Logistics Advancement Through Open Architecture Application - Flipbook - Page 8
4: Maintenance
Figure 5: U.S. Sailors conduct maintenance on an EA-18G Growler, assigned to the “Rooks” of Electronic Attack
Squadron (VAQ) 137, aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). (U.S. Navy photo by
Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Ikia Walker)
Maintenance is a necessary part of ensuring our military systems are reliable, relevant , and operationally available when called
upon. With such systems becoming ever more complex in nature the overhead of maintenance, and the training of maintainers,
increases signi昀椀cantly.
OA introduces modularity and standardization. The ability to change out elements within an OA-designed system is far easier
than it has been historically where monolithic implementations meant that separating out functional areas from the inter-woven,
inter-dependent integrated system was a major undertaking. Not only does this put systems out of service for signi昀椀cant amounts
of time, it is also 昀椀nancially expensive and unfortunately the situation has all-to-often been determined to be unviable which has
left our war昀椀ghters using less than optimal capability.
Using OA, maintainers can easily identify distinct and well documented boundaries around components that can be changed with
little or no wider impact to the system integrity. Elements of the system can be designed and implemented to be “hot-swapped”
while the system is live. Modular safety and information assurance assessments can be performed to ef昀椀ciently demonstrate
that the system remains safe and the con昀椀dentiality, integrity and availability of its data is not affected. Modular items, along with
supporting design and assurance artifacts, can be repurposed across platforms where upgrade requirements emerge, particularly
where products from new platforms can be integrated into aging platforms.
Commonality introduces the opportunity to consolidate diagnostics and other support equipment associated with maintenance,
and modularity enables the introduction of real system components into a virtual training space. The result is a reduced manpower
and training burden, and the opportunity for fewer type-speci昀椀c support systems to be deployed.
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