Simon Johns

Embraer has achieved very high reliability and availability levels for the C-390 because it matched its experience in commercial aviation to apply advanced design and manufacturing techniques to meet the stringent reliability and availability requirements demanded by today’s air forces.

• Concept - How the Design process can deliver modern, affordable, low risk solutions with high availability rates 

• Implementation – Combining rugged structures, Health Management Systems, and incorporation of Maintenance Steering Group (MSG)-3 philosophy 

• Delivery – The overall reduction of resource demand across the Defence Lines of Development

• Maintaining cutting-edge performance of air platforms over longer life cycles: How has sustainment needed to change over the years as platforms intended to serve for 20-30 years are now in service for 40 ad 50 years?

• How to balance increasing sustainment cost with reliability and safety?

• Lessons learned from the 60-year service of the T-38

• Creating and justifying a sustainment plan resilient to changing budgets, requirements and the industrial supply chain.

• Multinational collaboration and partnerships in enhancing sustainment: Balancing incentives across stakeholders—OEMs and the industrial base, operators, maintenance depots and materiel commands

• Key investment priorities: Leveraging tenets of Industry 4.0: Additive manufacturing in mitigating supply shortfalls; HUMS—enabling near real-time extraction of digital data from key systems; AI & Machine Learning in data analytics; Establishing ways to swiftly source and certify new technologies.

• Identifying the key mission sets after “shock and awe”

• Generating and sustaining air missions: aerial refuelling, ISR, armed overwatch, strike

• Dealing with adversary autonomous systems and ROE

• Continuing to support front-line forces: conducting intra-theatre airlift in contested environments

• The logistics and resupply mission in the European theatre: identifying bottlenecks for rapid deployment of air and joint forces

• What strategies can be adopted to speed up acquisition or minimise schedule slippage on major programmes?

• How can the best strategies be identified? What realistic hurdles can arise from the implementation of such strategies?

• Focusing on mature or adapting commercially available technologies: Lessons learned from previous acquisitions.

• Assessing the impact of industrial consolidation and mitigation strategies.

• Principals of agile acquisition and how they relate to technological advances in manufacturing.

• Key investment priorities to 2025 in Eastern Europe.