The Army Way

The Army Futures Command (AFC) was one of the first Joint Service four-star commands to implement the Urgent Capability Acquisition (UCA) and Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA) pathways established in the Adaptive Acquisition Framework (AAF) for expediting delivery of materiel and services to our Warfighters.
The AFC was established in 2018 with the primary goal of modernizing the Army for future warfighting superiority against near-peer and peer+ adversaries. The National Defense Strategy (NDS) has laid down three primary strategic line of effort for the U.S. military: (1) build a more lethal force, (2) strengthen alliances and attract new partners, and (3) reform the Department of Defense (DoD) for greater performance and affordability.

AFC was tasked to realign Army Materiel Developers, Capability Developers, and the various research facilities such as the Army Research Lab to enable quick reaction to NDS capability gaps. This requires rapid development of future weapon system prototypes.



In December 2019, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSD (A&S)) promulgated DoD Instruction (DoDI) 5000.8, Operation of the Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA). DoDI 5000.8 added several new lanes to the previous two provided by DoDI 5000.2, Operation of the Defense Acquisition System, which set up the Major Capability Acquisition and Defense Business Systems pathways.

As shown in Figure 1, DoDI 5000.8 adds the UCA, Software Acquisition, and Acquisition of Services pathways. These new pathways provide much greater flexibility and focus on specific capabilities introduced. All of the pathways are important, but this article concerns the UCA and MTA pathways. There are several unique challenges that systems engineering and acquisition logistics face in these new AAF pathways due to the highly compressed timeline and lack of DoDI 5000.2 program documentation (e.g., Systems Engineering Plan, Test and Evaluation Master Plan) required in these projects. Some of the challenges include the following:

• The difficulty of performing Reliability Availability Maintainability and Cost Analyses, or even preliminary studies during early system development in rapid prototyping projects.
• The lack of a requirement in the UCA and MTA pathways to perform preliminary Product Supportability Analyses such as Failure Mode Engineering, Reliability Centered Maintenance, and Level of Repair Analysis—which provide key supportability drivers to influence the system design.
• The traditional view of Diminishing Manufacturing Shortages and Material Shortages (DMSMS) and obsolescence as sustainment activities. However, this is primarily a “reactive” management approach. In rapid prototypes, most (if not all) new weapon systems will enter production with obsolete parts and material.
• Smart Parts and Material Management Processes are a new domain, and many prototype system engineers and designers are unfamiliar with these best practices and how to implement them.
• Counterfeit parts and materials represent a significant risk to Army weapon systems. At present, the Army has no Counterfeit Risk Management policy or procedures to analyze critical components or materials in rapid prototypes.
• Supply chain risks include counterfeit but also supplier health in addition to near-peer adversaries embedded deep in the supply lines. Supply chain risks are increasing in the DoD and must be addressed as early as possible in the system life cycle.

Source: DoD Instruction 5000.85
Key: ATP = authority to proceed; DD = disposition decision; I = iteration; IOC = initial operational capability; MDD = materiel development decision; MS = milestone; MVCR = minimum viability capability release; MVP = minimum viability product; OD = outcome determination; PHS&T = Packaging, Handling, Storage, and Transportation; R = release

All of these strategic challenges are equally real and have immediate and lasting negative impacts on mission readiness. However, let’s try to “eat the elephant” one bite at a time. This article focuses on obsolescence, counterfeit, and supply chain risks—and looks at an emerging toolset, the Readiness-Based Engineering Analysis (REA), and how it may enable the Army and DoD to mitigate these high-impact risks. Table 1 breaks out this problem statement as a strategic challenge and shows the “Five W’s”—what, who, where, when, and why—which provide the facts and assumptions that form the basis of the problem statement.

Obsolescence, counterfeit parts, and materials and supply chain risks have huge impacts on Army readiness. Currently, systems are fielded with obsolete parts that cause immediate supportability issues negatively impacting Operational Availability (Ao). Many critical systems include end-of-life parts even at time of initial fielding. Obsolete parts can only be managed proactively early in the life cycle; otherwise, the program office is in constant “reactive mode” and can never catch up.

Table 1. Obsolescence, Counterfeit, and Supply Chain Risk Strategic Challenge

WHAT	Prototypes are transitioning to programs of record and fielding without fully developed, cradle-to-grave product support strategies, and are unable to be maintained or supported. Consequently, the system can’t achieve operational availability. Supply Chain risk management including obsolescence, counterfeit identification, and deviation from mil-standard, causes supportability challenges later in the life cycle. Unmitigated supply chain risks Unidentified obsolete parts in system design Undetected counterfeit parts in system configuration Lack of production supportability focus during design phase Lack of funding/insight to secure government rights for technical data and drawings Readiness-based sparing analysis not being performed
WHO	Defense Acquisition Management System Warfighter Sustainment Commands PEO/Program Manager Capability/Material Developer Joint Capabilities Orig. Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) industrial base Depots
WHERE	Field/unit requirements Depot overhaul maintenance/RESET requirements Program Office/ Project Manager/ Configuration Manager Material Developer/Capability Developer
WHEN	Starts during prototype Developmental/ operational testing Material release Production/ Fielding Sustainment Modernization
WHY	Developing a robust supply support plan Highly compressed timeline for deliverables Lengthening service life and/or scope of program after initial design Not incorporating results of developmental testing OEMs not releasing ownership rights Not planning for modernization early on (tech refresh/tech roadmap) Budget constraints Not a comprehensive transition from capability development to program of record Development of support-able maintenance concept Product supportability not performed (Level of Repair Analysis; Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis, etc.) Inadequate documentation for tech manual development
Strategic Challenge​	The capability/ material developer is not identifying or mitigating obsolete, counterfeit parts and supply chain risk during the design prototype phase, which results in sustainability and maintainability issues later in the life cycle for the Warfighter.​

Source: Army Futures Command

Then there is an ever-increasing introduction of counterfeit parts and materials into Army combat and weapon systems via the supply chain. Counterfeit parts and materials primarily originate within the United States but also come from China and other near-peer adversaries. As previously mentioned, other supply chain risks include corruption, infiltration, foreign influence, mergers and acquisitions, and intellectual property hacking and theft.

A problem statement for all these risks might be: The capability/material developer (CAPDEV/MATDEV) is not identifying or mitigating obsolete, counterfeit parts, and supply chain risk during the design prototype phase, which results in sustainability and maintainability issues for the Warfighter later in the life cycle.
Why are the CAPDEV and MATDEV not identifying and mitigating these risks? Because a framework is needed that includes best practices, tools, and techniques to address these three areas. Such a framework exists, but let’s explore these problem areas a little further.

Traditional DMSMS management is inherently reactive and most commonly occurs in the sustainment phase, when we try to replenish stock and find it is unprocurable and/or unrepairable. This sets off a reaction that, ultimately, impacts readiness. The only real way to fix obsolescence is to get to the left of it earlier in the timeline. Even if a Life of Need buy is possible (and frequently it is not), this is fiscally bad for the Army. Moreover, the engineering change to find suitable replacements can take a year or longer. If a redesign is the only answer, all bets are off.

AFC has introduced a new DMSMS concept called Strategic Obsolescence Management—with the objective of managing part technology types to get ahead of obsolescence and stay ahead (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Obsolescence Management

TRADITIONAL DMSMS	(Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages) Takes place during sustainment phase and is largely reactionary because obsolete parts were included during production
STRATEGIC OBSOLESCENCE MANAGEMENT	A new framework in the Army Futures Command A set of best practices, methods, tools, and techniques to identify and mitigate obsolete parts out of the system design during the prototype development phase.

Source: Army Futures Command

Soldiers position a Stryker vehicle during Rifle Ready 2, an emergency deployment readiness exercise in Poland.
Source: U.S. Army photo

Instead of reacting to DMSMS issues, we need to think of obsolescence from a strategic perspective—not one of reacting to industry after the fact. Remember that the DoD is a very small customer to most industry suppliers, especially in the microelectronics area, where auto manufacturing is the largest customer. How do we get strategic? By identifying the part and material technology types when they are selected for the system design and then managing those technologies through a science-based sustainment refresh plan. This strategic approach is, in effect, to create an evolutionary design process—at the component level. This creation occurs right in the initial concept, during prototype development.

You probably recognize the Apache Helicopter program. This is a good-news story that AFC benchmarks as a “best practice” to share with other programs. We’re all familiar with bad examples of caneled programs plagued with obsolescence and cost overruns—the Comanche Attack Helicopter and Future Combat Systems, to name just two. Success is not always measured by hard dollars saved but also by the avoidance of added costs. With Apache, obsolescence was planned for and mitigated very early in the design phase. As a result, there have been no parts shortages or schedule delays in production. Moreover, $200 million in cost avoidance has been attributed to planning during prototype development. This is an example of “proactive,” not “strategic,” DMSMS. The difference will be explained shortly.

The first bullet in Figure 3 should get your attention. One-third of world trade is in counterfeit goods. Note again in the pie chart (bottom left) that the United States is No. 1, with China in second place, as a source of counterfeit parts and materials. Of all spare and replacement electronic parts purchased by the Pentagon, an estimated 15 percent are counterfeit! Subpar counterfeit parts in components used by the military can cause significant issues, including mission failure, safety hazards to personnel, and compromised national security. Counterfeits can show up almost anywhere—perhaps a fastener used on aircraft, or materials in engine mounts. But the more prominent issue for the military is counterfeit electronic parts. These parts can appear at any level: system, sub-system, component, or sub- component.

A few contributing factors enable the proliferation of counterfeit parts and materials:

• Multi-tiered supply chains
• Inadequate accountability practices
• Bargain hunting
• Scarcity of parts caused by end-of-life designations
• Performance of quality control and testing by others
• Limited or inadequate inspection and testing resources
• Limited or inadequate record-keeping of counterfeit incidents

Counterfeit Risk Management is performed through proper (1) prevention, to minimize counterfeits infiltrating the supply chain; (2) detection, to capture counterfeits prior to fielding a system; and (3) mitigation, to remove the counterfeit threat and alert other users.

Best practices against counterfeits. To avoid risk at the time of development, do the following:

• Procure from franchised and authorized sources.
• Select a few preferred independent distributors.
• Go with quality as defined by established industry memberships—in such groups as ERAI (originally the Electronic Resellers Association) and/or IDEA (Independent Distributors of Electronics Association).
• Contractually define your expectations.
• Know what is being counterfeited.
• Leverage a strong obsolescence approach.
• Search for alternate part types and manufacturers to replace known counterfeits.
• Review aftermarket sources.
• Leverage U.S. Government Qualified Manufacturers/Qualified Products Lists
• Test appropriately.
• Do not return known counterfeit parts.

The Pentagon is determined to develop and implement countermeasures to ensure our military effectiveness, personnel safety, and national security. An example is the DoD’s experimentation with using plant DNA to forensically brand all electronic parts in the supply chain. The plant DNA is suspended in epoxy ink and is cured so that it remains detectable.

A number of commercial services and government agencies provide some level of supply chain analysis. But these services typically focus on corporate risk rather than risks intrinsic to a device. In the traditional process, supply chains are built from relationship analysis, leveraging network traffic, commercial data sets, press releases, and past invoicing to determine which companies do business together. However, because this analysis is not device-specific, the confidence of an accurate supply chain map rapidly diminishes at lower supply chain tiers.

How do we manage supply chain risks? By supply chain risk analysis, which involves:

• The process for managing risk by identifying, assessing, and mitigating threats, vulnerabilities, and disruptions to the DoD supply chain from beginning to end to ensure mission effectiveness
• Successful supply chain risk management maintaining the integrity of products, services, people, and technologies, and ensures the undisrupted flow of product, materiel, information, and finances across the life cycle of a weapon or support system
• DoD supply chain risk management encompassing all sub-sets of supply chain risk management, such as cybersecurity, software assurance, obsolescence, counterfeit parts, foreign ownership of sub-tier vendors, climate change-related risks, and other categories of risk that affect the supply chain

Relationship analysis typically is not device-specific; it also is not site-specific. Large semiconductor companies may have dozens of engineering and manufacturing sites, as well as dozens of third-party manufacturing relationships. Each of those contract manufacturers may have dozens of sites across the globe. If we don’t take these factors into account, it’s impossible to get a granular view of supply chain risk.

Two examples are devices made by Intel: One has a largely organic and fully domestic primary supply chain. The second device has a primary supply chain mostly in China. A relationship map based on the parent company of these two devices would look essentially identical, but the threat vectors associated with these two devices really would be wildly different.

How do we select the “critical parts” to screen for obsolescence, counterfeit, and supply chain risks? By employing readiness engineering techniques to develop reliability block diagrams (Figure 4) mapped to the Design Reference Mission, which is developed from the operational mode summary/mission profile. Once the critical path for mission success is determined, the bills of material for those critical pieces of equipment can be screened through the tools that identify the different risks. After we have identified the bad actors, we can choose alternate parts and materials and establish a secure supply chain moving forward.

The Readiness-Based Engineering Analysis (REA) framework is being developed to perform deep-dive “snapshots” of Army prototypes to look for obsolescence, counterfeit, and supply chain risks in the critical path for mission success. The goal is to identify and replace these parts at the earliest possible design point and establish a process for ongoing monitoring and mitigation as the system life cycle evolves, including its fielding.
When combined, the results of these analyses provide a deep look into high-impact problem areas during early prototype design. The key is to find all the critical path problem parts before the system transitions to AAF.

Source: Army Futures Command
Key: ERCA = Extended Range Cannon Artillery; EPCS = Electronic Power Control System; OMS/MP= Operational Mode Summary (OMS); Mission Profile (MP)

A Soldier conducts an airborne operation in observance of 9/11 at Malmsheim Airfield in Stuttgart, Germany.
Source: U.S. Army photo

The REA has five methodologies to identify, mitigate, and monitor obsolescence, parts reliability, counterfeit parts and materials; determine critical spares; and analyze and mitigate supply chain risks. Three of these methodologies are proposed here to provide “snapshots” for obsolescence, counterfeit, and supply chain risks:

1. Readiness-Based Obsolescence: Employs sustainment scientific obsolescence management strategies and advanced Army DMSMS tools such as the Multifunctional Obsolescence Resolution Environment (MORE) and System Engineering Risk Analysis.
2. Counterfeit Detection: Employs the industry standard ERAI database to screen bills of material for counterfeit risks. ERAI is the world’s largest source of information on suspected counterfeit and nonconforming electronic parts. ERAI’s searchable database includes nonconformance descriptions, images, and the name of the supplier, if available. Also, once suspect counterfeit or nonconforming part data is vetted by ERAI, the relevant part information is uploaded to the ERAI High Risk and Suspect Counterfeit Parts Database.
3. Supply Chain Analysis: Is an initial deep analysis of the critical parts of the supply chain using a powerful DoD-developed part-centric supply chain analytical tool AMARO (Automated Microelectronics Analysis and Reports Optimization). AMARO provides system designers an advance view of the microelectronic supply chain risk during design and/or development so that alternate parts may be selected to mitigate the risk.

What does this mean? The Army can’t afford to put new advanced weapon system prototypes into transition to a program of record with obsolete or counterfeit parts and supply chains that include detectable and fixable risks. All three of these areas pose high risks to Operational and Materiel Availability (Ao/Am). The time to look is early, early, early during prototype system design and development. Once these risks are mitigated, there will be additional “snapshots” before major system milestones all the way up to production (Milestone C for Acquisition Categories I and II). Using this REA framework now can eliminate “bad actors” before they enter the system design. Analysis also is critical of the proposed supply chain for a new system to ensure that risks are mitigated before the system enters production. Using REA can allow us to get “left of boom” on these critical risks, mitigate them, and keep them out of the system for the entire life cycle.

The obsolescence snapshot employs the strategic management strategy previously discussed and screens critical parts through the two Army organic DMSMS tools: MORE at the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) Aviation and Missile Center; and System Engineering Risk Analysis at the DEVCOM-Ground Vehicle Systems Center. This quick but deep dive should identify current or nearly obsolete parts as well as provide supplier health.

The counterfeit snapshot relies heavily on screening our critical parts through the ERAI database previously mentioned. If we detect counterfeit parts in the prototype, Counterfeit Risk Management methods will remove them from the system design.

A review of commercial supply chain solutions occurred in 2018. The results revealed:

• Fundamental issues with all tools
• Top-down approach rather than a part-centric approach

The Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) has called for a new and novel, part-centric supply chain tool to address the issues with commercial supply chain solutions in mid-2019 via the Navy’s S2MARTS (Strategic and Spectrum Missions Advanced Resilient Trusted Systems) OTA (Other Transaction Authority). KSM Consulting won the award. AMARO tool went live in the fall of 2020 and its enhancement continues.

A key fact to remember is that we have a methodology to locate the high-impact risks for obsolescence, counterfeit, and supply chain and mitigate them before there is a serious negative effect on system readiness. It isn’t enough to state the problem—we all know what the problem is. We must develop a real solution set to address the problem. This solution requires executive leadership to champion change in existing Army system development processes that are broken.
Since OSD’s 2019 implementation of the AAF’s new rapid prototyping pathways, UCA and MTA, the existing problems are amplified by extremely compressed development timelines.

Therefore, we must solve these problems now. The Army already is using these two new pathways and developing major weapon system capabilities for the future. In the face of rapidly changing global threats and military modernization of our near-peer adversaries, all of the Joint Services are expected to use the UCA and MTA pathways in the future. If we employ some or all of the best practices, tools, and techniques reviewed in this article, this is a fight we can win!

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Bolner is the Acquisition Logistics Advisor of the Army Futures Command’s Long Range Precision Fires at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

The author can be contacted at brent.l.bolner.civ@army.mil.

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The views expressed in this article are those of the authors alone and not of the Department of Defense. Reproduction or reposting of articles from Defense Acquisition magazine should credit the authors and the magazine.

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