Return-on-Investment Potential for US Army Missile Health Monitoring

Application of health monitoring technology and the capability to predict failures can potentially improve the efficiency and effectiveness of US Army missile sustainment. Sustainment functions throughout the weapon's lifecycle and across the spectrum of different Army missiles such as field testing, lab testing, inspections, retrograde, maintenance, reliability improvements, and supply functions offer many opportunities to better the sustainment status quo in both cost and performance. New technology solutions must however accrue benefits associated with metrics such as total life cycle cost, as well as other readiness-type metrics such as reporting accuracy, timeliness, uncertainty, and other factors. Application of health monitoring and failure prediction must provide an acceptably high return in benefits as compared to the investments needed upfront for development and deployment. Given those constraints, only the most innovative and well engineered applications of existing, emerging, and new technology will suffice in context even though overall sustainment improvements are highly desired. The information in this paper is intended to notionally describe the US Army's missile logistics and supply such that feasible and effective technology solutions can be targeted at specific processes, and thereby provide maximal quantifiable effect. The paper will also briefly address applied research currently being conducted that targets Return-on-Investment (ROI) risks and thereby better enable technology transition.