Operational Sustainment
The Science & Art of
Operational Sustainment
Battlefield, disaster response, and public safety sustainment is both an art and a science. It’s about synchronizing, integrating, and transporting commodities in a highly “just-in-time” manner to provide maneuver and incident commanders with freedom of action, extended operational reach, and prolonged endurance.
As it turns out, the “science” of sustainment is not terribly difficult as it is grounded in basic math and computation, based on real-time data from the operational space. A fire team deploys with X amount of ammunition multiplied by the number of soldiers on a fire team, and then an ability to monitor ammunition consumption in real-time. The same calculus can be made for food, water, fuel, medical necessities, and nearly every other supply class.
The “art” of sustainment is about considering how the tactical or incident response environment affects logistics and resupply.
The “cog” at the center of the autonomous replenishment machine is data and situational awareness, fed by an array of IoT sensors (body worn and proximate) and stream analytics to anticipate resupply needs. Using a simple example, a vehicle that takes X amount of petrol may be started early to warm up on a cold day, requiring additional fuel sooner. Similarly, on a hot day, soldiers experiencing an accelerated operational tempo will drive faster and more acute need for water resupply. Core to the discussion of “art” is all channel access to IoT, GIS, and environmental data, but also recognitional support “services” in the form of rules and AI.
Wilcox Industries has partnered with Blueforce Development Corporation and Thunderbolt Solutions to develop a packaged capability for operational sustainment based on deployed fire teams using the Wilcox FUSION System. The FUSION System houses an integrated maintenance counter that monitors the number of rounds fired, as well as barrel temperature and other rail sensors. It moves weapon data using BlueforceTACTICAL (BTAC) where the data is shared amongst the fire team and their commander but is also shared with the Wilcox Armorers Module in an armory.
FUSION System data is also monitored in real-time by Blueforce’s new Autonomous Orchestration Plugin for BlueforceEDGE, which monitors a wide array of soldier systems to include the Wilcox FUSION System, physiological wearables, CBRN, laser rangefinders/targeting, and others for single-variant and multi-variant threats. The Plugin contains sets of business rules that can detect active engagement and shot counts but also look across an entire deployed fire team versus a single operator.
Once certain thresholds are reached or a team requests support, the Plugin engages Thunderbolt’s Manned-unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) framework, which autonomously monitors, selects and dispatches unmanned assets to perform situation-based resupply, reconnaissance and overwatch missions. This creates a fully extensible environment that integrates additional components, sensors, datasets, UxVs and missions. These products house an integrated maintenance counter that monitors the number of rounds fired as well as barrel temperature and other rail sensors and moves weapon data using BlueforceTACTICAL (BTAC), where the data is shared amongst the fire team and their commander but is also shared with the Wilcox Armorers Module in an armory.
Learn more by downloading our Operational Sustainment Brief.
About Blueforce development
Blueforce Development Corporation develops software products that facilitate the formation of arbitrary and spontaneous confederations of people, sensors, and systems using handheld devices such as smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. Our passion is in the delivery of network-centric computing for those requiring the highest degree of security, mobility, and interoperability., barrel temperature, and maintenance status of Wilcox devices shared in real-time amongst the team and command. Learn more about Blueforce Development.
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