Responding to Capability Surprise by Committee on Capability Surprise on U.S. Naval Forces

Author:Committee on Capability Surprise on U.S. Naval Forces
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2014-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 6-6 Ohio-class submarine. SOURCE: U.S. Navy.

This highly innovative and cost-effective reconfiguring of the Ohio class has provided the Navy with greatly expanded capabilities at a relatively modest cost. This was possible because the Ohio class was originally built with adequate robustness, the ability to forward deploy for long periods, and with adequate size and space. It is yet another excellent example of the Navy’s successful repurposing efforts.

Repurposing Payloads

The key elements of repurposing an asset to enable new capabilities for new missions include upgrades of data processing capability, guidance and navigation, and energy management. Processing capabilities have been following Moore’s law since the 1970s and have enabled an explosion of products in both the military and commercial sectors from small, smart, precision weapons and unmanned systems to personal mobile communication devices such as smart phones and tablets. Advances in guidance and navigation have allowed miniature weapons with meter-level targeting accuracy and personal location systems tied to advanced schemes using mobile communication devices. Finally, new energy sources and management techniques enable systems to perform longer in stressing environments. Unmanned vehicles, drones, and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) have all greatly benefited from these advances.

Naval forces too have greatly benefited from taking assets with existing capabilities and quickly upgrading them with new capabilities to respond to “surprises” in the operational environments. This was demonstrated with the preprogramming of the SM-3 missile to neutralize a failing satellite in a destabilizing orbit by shooting it down in an operation known as Burnt Frost. Repurposing was responsible for the procurement of air-to-surface missile capabilities using unmanned air vehicles during the Iraq War. In each case, existing platform and payload capabilities were minimally altered to provide significant new capabilities within a short period of time. This saved significant development and testing schedule time by leveraging established system performance capabilities. Furthermore, the appropriate level of regression testing was identified, which appropriately set testing and qualification requirements and focused them on the new capabilities to enable earliest deployment times.

Besides avoiding the usual requirement creep of a new systems development, repurposing eliminated the proposal development and evaluation cycle and potential protest delays and allowed requalification by similarity for certain subsystems—all saving time and money for DOD. While software modifications do not come free, upgrades can have significantly less impact on the test and qualification process than new hardware or systems replacements. Finally, with software modifications, impacts to the interface control documents for the platform interfaces can be minimized to facilitate deployment.

The committee advocates taking this same concept of software modification down to the hard subsystem and component levels. Building in excess capacity in a system will position it for future growth or added capability. Subsystems and components, such as firmware or even power amplifiers, for example, need to be designed with the ability to change functional performance without physical replacement. Using these key critical components as an investment or hedge for future capabilities, they can be leveraged as the building blocks to enable a quick turn to respond to future capability surprises.

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