Techniques in reactive to proactive obsolescence management for C5ISR systems

Abstract

Obsolescence is a significant challenge for the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) community. Obsolescence can negatively affect a C5ISR system's cost, schedule, performance, and readiness. This research examines the challenge of obsolescence for C5ISR systems by focusing on the U.S. Army at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland and their industry partners. The objective of this research is to synthesize insights from the experiences of government and industry practitioners that mitigate diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) challenges into mitigation techniques. The obsolescence mitigation areas described in this research include proactive and reactive obsolescence mitigation, obsolescence mitigation methods, and the importance of DMSMS contracting language. This research also offers approaches grounded in practitioner experiences to mitigate obsolescence through a proactive obsolescence management model, risk mitigation framework, metrics, modeling & simulation, and systems thinking methods. The combination of the models, methods, and approaches discussed from this research have the potential to achieve greater system readiness, more availability, better maintainability, and lower costs for C5ISR systems.