Article from current Jane's FWIW, :
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British Army urged to change fleet practice
TONY SKINNER JDW Staff Reporter
London
The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) needs to introduce a mandate ensuring British Army vehicles are contracted for availability in order to realise operational readiness, according to a former army Director General, Whole Fleet Management.
Retired Major General Murray Wildman said that under the army's existing practice of "run to fail" there was never any guarantee how long vehicles would last during an operation. "The premise upon which we base our land logistics is running to failure. But that does not work on operations. If you head out with 100 tanks and 50 break down, have you realised your mission?"
A spokesman for the Defence Logistics Organisation (DLO) said contracts for repair and support tied to availability had already been brought in where appropriate and studies were under way into taking the concept further.
Wildman - who retired from the British Army in August 2001 - said health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS) needed to be installed across the board; maintenance should be carried out after a set number of kilometres rather than over a designated amount of time and every procurement project contracted for availability.
"At the moment industry loves it when things break down because they make money on spares and maintenance. Where's the incentive to make it more reliable? So you should contract for availability - 'I am going to buy your tank but I want 80 per cent reliability and every time it breaks down you lose money'," said Wildman.
The DLO spokesman said use of the expression "run to fail" was inaccurate as regular inspections generated preventive maintenance tasks designed to intercept potential failure.
"Furthermore, we are progressively introducing built-in test facilities into new electronic systems and process changes such as oil health monitoring. Using oil health monitoring for example, we are now predicting engine, gearbox and other [failures] and exchanging the items before catastrophic failure at some considerable saving in repair cost."
The spokesman said the MoD already contracts for repair support, for example, with heavy equipment transporters (HET) where the contractor and MoD share the risk and the maintenance burden is specifically addressed in a service contract.
However, he said each case was judged on its merits.
"A contractor will only take the risk of contractual responsibility for operational availability when they have authority over all the levers which deliver the availability. In the case of HET, they provide sponsored reserves - staff who are TA [Territorial Army] members - with a full call-up liability."
The future degree of industry involvement in the management of the land vehicle fleet and the prospect of increased contracting for availability are currently being examined as a part of the Whole Fleet Management project. This will also deliver the information and tools to enable further improvements in failure prediction and preventative maintenance, the spokesman said.
The UK MoD is being urged to extend the concept of repair and support contacts like those for heavy equipment transporters
(Source: P Allen/Jane's)
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As I say, for what it's worth. only the last para relates to WFM.
' contracting for availability' is the latest buzzword-bingo phrase to come down from the Adminisphere - I don't know what is meant by it and I suspect that it means whatever the user wants it to.
Amazing how everybody focuses on 'A' vehicles - the Challenger,Warrior and AS90 fleets are miniscule in comparison with the B vehicle numbers.
On DROPS alone some anorak told me we have around 800 basic MMLC worth about £240M.
Without the humble truck fleet , your lead armoured Battle Group is going about 30 miles from the SPOD, if you' re lucky.....less if it runs out of ammo in the first 5 miles.
On Telic 1, the guys in my unit who earned the clasp were the ones with DROPS licences....
Le Chevre