the IOA in every aspect of the vehicle in order to ensure seamless and cost-effective integration of future systems and assemblies. As an example – today’s infantry fighting vehicle may carry what we shall call a Mark IV commander’s day/night sight. The vehicle may have a projected life span of 30 years, but five years into its life, new technology and new manufacturing techniques make available a Mark V sight with better resolution, longer intervals between major service, faster implementation times and that is more cost-effective to boot. If the vehicle, the Mark IV and the Mark V sight have all been designed to an IOA standard, the operation of procuring, fitting and making operational the new capability becomes a vastly simpler process than under the old ‘core’ procurement system. Essentially, this becomes a matter of true ‘plug and play,’ rather than the all too frequent necessity to ‘plug and pray’ that has been the de facto standard to date.

GVA and IOA do not together form a panacea for curing the potential ills of future procurement. It is still very much too early to determine whether the initiative will realise its potential impact, and it is evident that the MoD is adopting a gradual approach rather than a traumatic one, largely, one suspects, in order not to put too much of the fear of God into the systems integrator audience. It is also not a uniquely British approach, since many nations are adopting similar approaches to ensuring more intelligent procurement. However, the MoD is arguably further ahead than any other nation in that no other authority has gone quite as far as the UK in mandating aspects of an IOA adoption in this manner.

Not only has MoD mandated the use of IOA in design of future vehicles and their associated systems, it has also tasked QinetiQ with the creation and maintenance of a System Data Dictionary (SDD) – a dictionary and vocabulary for vehicle systems down to the component level that defines the language by which all vehicle systems will communicate and interface. Known as the Land Data Model in MoD parlance, when completed and broadened, the SDD represents a fundamental shift away from the traditional procurement approach based on Interface Control Documents – which could lead to the specification of differing and potentially counterproductive ‘languages’ for sub-systems.

Even more radical than the creation of the SDD, however, is what the Ministry has done with it. In simple terms, it has made this mandated dictionary and associated language available to the entire defence community. It is an open document, intended to promote truly open competition and to ensure ‘plug and play’ capability for any system intended for implementation on a military vehicle. In addition to being subject to careful scrutiny and consideration by a host of systems integrators and component manufacturers, the SDD is also under careful consideration by the procurement authorities of other nations as an example to be followed – notably Canada, France, Australia and Germany.

So, is GVA a one-off, or is it the harbinger of a new era in procurement? The current indications, despite the soft pedal applied by the MoD, are that it could be the latter. If it works in the ground vehicle arena, there is no reason why it should not be applied to the other areas of major expenditure for MoD. How might an IOA approach bring cost savings and future operational flexibility to the navy’s new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, for example, or the Trident submarine replacement programme? How might it be applied to the aerial environment, which has become the 800 pound gorilla in the room for most defence budgets as technology drives unit costs ever upward?

In the United States, the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Control Segment programme (UCS) intends to define and implement a unified and common architecture for the ground control stations of every current and future UAS. Following very similar principles to those espoused by the GVA initiative, the UCS programme is fully cross-service and the military is already deeply vested in a data-centric integration strategy, though it has not yet reached the level of an industrial mandate.

Real-Time Innovations, Inc., a California-based company created in 1991 from a robotics research laboratory at Stanford University, is a key player in the IOA world, with a vision of implementation that gels entirely with the objectives espoused by the MoD. Geoff Revill, a UK-based marketing consultant for the company and someone who has followed the MoD’s initiative very closely, encapsulates the issue. “Open standards have been around for a long time and do not comprise a new phenomenon,” he says. “However, a key difference here is that, recognising that the implementations of open standards do not always follow the same route and are not always the same, the MoD, in mandating the use of a common dataset for future implementation and making the supporting documentation freely and openly available, has gone further than any other national defence procurement authority. In this sense this is a radical departure from the traditional norms and, if fully realised, could lead to true competition in an open marketplace.”

That has to be a good thing for the military, for the public purse and, in the long run, for industry. There are likely to be many obstacles along the road to the Holy Grail of a truly open competitive marketplace, but the fact that the Ministry of Defence is giving a lead to the rest of the world in taking the calculated risk of re-defining critical aspects of defence procurement should give this community cause for considerable hope.

Contributor:   Tim Mahon

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Report Abuse   patrick.willard@prismtech.com 10/07/2011 11:39:45 AM EDT A very good article and a good history of how we got to here. I would have liked to have seen great balance in also getting a quote from PrismTech. PrismTech are the only company to fully implement the DDS standard, are a British company and were contracted by QinetiQ to consult on the Land Data Model development. We are also a British company. Replies (0) Post a reply Sign in or Sign up to post a comment