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The products and services described in this series of articles are currently available or in development by Elbit America’s 3,500 employees at engineering, manufacturing, and sustainment facilities across seven states.
SITREP:
After restoring order to the Red exclave city, tensions on both sides of the DMZ are reduced, giving Blue and its allies an opportunity to repair and replace equipment for future operations.
The critical electronics system was 40 years old, built by a non-NATO Western ally, and broken.
Critical to the effective operation of a Blue platform’s electronic countermeasures, it had been disabled when a lucky shot from a Red insurgent put a 7.62mm round directly through it.
Blue’s maintainers quickly discovered that the system was no longer being supported by the manufacturer, who during the past few decades had been bought and sold by much larger defense industry companies, uninterested in keeping such an old system working; selling the operator a newer – and more expensive system – was preferable, at least to the seller.
In desperation, Blue took the box to the U.S. Army maintainers located at the host nation’s sole international airport. There, the Soldiers were sympathetic, but unable to help.
However, a nearby civilian contractor field service representative overheard the conversation, and asked if he could take a look. He had seen this box before, decades ago and a few continents away. And while the box and its components were obsolete, and none were made by his current employer, he had a strong feeling that they could make this electronics system work again.
Credulous, but with no other options, the Blue Soldiers handed the system over to the field rep. – after obtaining a hand receipt from him.
Video teleconferences with the home office wasn’t a problem, but the nearly 12-hour difference in time zones was slightly more than inconvenient. But within a day the field rep. and colleagues back in the U.S. convened a call and were able to thoroughly examine the third party’s aged and unsupported Line Replaceable Unit (LRU). For several hours, until the sun set on America and rose to the east of the distant archipelago, technicians troubleshooted and conducted engineering analysis of something they had never physically touched before.
Fortunate for Blue nation, the men and woman working to fix this problem were well experienced with providing a variety of comprehensive obsolescence mitigation solutions to rapidly repair and maintain various non-NATO systems. As part of their employer’s lifecycle product sustainment capability, they specialize in supporting systems that are no longer supported by OEMs.
Unable to find replacement parts made by the OEM, and unable to contact the OEM to determine if they still had the ability to make the parts, the repair team resorted to the company’s in-house re-engineering capabilities to re-design and then outsource for re-manufacture of a replacement part for the aging, unsupported system.
When the field service rep. returned the box to the Blue Forces customer, they expected him to return the product unrepaired, along with a bill for the failed attempt to repair it. They were surprised and delighted when he delivered the repaired system, along with documentation regarding how it had been fixed and tested, accompanied by a reasonably-priced invoice for services provided.
The platform that hosts the electronics would be able to return to service quickly, without needing to retrain either operators or maintainers, to help keep the host nation and its allies protected during the ongoing peace-enforcement operation.
Read more from the Made in America Innovation series. >>
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