Biden Executive Order unearths military's Right to Repair problem

[AshG]

By Louis Rossmann, my favorite laptop repair / libertarian blogger. Well with the watch.

 

[NEO]

I am for right to repair.

I just wonder if this will make reverse engineering easier for our Chinese competitors.

 

[Rasputin_Vol]

I am for right to repair.

I just wonder if this will make reverse engineering easier for our Chinese competitors.

They're reverse engineering already. What in particular are you scared of them reverse engineering? Don't most of our military components come from overseas anyways?

 

[ClearwaterVol]

Good XO

 

[AshG]

I am for right to repair.

I just wonder if this will make reverse engineering easier for our Chinese competitors.

If you've got a tank in the field that's broken down, would you rather your unit engineers be able to get it up and running or have to wait for the manufacturer to send a tech that you then have to escort into a combat zone and keep alive to fix it?

 

[Grand Vol]

If you've got a tank in the field that's broken down, would you rather your unit engineers be able to get it up and running or have to wait for the manufacturer to send a tech that you then have to escort into a combat zone and keep alive to fix it?

Depends on how much the manufacturer spent on campaign donations to make it to where only their techs could fix it.

 

[NorthDallas40]

If you've got a tank in the field that's broken down, would you rather your unit engineers be able to get it up and running or have to wait for the manufacturer to send a tech that you then have to escort into a combat zone and keep alive to fix it?

So this is a common occurrence today as is. With the complexity of many of our systems the military doesn’t have the organic skills to properly maintain or diagnose issues and contracts specialist help. They are called Field Service Engineers or FSRs. All of ours are issued body armor and several if not all are small arms qualified. They do not carry a weapon however.

 

[Rasputin_Vol]

So this is a common occurrence today as is. With the complexity of many of our systems the military doesn’t have the organic skills to properly maintain or diagnose issues and contracts specialist help. They are called Field Service Engineers or FSRs. All of ours are issued body armor and several if not all are small arms qualified. They do not carry a weapon however.

And this makes sense to you? WTF is the military doing purchasing equipment it can't repair and WTF is the military doing wasting engineering graduates from West Point and Annapolis for? Or for that matter, the military should have the vendors train their field guys on how to repair and service the equipment.

 

[NEO]

If you've got a tank in the field that's broken down, would you rather your unit engineers be able to get it up and running or have to wait for the manufacturer to send a tech that you then have to escort into a combat zone and keep alive to fix it?

@Grand Vol has a great reply.

I will say on the battlefield if it is deemed a must need they should have immediate access.

I just know though that somehow this will backfire. That’s all.

 

[NorthDallas40]

And this makes sense to you? WTF is the military doing purchasing equipment it can't repair and WTF is the military doing wasting engineering graduates from West Point and Annapolis for? Or for that matter, the military should have the vendors train their field guys on how to repair and service the equipment.

Yes it makes complete sense to me. All of our modern toys of war are quite complex and can’t be maintained by your average 19-21 year old 3 or 4 striper. And in 30+ years I’ve never seen an Annapolis, West Point, or Colorado Springs grad roll up their sleeves and grab a schematic and dive in.

Most front line organic maintenance is “swap-tronics”. Utilize built in test and available spares to isolate to the bad box and send the box back to the shop or depot for repair. In that scheme that is where most of your FSRs are. However that scheme is a costly investment in a full up organic maintenance program with specialized test equipment and a full set of TO’s. We simply don’t do that across the board anymore and thus we will pull specialized support forward to keep the equipment running. Not all programs have the economies of scale to warrant that investment

I don’t do it as much anymore (was able to pass it off to the younger engineers) but I’ve spent a lot of time talking with people on sat phones trying to diagnose a problem.

And if the stuff is REALLY new you can actually wind up with actual design team members going forward to work on it. That is the exception not the rule.

 

[NorthDallas40]

Depends on how much the manufacturer spent on campaign donations to make it to where only their techs could fix it.

Military hardware sales isn’t as bad as new car sales but the premise is the same. You make decent money on the initial sale, but you make bank on maintaining it. It’s always been that way. Even if they invest in a full up organic maintenance program the tech support contracts to keep those depots stocked and running is big business.

 

[LouderVol]

Military hardware sales isn’t as bad as new car sales but the premise is the same. You make decent money on the initial sale, but you make bank on maintaining it. It’s always been that way. Even if they invest in a full up organic maintenance program the tech support contracts to keep those depots stocked and running is big business.

I guess the point then is our military equipment needs more A10s and fewer F35s.

In a battlefield situation if something can go wrong, it will. The lower on the totem poll you can get to fix the problem, the better.

We shouldnt just accept that some mission critical piece of gear cant get jerry rigged to working condition by someone normally on mission.

 

[MG1968]

And this makes sense to you? WTF is the military doing purchasing equipment it can't repair and WTF is the military doing wasting engineering graduates from West Point and Annapolis for? Or for that matter, the military should have the vendors train their field guys on how to repair and service the equipment.

An M1 gets damaged by enemy fire no one gets near the Chobham armor. That stuff’s composition is top secret. No one works on it but the company that produces it.

 

[NorthDallas40]

I guess the point then is our military equipment needs more A10s and fewer F35s.

In a battlefield situation if something can go wrong, it will. The lower on the totem poll you can get to fix the problem, the better.

We shouldnt just accept that some mission critical piece of gear cant get jerry rigged to working condition by someone normally on mission.

Not exactly. If an A10 will do the job then by all means use an A10. But if you need an F35 then that is what you use. And let me be clear I’m a huge fan of the A10, it can do things the F35 cannot but also visa versa.

The mission determines the equipment requirements. That’s it.

An M1 has been brought up several times already. So here is another example. If the power pack (the engine comes out as a palletized Assembly) goes out on an M1 no problem it goes to the motor pool and gets an on hand spare power pack installed and it’s ready to go. If the main gun fire control computer goes out then the first maintenance level electronics tech diagnoses the bad box/assembly and swaps in a spare and it’s ready to go.

The military right to repair as compared to civilian right to repair is really not apples to apples. How many of you guys have a spare smart phone handy if you bust your current one huh? The military always buys spares so as to quickly restore the down equipment to FMC status (fully mission capable). Then the down hardware is rotated back to appropriate spares depot for repair … or back to the OEM manufacturer. The blog post at the start of this is somewhat hyperbolic, it’s basically equating all down equipment to clearing a jam on an M4. That’s ridiculous. There is an entire logistics apparatus in place to keep adequate spares for rapid front line repair time. That’s in every contract. The military logistics and “whole life engineering” apparatus is in place to make sure rapid repairs occur at the front line to avoid what the blog is implying. Now at the depot things get more diced up between organic depot repair, mfg supported deport repair, or straight up mfg R&R. It just depends on the contract. But I can assure you the military is very aggressive to retain as much organic control as possible. They just are not always equipped with the organic skills to accomplish that function on the most complex systems. That’s just how it is, if the maintainers had those skills they wouldn’t be on active duty they’d be retired and working as an FSR or straight up contractor employee no longer involved in maintenance.

 

[KB5252]

They're reverse engineering already. What in particular are you scared of them reverse engineering? Don't most of our military components come from overseas anyways?

Our technology, though they are already doing it we will just make it easier I guess.

 

[AM64]

Yes it makes complete sense to me. All of our modern toys of war are quite complex and can’t be maintained by your average 19-21 year old 3 or 4 striper. And in 30+ years I’ve never seen an Annapolis, West Point, or Colorado Springs grad roll up their sleeves and grab a schematic and dive in.

Most front line organic maintenance is “swap-tronics”. Utilize built in test and available spares to isolate to the bad box and send the box back to the shop or depot for repair. In that scheme that is where most of your FSRs are. However that scheme is a costly investment in a full up organic maintenance program with specialized test equipment and a full set of TO’s. We simply don’t do that across the board anymore and thus we will pull specialized support forward to keep the equipment running. Not all programs have the economies of scale to warrant that investment

I don’t do it as much anymore (was able to pass it off to the younger engineers) but I’ve spent a lot of time talking with people on sat phones trying to diagnose a problem.

And if the stuff is REALLY new you can actually wind up with actual design team members going forward to work on it. That is the exception not the rule.

I repaired Hawk Missile radar in the late 60s beyond the swap level. I was Ordnance attached to Artillery and attended an 8 month school before going into the field (and had completed three years of engineering). The system was "mature" by that date, and we had semi-automated shop consoles to troubleshoot and repair the modules that the Artillery maintenance guys swapped out, so the system worked pretty well. We basically did anything that fell in between site level and depot level maintenance (depot level stuff, too if we could get our hands on the parts) - if the site people couldn't do onsite repairs, we did that, too - my favorite, in fact, because it was generally more interesting and challenging than the shop work. The semi-automated chassis repair was too guided for me - the challenge of really having to think and diagnose was much better. A lot of guys were probably not really up to more than the basic chassis level repair, so I generally got to pick my jobs. In the end it was never a career consideration because while the job was fascinating, the Army wasn't.

Army specialist ranks were a dual ladder approach to retaining talent, but they weren't anywhere what was needed. I only saw Raytheon tech reps a couple of times, but I don't ever remember them assisting in any way. I don't see any sane way for the military to keep new and complex stuff like F-35s flying at this time, and the operational/reliability rate demonstrates the problem well. Overly sophisticated equipment in the field is always going to be a nightmare technically and logistically; it's no better than simpler equipment if it can't be kept operational. We had a few Officers, Warrant Officers, and NCOs, but to be honest the work was done by guys who were on a first three year enlistment - the ones who reenlisted were almost without exception worthless. As an AF brat (and my dad was a pilot and Armament and Electronics Officer), I got the impression the that AF aircraft maintenance was far more a profession than a one enlistment job.

I was on Okinawa which has a very humid climate, and the Hawk radars didn't like the humidity - especially when it got cool at night. The simple fix was light bulbs to keep it warm in the cabinets. I spent almost two weeks getting one radar up and running went the site shut it down and turned off the lights after a failure - most of that was just getting it back to the original problem. Environment is a huge issue with military equipment - lots of different operating locations with unique issues - and that's just for stuff that stays on the ground.

 

[NorthDallas40]

I repaired Hawk Missile radar in the late 60s beyond the swap level. I was Ordnance attached to Artillery and attended an 8 month school before going into the field (and had completed three years of engineering). The system was "mature" by that date, and we had semi-automated shop consoles to troubleshoot and repair the modules that the Artillery maintenance guys swapped out, so the system worked pretty well. We basically did anything that fell in between site level and depot level maintenance (depot level stuff, too if we could get our hands on the parts) - if the site people couldn't do onsite repairs, we did that, too - my favorite, in fact, because it was generally more interesting and challenging than the shop work. The semi-automated chassis repair was too guided for me - the challenge of really having to think and diagnose was much better. A lot of guys were probably not really up to more than the basic chassis level repair, so I generally got to pick my jobs. In the end it was never a career consideration because while the job was fascinating, the Army wasn't.

Army specialist ranks were a dual ladder approach to retaining talent, but they weren't anywhere what was needed. I only saw Raytheon tech reps a couple of times, but I don't ever remember them assisting in any way. I don't see any sane way for the military to keep new and complex stuff like F-35s flying at this time, and the operational/reliability rate demonstrates the problem well. Overly sophisticated equipment in the field is always going to be a nightmare technically and logistically; it's no better than simpler equipment if it can't be kept operational. We had a few Officers, Warrant Officers, and NCOs, but to be honest the work was done by guys who were on a first three year enlistment - the ones who reenlisted were almost without exception worthless. As an AF brat (and my dad was a pilot and Armament and Electronics Officer), I got the impression the that AF aircraft maintenance was far more a profession than a one enlistment job.

I was on Okinawa which has a very humid climate, and the Hawk radars didn't like the humidity - especially when it got cool at night. The simple fix was light bulbs to keep it warm in the cabinets. I spent almost two weeks getting one radar up and running went the site shut it down and turned off the lights after a failure - most of that was just getting it back to the original problem. Environment is a huge issue with military equipment - lots of different operating locations with unique issues - and that's just for stuff that stays on the ground.

Yeah a system like Hawk is a case where it’s big enough to do the investments in specialty test equipment and all of the repair guide TOs and operational descriptive docs.

But even within my career timeline the miniaturization has gone up exponentially. I’m guessing Hawk was all thru hole ICs and discretes. We don’t do that anymore. The very first 6”x10” circuit board I designed had a very small fraction of the functionality and complexity of even the simple boards I do today. What used to be in a whole LRU is now a fraction of a single board.

That’s good and bad. More stuff in a smaller area. And more headaches when it acts up.

Honestly our best stuff today has sophisticated PBIT and IBIT capability that just says replace LRU2 or the 3A4 CCA and make it the depots problem. That’s where the headache hangar queen hardware belongs.

 

[AM64]

Yeah a system like Hawk is a case where it’s big enough to do the investments in specialty test equipment and all of the repair guide TOs and operational descriptive docs.

But even within my career timeline the miniaturization has gone up exponentially. I’m guessing Hawk was all thru hole ICs and discretes. We don’t do that anymore. The very first 6”x10” circuit board I designed had a very small fraction of the functionality and complexity of even the simple boards I do today. What used to be in a whole LRU is now a fraction of a single board.

That’s good and bad. More stuff in a smaller area. And more headaches when it acts up.

Honestly our best stuff today has sophisticated PBIT and IBIT capability that just says replace LRU2 or the 3A4 CCA and make it the depots problem. That’s where the headache hangar queen hardware belongs.

The Hawk was a mix between tube and transistor circuitry - even miniature solder in tubes in some equipment, and huge ones in the HV and transmitter cabinets. You are right that miniaturization, large scale integration, and even discrete components smaller than the size of a rice grain have changed everything. You basically knew how most components functioned, but if you can't work at that level you have to know a lot more about theory of operation and function - big complex manuals (or computer documents) something manufacturers aren't going to willingly share. That bonds us to disposable technology which has always seemed like a tremendous waste with no reasonable solution. My wife and I have arguments regularly about why I don't fix stuff anymore, and I can't convince her that it's not a won't but a can't issue most of the time. Even if you can get the part, you usually can't get enough technical information to analyze and troubleshoot.