SUSTAINED COMBAT AVAILABILITY A DESIGN ASSESSMENT TECHNIQUE

A weapon system's true effectiveness is measured by a combination of its performance capabilities and its long-term sustainability. Three things determine sustainability: partitioning for minimum Life Cycle Costs, packaging for the intended maintenance environment, and automated diagnostics. These three aspects can be tied into a design trade-off metric based on a system’s "Return to Readiness" capability. Doing this yields significant insight into a given design alternative’s sustainability. Analysis of Martin Marietta’s LHX hardware shows that sustained availability can be increased by 25%, while simultaneously reducing the logistics burden by two-thirds.