An effective technology refresh plan establishes the points along the service life of a product or system when it is optimal to change, or “refresh,” both custom-built and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) system components within a larger military system or platform to ensure continued supportability throughout its lifecycle. The EMPF is currently working with its partners, Advanced Technology Institute, Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, and Altarum, on a Navy ManTech project to develop advanced technology refresh tools to support military platforms currently in use by our warfighters. Having a viable technology refresh plan is vital to the mission of supplying the warfighter with hardware that is technically capable, available, sustainable, and cost effective. The changes can be in the form of an electronic component substitution/replacement, or in the form of a re-design of the product. That is, if a military product is to be produced and/or sustained over many years, then there will be points when it is necessary to replace components in the design, or as mentioned, perform a re-design.

There are different interpretations about what influences a technology refresh plan. Here, three factors are considered: 1) Obsolescence risk; 2) New technology benefit; and 3) Requirement change (Figure 1-1). The most well-known impact on technology refresh is obsolescence. It is known that military electronics make up less than 1% of sales in the electronics product market. In addition, military electronic products/systems typically have extremely long lifetimes compared to consumer electronics (decades vs. months in some cases). These two factors are the cause of component obsolescence being a well-known risk with military electronic systems. If a system supplier builds product today with a certain set of components, it is likely that in time, consumer product designs will change at a rapid rate, forcing a change in components that are in demand. Various components of the military system may no longer be profitable for the component supplier to offer, and thus become obsolete.

Once it is known or predicted that certain components present an obsolescence risk, there are numerous responses. The three main responses are the following:
1) Execute a long-term buy of the subject component in order to have it on hand for the future; 2) Identify and utilize a substitute part; or 3) Perform a re-design of the product, thus ensuring current, available components are utilized. Each of these responses can lead to costly inefficiencies. For instance, excess component buying is costly from both a purchase and an inventory standpoint. Substitute parts may require timely qualification testing, and re-designs are typically time consuming and costly undertakings. These points illustrate the importance of optimizing the response to component obsolescence risk. This response is part of the technology refresh planning process.

In addition to obsolescence, two other factors can impact a technology refresh plan. First, with the dynamic consumer electronics market, new electronics technology is available regularly. Understanding when the benefits of new technology outweigh the time and cost associated with re-designing a product to implement the new technology is another aspect of a technology refresh plan. Second, customer requirements change, often requiring more capability. This desire for change manifests itself in the need to perform a re-design of the product or system. Knowing the requirement upgrade schedule can impact the optimal time to perform technology refresh.

Current practices address the three technology refresh planning aspects listed in Figure 1-1, but these efforts are fragmented in nature, resulting in a less than optimized technology refresh plan for a module, system, or platform. One main issue relates to the fact that the appropriate information detailing the up-to-date status of a system’s requirements, component obsolescence risk, and new technology insertion opportunities, is not well defined, not visible, and not available to all pertinent parties, including the DOD customer, the prime, and the system suppliers. The EMPF-led Technology Refresh for Navy Transformation (TRENT) program focuses on defining and demonstrating a system framework that uses existing software tools to define the status of requirements, obsolescence risk, and new technology opportunities, as well as to disseminate that information to the needed program Government sites, companies, and personnel. By achieving this activity, TRENT intends to demonstrate that a defined and coordinated sharing of important technology refresh information results in a more optimal technology refresh plan for the systems of a military platform. By achieving an integrated and complete technology refresh plan, cost savings can result due to reduced excess component buying/inventory and a reduced number of costly re-designs of a product/system.

Figure 1-2 shows a conceptual example of the type of framework necessary to maintain, update, and distribute the technology refresh information properly. This framework must also ensure security and informational configuration management so that existing conditions at the time of decisions can be reviewed for justification and decision improvement purposes.

As the commercial electronics world continues to grow evermore dynamic in technology advancement and products, the military electronics producers will need to continue to adapt and blend their long product life cycles with timely refreshes in technology. The three main drivers of such changes – requirement change, obsolescence risk, and new technology benefit – need to have related information tracked and distributed to the important players in the supply chain. The TRENT program is defining and demonstrating a means to accomplish this objective. Only through efforts such as this can a complete picture be drawn that allows an optimized technology management/refresh plan to be embraced and understood by all concerned. Efforts such as this will allow military electronics producers to not only keep pace, but to take advantage of the giant consumer electronics industry, thus ensuring that the needed electronics hardware is available and sustainable for our forces in the field.