 |
|
 |
|
C. Barrios, T. Bales, J. Jones
© «AAFM», December, 2021.
Our address: en@rvsn.info |
See also:
About autors Maj Carlos N. Barrios is the Deputy Chief, MMMIII Sustainment Division, Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, Hill AFB, UT responsible for MMIII sustainment operations. He is a career Missileer and has served as an Evaluator, Missile Combat Crew Commander, Command Lead for ICBM Propulsion, and Chief of AFGSC’s Requirements & Modification Management Policy Branch. Mr. Anthony (Tony) Bales is the Lead Logistician for the MMIII Sustainment Division, MMIII Weapon System Product Support Manager, MMIII Transition Lead, and the Deputy of ICBM Transition Coordination Office. He is a retired C MSgt, 2MOX2, and an AAFM member. Mr. Jessy Jones is the Lead Sustainment Engineer in the Sustainment Division at Hill AFB for the MMIII weapon system responsible for uninterrupted, on-alert, operational safety, suitability and effectiveness of 400 combat capable missiles through transition to GBSD. Mr. Jones is also a USAF Reserve Lt Col and the Individual Mobilization Augmentee (IMA) to the F-22 Product Support Manager at Hill AFB.
Disclaimer: the views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official views, policy or position of the Department of the Air Force, Department of Defense or the U.S. Government. Minuteman III Sustainment From Now To GBSD «AAFM», December, 2021. Newsletter of «Association of Air Force Missileers»
Diminishing manufacturing sources, a shrinking industrial base, coupled with a limited workforce with the skills required to sustain the aging ICBM weapon system, makes sustaining Minuteman III (MMIII) – a weapon system over 40 years beyond its designed lifespan – increasingly difficult. The first MMIII Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) was installed at Minot Air Force Base (AFB), ND in 1970 and, with an intended operational use of only 10 years, celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2020. The MMIII Weapon System (WS) is a tightly coupled 1960s era design that, though cutting-edge at the time, makes developing and fielding replacement components costly and technically risky.
The near 60-year-old technology imposes difficulty in predicting age-out, maintaining a positive spares posture, and significantly increases sustainment costs. Limited Aging Surveillance data with the ground systems results in a decreased confidence in how reliably the MMIII WS will age. The MMIII System Program Office (SPO) is diligently working to mitigate the risks to the WS and build the bridge to MMIII’s replacement which is currently under development: Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD). In order for GBSD to be realized as an operational system and achieve Initial Operational Capability by 2029, launch facilities (LF) and missile alert facilities (MAF) must be converted at a rate of one per week for nine years straight. Some of the major sustainment efforts to achieve this complex transition effort include: the Nuclear Capability Improvement Program (NCIP), right-sizing Programmed Depot Maintenance (PDM) and Targeted PDM, establishing a Digital Sustainment environment, and standing up the Deactivation, Demilitarization, Disposal, and Deployment (D4) Integrated Product Team (IPT). This article serves to explore each of these efforts and share how MMIII is leveraging the latest developments in Systems Engineering and related fields.
Nuclear Capability Improvement Program In collaboration with Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), the MMIII SPO has developed the NCIP, which seeks to capture and utilize high-quality metrics to assess and predict the state of the WS. This approach focuses on the MMIII Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) of availability, reliability, survivability and accuracy as well as the Critical Consequence Areas (CCAs) of safety, security and surety requirements; top drivers that are degrading KPPs and CCAs can be identified to inform a focused investment on areas that provide the highest Return on Investment (ROI). The effort shifts away from the traditional approach of analyzing on-alert rates, which do not truly capture the health of the WS or its capability. Conversely from the aircraft domain, the ICBM enterprise is concerned with the capability to operate through pre-, trans-, and post-strike environments. With NCIP, the rates tracked are the Nuclear Capability (NC) rate, which includes pre- and contested-nuclear strike environments and the Mission Capability (MC) rate, which is only pre-strike. The Health of the Fleet effort, led by the MMIII SPO, operationalizes NCIP and allows enterprise partners to track progress toward ameliorating the 17 top drivers that affect the NC and MC rates in the LFs, Launch Control Centers (LCC), the Air Vehicle Equipment (AVE), and Support Equipment. Data is delivered regularly to supply chain partners and industry, providing a valid need to double down on efforts for mitigation activities. The proactive approach in analyzing not only the missile, but also the ground equipment by identifying these top drivers of maintenance and supply actions, poises MMIII to successfully sustain this system for 18 more years -when GBSD will be fully capable. Right-Sizing and Targeted Programmed Depot Maintenance (PDM) A July 2021 decision by senior leaders to approve changing the way the ICBM enterprise conducts PDM will greatly reduce the hours spent by Maintenance and Security Forces teams at the Wings, while still allowing for adequate Aging Surveillance to be conducted on the AVE. Most notably, this decision resulted in right-sizing PDM, presents a reduction in the number of missiles that need to be pulled from the field and sent cross-country to Hill AFB for Booster PDM; the reduction in associated manpower for these activities is equally significant. Secondly, cookie-cutter PDM tasks at the LFs and LCCs are being phased out and replaced by targeted PDM, which will allow the Wings to build task lists specific to the LF or LCC. The MMIII SPO is gathering data now, with support from our industry partners, to conduct aging surveillance to produce specific predictions – and subsequent prioritization – on AVE subsystem attrition and age out. The higher-order Targeted PDM is a benefit to the ICBM enterprise by focusing investment dollars and obtaining a higher ROI relative to increasing NC and MC rates. The MMIII SPO stood up a PDM Tiger Team to facilitate collaboration with enterprise partners toward refining and optimizing this new approach. The MMIII SPO and supply chain partners are also focused on enabling predictive measures for supply chain components that are degrading capability and driving Mission Incapability (MICAP) statuses. The voice control panel on the weapon systems controller and motor generators in the LFs are both examples of components that have reached end-of-life and for which extremely limited assets remain in the supply system. Another focus area is to follow the lead of Navy Strategic Systems Programs (SSP) to track and measure the health and performance of the key Tier 1 supplier base, to not only quantify the exodus of certain key suppliers, but to also help manage diminishing sources and dwindling expertise. Digital Sustainment Environment MMIII has made significant investment into a robust Digital Sustainment environment to posture the program for sustainment over the remainder of its lifespan and, in addition, promoting a smooth transition to GBSD. To that end, the MMIII SPO has adopted the Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen Charles Q Brown’s, strategic imperative to “Accelerate Change or Lose” and applied it to the Digital Sustainment mission: To provide the right data, to the right people, at the right time, to make time-critical and effective decisions. This mission resulted in the establishment of three lines of effort: Strengthen Technical Ownership, Enable Efficient Transition, and Visualize Data. Over the past 5 years, there have been various initiatives to transition MMIII data from 1960s-era drafted drawings to a 21st-century digital capability. Most recently, the MMIII SPO created a Teamcenter hub to consolidate and organize data, enable enterprise-wide workflows, and visualize health of the fleet. Specific targets of opportunity with sufficient ROI to justify investment have been selected for the digitizing effort, as it would not be cost effective to transition all MMIII data to a digital environment in its current sunset phase of the lifecycle. Perhaps the greatest opportunity is to facilitate a smooth transition across the ICBM enterprise as MMIII phases out and GBSD phases in over the next 18 years. Director and Senior Materiel Leader of the MMIII Systems Directorate, Colonel Erik Quigley, states, “Teamcenter provides us the capability to maintain a digital library of our complex weapon system and has the ability to store that data in a secure cloud. It will serve as the backbone of data used for GBSD digital engineering and informing MMIII to GBSD transition risk. MMIII is adopting Teamcenter to help visualize workflows, system work-breakdown-structures, and is capturing 3-D drawings of subsystems and components that missile wing maintainers can use to familiarize and train with in the future.” The MMIII SPO is not pursuing digital sustainment due to its popularity, but because it is indeed necessary. It is important to know that applying MMIII digital sustainment and digital engineering principles and efforts and resources today is a necessity in managing such a complex system. A modern, industry-standard, Integrated Digital Environment affords opportunities to execute sustainment far more effectively and efficiently than tools and resources of the past. Digital Sustainment will enable just-in-time visualization of attrition and age-out data, as well as live missile, support, and ground systems health. Maintainers, engineers, and industry partners will have common access to needed information, including modeled interactions with other components to determine how best to maintain and/or remanufacture components. Reduction efforts are needed in the field to keep missile wing commanders and the maintenance group commanders from spending excessive time on what is referred to as exploratory maintenance. Digital sustainment tools can help with this by adding and digitally connecting a suite of sensors on certain aging equipment to enable off-site diagnostic analysis. This is an example of how wasted effort – sending security forces and maintenance teams into the field to conduct exploratory maintenance or troubleshooting – can be reduced through connected digital tools, thereby saving hundreds of man-hours per month. MMIII Deactivation, Demilitarization, The MMIII transition to GBSD is a significant task, consisting of the transition of 450 LFs, 45 MAFs, and hundreds of miles of cabling and infrastructure across five states. This activity requires collaborative communication between MMIII D3 and GBSD Deployment teams beginning now through five years prior to deployment begins. MMIII D3 and GBSD Deployment have combined forces and established the D4 IPT that meets weekly to identify and follow up on actions required for success. The MMIII D3 team has been diligently working on producing the Procedural Disposal Plans (PDP) for the re-entry system, facilities, and trainers that will be used to D3 the MMIII WS in preparation for GBSD. The MMIII D3 team has also been instrumental in providing plans that will be incorporated into the environmental impact study mandated by the National Environmental Protection Act, which must be completed prior to GBSD’s ground breaking. Additionally, the MMIII D3 team is in the process of preparing LF-04 at Vandenberg Space Force Base, CA, where MMIII test flights take place, for transfer to GBSD. This effort is critical to maintain GBSD’s testing schedule. The LF-04 D3 activities have also served as an exercise in transition and will provide a template for the future D3 of operational LFs and LCCs. The MMIII SPO is developing its funding requirements, identifying the labor-hours, skills, personnel, and the equipment it will take to keep MMIII D3 activities off GBSD’s critical path to deployment. The D4 transition must occur while simultaneously maintaining our nation’s nuclear mission with on-alert ICBMs. Digital sustainment efforts also enable and inform transition planning from MMIII to GBSD, focusing on D3 activities. As we begin transition over the next decade, we are using digital tools and visualization to inform Northrop Grumman – the MMIII sustainment contractor and GBSD development contractor – and their Order of Service for converting sites. These digital sustainment tools and products serve to ensure a seamless transition, such that MMIII D3 does not impact GBSD’s critical path, as well as ensuring the persistence and reliability of the land leg of our strategic nuclear triad. Conclusion The MMIII SPO and enterprise partners are leveraging Department of Defense and industry best practices and cutting-edge ideology to sustain the MMIII WS well-beyond its 10-year design life and despite significant sustainment challenges. Together, they are developing and executing innovative strategies to keep 400 ICBMs on-alert until GBSD reaches Full Operational Capability (FOC) in 2036. The MMIII SPO is working to implement mitigation efforts to focus on sustainment, maintenance, and supplier concerns using digital sustainment efforts. Efforts like the NCIP, right-sizing and targeted PDM, building a Digital Sustainment environment, and standing up the D4 IPT will poise the ICBM enterprise to effectively mitigate risk in a WS that will be nearly 70 years old by the time GBSD is fully operational. Additionally, attempting to extend MMIII as a viable weapon system beyond the current schedule is costprohibitive, won’t deliver capability before age-out of the weapon system and, most importantly, does not meet US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) capability, flexibility, safety, and security requirements against rising adversary threat. The MMIII SPO is focused on ensuring sustainment challenges do not inhibit capability now and throughout transition to GBSD. Embracing the “accelerate change or lose” mentality from Gen Brown, teams have targeted areas where innovation can be incorporated within the aged weapon system without jeopardizing nuclear surety or safety. These focus areas are incorporated into the digital sustainment environment, leveraging Air Force-wide tools and processes to achieve the highest possible ROI. These products, in conjunction with collaboration among nuclear enterprise mission partners, and operators and maintainers in the field, poise MMIII to meet the focused goals of Air Force leadership. Transitioning from MMIII to GBSD is a complex effort that requires these programs be synchronized throughout the transition. However, we have prepared for this and will continue to focus on the necessary collaboration between the programs to ensure this is a successful transition. GBSD will hold the first test launch in FY24 and will not achieve IOC until the end of this decade. All current investments are in support of ensuring the MMIII WS is sustained and maintains capability until GBSD reaches FOC. The MMIII Systems Directorate fully embraces the one team, one fight attitude as we, the most responsive leg of the nuclear triad, march side-by-side with the nuclear enterprise in maintaining 400 ICBMs on-alert 24/7/365. 
|
||||||||||
