Logistics vehicles are now on the front line. In today’s asymmetric threat environment, every vehicle outside the protected area is exposed to every new threat the enemy can devise. The Afghanistan and Iraq theatres are creating unexpected operational requirements and support vehicles now face many of the same risks as combat vehicles.
“The need for armour has grown dramatically,” says David McLoughlin, MAN Truck & Bus UK’s Integrated Logistics Support manager for defence. The British Ministry of Defence (MoD) ordered 5200 MAN medium trucks in 2005, and an additional 2,077 the following year. The armour element of the MAN truck contract was negotiated about nine months after main contract award and by that time, says McLoughlin, “suddenly armour requirements became very, very high priority from the customer side and hence we put a whole team together to deal with armour.”
Driver training
The added weight of armour on today’s truck means drivers must be more careful about how they operate their vehicles. Computerized systems can help. At the Millbrook vehicle test range north of London, England, McLoughlin steered a heavily armoured and loaded MAN HX 77 truck to the top of a steep dirt slope. Looking down through the armour plate windshield, the drop felt almost vertical. In the right hand seat, McLoughlin took his hands off the wheel and his feet off the pedals. “Watch this,” he said, and engaged the secondary braking system. Slowly and smoothly, 24.5 tonnes of truck and payload “walked” down the hill under computer control. Engine braking instead of traditional foot braking removes the human interface and fluctuations in application, and enables the vehicle to control its own descent without putting any undue stress on the braking and suspension systems.
This kind of operator assistance is becoming imperative, not optional, McLoughlin explained. As an ILS manager, he shares responsibility for keeping this truck and thousands of others running. The extra weight of armour on the front of the vehicle protects the soldier but there can be a cost in reliability. Automated assistance helps even relatively inexperienced drivers to maintain control of their vehicles in demanding environments.
While the trucks have all the power they need – and armour is available to protect their crews – the additional weight is testing the strongest axles and suspensions. Depending on the operational requirements the axle might see its physical limitations, said Ralf Melbardis of MAN’s Military Division. A four-axle vehicle can distribute weight on two front axles, he explained, “but if a military customer would like a small vehicle, air transportable for instance, and a high degree of protection, then the axle does become a limiting factor. So it is a combination of different requirements that do not fit together very well.”
If the operator-users now have computerized systems to assist them, so do the soldiers who maintain the vehicles. Because the British Army’s previous logistics vehicles were decades old, the maintainers are mechanically oriented. The soldiers who will maintain the new fleet are now learning new computer and electronics skills. The diagnostic programs they work with will constantly update their knowledge.
Purchasing power
The rapid evolution in vehicle requirements demands a corresponding change in procurement. As McLoughlin put it, “now, the asymmetric threat out there means the end user and not the procurer is driving design changes, enhancements, daily improvements, because every day there is a new threat.” When a major procurement must respond again and again to sudden and fundamental changes, the phrase “requirement creep” may need to be rewritten as “standard operating procedure.”
In the British Army, Lieutenant-Colonel David Casey is Requirements Manager with Defence Equipment and Support’s General Support Vehicles Integrated Project Team – he represents the soldiers in the field when they need support vehicles. LCol Casey said his office must trade off requirements against cost. He defined his prime role in the IPT as leading on that trading and where necessary, referring back to the MoD sponsor about whether performance is adequate against the original requirement.
Until new threats emerged, very few people anticipated the requirement on support vehicles for equipment like remote weapons stations, bar armour or, most recently, electronic counter measures (ECM). “Five years ago, we were in Iraq but I don’t think anybody assumed that particular threat would escalate to the level it has,” Casey said. Providing electrical power for ECM equipment is a considerable challenge, and it will only get more difficult as vehicles become more and more power hungry to support a variety of surveillance and sighting equipment.
During the Cold War, when there was little evolution of the threat, and what there was evolved slowly, setting a requirement at least five years before a vehicle came into service was probably appropriate. Nobody imagined, even a short time ago, that the operational threat environment would change so radically and create vast changes to logistics vehicle design and construction. For example, putting bar armour on a fleet of trucks to defeat rocket warheads may seem straightforward but it actually represents some serious technical challenges. Each truck variant may demand a unique design, because each might have different supporting structural points. Do doors and hatches still open freely? Can the cabs tilt? Can the hinges sustain the extra weight? Can soldiers open heavier doors?
“The amount of work that we have done with MAN and other contractors setting up a very good collaborative arrangement has been outstanding. We are now deploying vehicles that will more than match the threat they will find in theatre,” Casey said.
The contract the MoD signed with MAN UK anticipated the possibility of sudden, substantial changes and allowed for them. But putting that into practice calls for commitment, Casey said.
“I think we are very fortunate to have a good relationship that was developed during the core program with the prime contractor, MAN, but also the other contractors we are using, where we don’t follow slavishly the contract process in ensuring that every side of the commercial officer’s concerns is addressed before we start making progress,” he said. The process must still demonstrate value for money, so all the appropriate oversight is in place, but the contractors have confidence and are willing to take a degree of financial risk to deliver progress. Casey said contractors know that even when processes are not followed strictly to the letter, they will receive the appropriate payment at the right stage.
Heads up
In the UK procurement system, Casey’s Integrated Project Team, General Support Vehicles, has embedded commercial and financial staff with whom he works on a daily basis. Those personnel are completely aware of their oversight responsibilities so they are able to provide valuable advice about the level of risk all parties to the contract can assume. Within a process that has already demonstrated the ability to respond quickly, Casey said things only slow down when there is very short notice for an unfunded requirement. There is no way to shorten the process of receiving additional funding, so the challenge is to get the work done as quickly as possible.
Close collaboration within the Ministry of Defence means the IPT has early notification of impending requirements. In turn, cooperation between the IPT and the manufacturer turns that information into action. On the MAN UK side, the truck manufacturer more or less duplicated the IPT’s senior personnel, adding key positions like finance manager, project manager and ILS manager, and established relationships to create a partnership. “We know what’s coming, because of our inside knowledge, our working relationship, so we can very quickly get our technical and commercial guys to be working in advance knowing what is coming,” David McLoughlin said. As soon as the IPT learns that a request is likely to arrive, MAN UK can inform the parent organization’s necessary design, finance and engineering people. As a result, the contractor is rarely unprepared for a new requirement.
SIDEBAR
Fast changing requirements:
Bigger now can mean better later
In a fast-changing environment, procurement programs and contracts should build in growth potential, even if it does not appear to be necessary or justified at the moment, says Lieutenant-Colonel David Casey of the UK Ministry of Defence General Support Vehicles Integrated Project Team.
Requirements can and should be confirmed today, but vehicle fleets may not come into service for five years. Operators will need to match the threats that will exist in five years time, not just the ones they face today. There is no sure way to predict future requirements with certainty, but Casey believes it is safe to say that support vehicles will have to carry more, use more power, both motive and electrical within the vehicle, and crews will require higher degrees of communications and ECM capability for protection.
“Without the ability of the vehicle to power the components that will deliver the protection, you’ll be playing catch-up from the start, so I think the one message is, over-engineer a solution now, because you won’t be over-engineering the solution you need in five years time.” Without growth potential, operators may find themselves compromising on one of their key requirements.
Casey conceded that military organizations must operate in a very tight financial climate and governments must balance their obligations to other public sectors, but the cost of denying growth potential now is higher costs later, when political imperatives may demand a response, no matter what threats might be countered. Investing early in growth potential will ultimately save money, he advised.
The previous assumption of a forward edge of the battle area with known echelons is long gone and so has the ability to predict requirements. Over-engineered equipment can always be adapted to meet lesser threats, but it is hard and expensive to upgrade equipment for greater threats. “Now, if we can match the threat that we are meeting today, we can easily adapt equipment to a more conventional scenario. But working the other way around, as we are finding right now, is far more difficult and ultimately far more costly.” Casey said.