Application of the R&M Case Process for a UK Armoured Fighting Vehicle Programme

This paper provides a study of the practical application of the Reliability and Maintainability (R&M) Case process on the UK Scout Specialist Vehicles (SV) programme. Scout SV is a UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) procurement programme to deliver a Medium Weight Armoured Reconnaissance capability to the British Army. High levels of Availability/Reliability are considered to be essential for Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) and reliability is a key system requirement for the Scout Manned Reconnaissance capability which often operates far from any support. There are numerous factors that present significant challenges to the achievement of reliability on the Scout SV project. The demanding functional requirements necessitate a complex design with reliance upon the integration of many subsystems with a mixture of development and off-the-shelf equipment/software. The programme is based upon the best of breed subsystems which has led to a multinational design and delivery organisation each with their differing approaches to R&M. Usual constraints with MoD procurement projects impact on the effort that can be applied to achieve the requirements, e.g. one off projects, small production quantities, costs and time constraints, etc. The R&M Case process was implemented at project inception as a means to identify risk to shape the R&M Strategy and Plans. To the Authors' knowledge this is the first significant military procurement project that has utilised a detailed application of the R&M Case process from the early stages of the programme. As the project has continued the process has been widely used and has provided significant demonstrable benefits as described in paragraph 5.