Exploiting Data, Winning Wars, and your part in the plan – Part 2

Introduction: Brigadier Stefan Crossfield, Head of Army

As we enter this second editorial looking at the potency of Data, I can’t help but recall the excellent quote by the Statistician Edwards Deming, “Without data you’re just another person with an opinion”. This is clearly one of the very few witty things ever said by a Statistician and it’s also highly relevant to the role of REME on the modern battlefield. We’ll always have to balance risk between supply and demand in the heat of the fight, but we will have to increasingly reduce the risk in this gamble by collecting and exploiting the rich streams of data available from modern platforms and supply networks. This will require everyone to cherish data, to capture as much of it as possible and to become comfortable using it to increase our fighting power. But battlefields are non-permissive and the EMS is likely to be a competitive environment, so we need to start working on emergent technologies to build-out data voids to provide a degree of confidence that allows some planning to happen. We are also looking at the policy on collection – should we not collect it all and then decide what’s useful – can we afford to do this, can our networks deal with the demand, have we got the tools to interpret large data sets and what about storage? There’s much to do, and our adversary has started on the same path, so let’s get moving!

Phase 1

Scribe: Colonel Tim Allison, Assistant Head Operations Support, DE&S

As you will no doubt have noticed from Colonel Andy Elliott’s article last month, data in the Army is truly a team sport and it has increasingly become a pan-Defence endeavour. From my position in Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), looking at pan-platform, inservice support, we routinely engage with Army HQ, Field Army, Industry partners, Industry data experts, and our own everincreasing pool of experts to use the data we have, better. It is fair to say, everywhere we look, we either see people using their data better, or people who should use their data better!

Hopefully you remember this formula from last month:

Readiness = Capability + Availability + Sustainability

What we have invested our energy in most recently, in support of increasing Readiness for MOBILISE, is growing our understanding to identify how we can increase defence outputs now, while simultaneously identifying where the data appears to be letting us down, all with the data we have today. As you might imagine this is a massive task. For many years there was no tangible benefit to the user of completing all the fields on the Joint Asset Management and Engineering Solutions (JAMES) system, and so collectively we normalised adding the minimum amount of data to complete the task. Once we can use every bit of data, the impact will be decisive and immediate. Being able to demand spares more accurately is an obvious one, but only the tip of the iceberg. With complete and accurate data, we can understand failure modes, usage trends, environmental impact, people allocation and generate much more accurate planning yardsticks (mean variance between failure) to help everything from structural changes like ‘Future Soldier’ all the way to operational and tactical planning in Brigade Combat Teams and Battlegroups. To further aid understanding on this, it may be worth explaining that where the data becomes vital is prioritisation when stocks are low, and to assist in better forecasting demands. If you can keep this data accurate, Industry and DE&S can improve the service they provide you.

There has been some amazing work done on this at all levels. As mentioned last month, the Field Army Readiness Dashboard is an incredible tool which uses JAMES data to inform all commanders up to and including Commander of the Field Army, how Ready the vehicles are, how long it would take to get them ready (i.e. are they going to meet the readiness time set within the Army Operating Order) and what is stopping it. In this last category, the issue sits either in ‘bad data’ which means the system just doesn’t know if the vehicle can be ready in time – you can help with that – or it is unachievable, which is most likely to be a supply chain issue. In DE&S we have been working very hard on this final part using a tool called ‘Support Metrics’ which uses the data we have, to communicate the health of each platform and where any risk may be. The aim is to more quickly get to the most important issue by platform, automating data interrogation at every level, and allowing procurement Subject Matter Experts to give more accurate and focussed support. This will unlock ES Mat problems, and allow correct prioritisation for platforms which the Readiness Dashboard assesses as ‘unachievable’ in time.

Where are we now? Incomplete, incorrect, and incoherent data misleads our systems and us. This denudes our ability to meet our required Readiness levels effectively & efficiently, prevents the supply chain from getting the most critical ES Mat to where it is needed most, and undermines how we conduct planning. Where do we want to be? We must use the data we have to become more effective Engineers, leaders, and war-fighters. Increasing the potency of our Army is the Main Effort. As a Corps, we will develop the use of data to allow decisions to become disaggregated to the lowest level, empowering our people. It is our collective and individual responsibility to identify opportunities to improve processes, systems, data accuracy and applications.

What do we have to do? Today, to understand the value of our data, and what can improve our combat effectiveness for warfighting, we need to cleanse our data, starting at the platform owner-level and do it on all systems to allow us to create a stable foundation. Once our data foundations are strong, we can automate data collection and communication wherever possible, even to the point of discomfort, reducing the burden on operators and maintainers. What else can you do to help? Field Army are in the process of initiating a data scrub by platform owners, to reset the situation for outstanding demands and JAMES tasks which are no longer required. We must all ensure old demands which you have sourced from ‘elsewhere’ have been closed-down on JAMES / MJDI (Management of the Joint Deployed Inventory), so the ones that still exist are the ones in the process of being satisfied.

Phases 2 & 3

As you may recall from last month, this is still predominantly Phase 1 activity and any good plan has a lot of concurrent activity underway, which means not only are we making progress on Phase 1 (above) but the team from Army Headquarters will now explain how well we are doing in Phase 2, and what Phase 3 is shaping up to contain.

Equipment Digitalisation

Scribe: Major Craig Watson, SO2 Equipment Information Exploitation.

The Equipment Digitalisation team are part of Military Capability Delivery, a branch within the Programmes Directorate in Army Headquarters. The focus of the team is to exploit ‘support data’ to

Before submitting an article you are requested to read the guidelines on the inside front cover 5 improve equipment availability; which includes fitting new sensors or exploiting latent sensors within our vehicles. The purpose of this is to deliver a connected data value chain from factory to frontline. Why is this important for you? If we succeed in delivering this connectivity we can begin to unlock the power of automation. For example, feeding usage, failure, fuel consumption data directly into our logistic, engineering and asset management systems to free your time to be invested in more meaningful activities, repair of equipment, military training, as well as adventure training, professional development and sport. This is likely to happen when Defence Equipment Engineering and Asset Management System (DEEAMS) delivers, but there is much we can do to improve data quality and remove the burden from you before then.

The outcome is to find/create the data to understand our equipment and its route to failure. Whilst we will not be able to prevent all failures, we must focus on driving unexpected failure to as close to zero as practical. This is not a silver bullet; as our equipment ages new failures will emerge. We aim to build the structures and processes to identify these, but ultimately it will be you at the frontline, delivering battle winning availability that will spot emerging issues and we will rely on your engagement to continue to iteratively improve the way we deliver equipment support.

Military Capability Plans (MCP) – ES Capability in the Future

Scribe: Major Mark Foster

In addition to the improved use, and gathering of data by Equipment Digitalisation above, there is also excellent work also being done within Army HQ on developing equipment capability. ES MCP branch reside within the Army HQ Futures Directorate and are responsible for ES Concept and Capability Development. The team are engaged in several contributory activities with the most notable highlighted below:

Equipment Support Skills Transformation (ESST) – The ESST programme will modernise and upskill the Army to deliver effective ES for

Land operations. It will identify ES skills shortfalls at ES levels 1-3 and provide the foundation for an enduring, adaptable, future training and skills acquisition model. ESST will: deliver engineering specific training to maximise the use of data, digital processes and decision support systems; identify and train the correct balance of advanced and traditional repair techniques, and, optimise future career structures and accreditation pathways. Advanced Manufacturing (AdM) and Augmented Reality (AR) Triage – ES MCP coordinate the Army AdM and AR communities and are now leading a series of trials with support from the Field Army and international partners. Trials and experimentation will continue with opportunities to deploy technology to large scale exercises in 2024 such as Ex LINOTYPER.

Project CONVERGENCE CAPSTONE 4 (PC-C4) –

The British Army will deploy to the US in early 2024 to conduct a series of experiments with our Australian, UK and US (AUKUS) allies. As part of a wider CSS series of experimentation, ES Cap Dev aim to develop a Common Maintenance Picture that utilises data from multiple sources and leverages automation to plan and execute ES activity, including AdM and AR.

Summary

Thank you all for your incredible professionalism, not least for reading this far into an article on data. As you can see, we have excellent people moving mountains to improve how we can support Field Army’s Readiness. Lt Col Kitty Small, currently on the Army Advanced Development Programme (AADP), but a vital member of the Data team, described the problem superbly:

“the MOBILISE ‘fight tonight’ problem is not about waiting for an amazing ‘solve everything’ solution; it is a whole force, ongoing, dataimprovement task which we all own. Collaboration and transparency, so we can secure and scale our innovation, are really important, hence this editorial! Some of what we do is highly technical ‘1s and 0s’; most of our work today though is about fostering an attitude of being ready to apply core engineering skills to understand data exploitation for real battlefield and ‘under the hood’ benefit.”

We can only do this with your support, and we know there is excellent data improvement going on at unit-level all the time. This article has shown you what we are doing, where, and why. This is to allow you to know who to reach out to if you want to do even more. If you are already doing great work and want to link it to the REME Corps Strategy, this article should point you in the right direction of the team closest to your work. If you want to get involved from a standing start, any of the people mentioned in this article would be very glad to hear from you. If none of these apply, rest assured that you will be making a huge difference by doing your part just on your own platform; because every bit of cleaner data will add up to a more effective, more ready, and more capable Army, which is something we can all be proud of.

ES Data Summary – your part in the plan: If you are limited for time, here is a summary of what you should be doing to enable Exploiting Data, Winning Wars:

1. Configuration of equipment (Modifications) – a pre-requisite to DEEAMS transition is the accurate modification state of platforms and all associated EBS items. If you see it don’t tolerate it, treat it.

2. Faults and demands. The Main Effort is always to keep kit at the required readiness, but we must ensure JAMES & MJDI correctly state if work is done, or a spare has arrived. If you are a platform owner and haven’t done this, do it today and correct the errors.

3. Accurate Equipment Breakdown Structures – if you see incorrect / incoherent Serial Numbers within EBS do something about it (if you can) or raise it up your ES chain if you don’t know how.

4. Engage with, use and champion the ES dashboards that have been created, such as Field Army Readiness, JAMES IX, and VERITAS.

5. Reach out to with the relevant team if there are things we can do to enable you to deliver your roles more efficiently, or if there is something you have done, or can do, to support any of this work. This is something which will help the whole of the Field Army – play your part.

Before submitting an article you are requested to read the guidelines on the inside front cover 7