Military MRO In France: “Moving Towards a Combat Maintenance Planning Document” (II of II)

By Murielle Delaporte - Highlights from the second panel entitled “Preparing For Conflict: Economy of Aerospace Operational Support Services” (Part II)

This second part of our article on the highlights of the second panel of the first day of AD2S conferences focuses on the three other areas of adaptation mentioned by the panelists, namely:

1.  the optimization of existing solutions thanks to the existence of a dual-use industrial base;
2. the urgent need to lighten the peacetime regulatory straitjacket in order to optimize the ratio between maintenance hours and flight hours, thereby reducing aircraft downtime;
3. national autonomy in terms of resources, an essential condition for dealing with HI.

2. The advantage of a “dual-use” civil-military industrial base

On the industrial side, Olivier Tillier, in charge of support at Airbus Helicopter (MSCF for “Military Support Center”), emphasized that he heads a team of 600 people whose vocation is above all to “support those who protect us”.

1. While many solutions for dealing with high intensity warfare remain “to be explored”, Olivier Tillier highlighted two assets already in place:
   the existence of outsourced fleets is a “complementary tool for regeneration and increased availability”, and a step towards a truly operational investment by the industry;
2. Airbus Helicopters' unique ability to draw on a supply chain dedicated to dual fleets, which facilitates the recovery of spare parts and the acceleration of production and repair rates when needed.

However, it has taken up a number of challenges to rise to the stakes involved with the prospect of high end conflict, including :

• continued mapping of supply vulnerabilities, a process already initiated in conjunction with DMAé and industry in general, and which has already identified a number of concrete cases;
• certain regulatory issues, such as the use of parts from other users (for the NH90, for example);
• the need to “rework deployment batches”;
• risk management: the possibility of “postponing or ignoring an MRO act ” and the definition of what could be an acceptable level of risk in terms of preventive maintenance in a high-intensity context are among the questions to which manufacturers need to provide answers today.

Lessons learned of war manuals detailing repairs to high-intensity war damage are needed, while the collaborative work currently being developed would enable us to go beyond contractual links by fomenting privileged partnerships conducive to an effective “ sharing of good ideas ” and to a coordinated ramp-up.

Bruno Chevalier, DGSM at Dassault Aviation, concurred with his counterpart at Airbus Helicopters, as he underlined the dual nature of his company's activities, with 8 to 900 people dedicated to the production of some 1,000 aircraft over the past forty years.

Dassault Aviation is thus able to draw on a wealth of experience and a high level of responsiveness that was “taken up a notch during Covid”. High intensity represents however a new challenge requiring massive commitment and regeneration over the long term.

From his point of view, it is therefore essential to get all MRO players working together, first to avoid duplication, and secondly to ensure that agood complementarity between manufacturers, the DGA and the SIAé occurs.

It is therefore necessary to modernize the repair guides drawn up in the past, while incorporating the new methods available today. Reintroducing an inventory policy adapted to the changing battlefield is another requirement.

The difficulty in increasing production and regeneration rates is more of an engineering nature, but the dual nature of Dassault Aviation's aeronautical production is such as to facilitate conversion from the civilian to the military sector, should the need arise. A major advantage is that, while not all aircraft are interchangeable, “human resources already are”, concludes Bruno Chevalier.

For Emeric Tamboise, vice-president of support and customer service for military aeronautics at Thales, the focus is on three areas:

• industrial resilience, with the implementation of business plans meant to pursue a normal activity in the event of a crisis, whether cyber-related or linked to physical threats: site security is a major issue, particularly in view of “the epidemic of fires that has been raging for the past two and a half years”.
• Thales has already stepped up its investments, with €750 million earmarked for site and skills enhancement (CapEx) and “a 30% increase in HR over three years”. In the support sector, Thales employs 1,000 people at 52 sites. For Emeric Tamboise, ”working on skills”, by developing multi-skilling in particular, is essential to cope with the differences in equipment generation: “the only thing that two radars designed thirty years apart have in common is the word ’radar'...”, he explains.
• “Supporting the mobility of the armed forces” by every possible means: crisis simulation to train Thales teams; operational adaptation of maintenance batches; flexible production of spare parts “according to attrition scenario”’; flexible working hours for teams organized in 2 x 8 or 3 x 8 shifts to adapt to the needs of the forces; etc.

These are just some of the issues currently being examined by Thales to respond to the changing security context.3. The urgent need to lighten the regulatory straitjacket
Concluding this second panel, Sébastien Fabre, MCO/MRO Program Director at Sopra Steria, emphasized the ubiquity of digital transformation: whether it is the digitization of the supply chain, the generalization of simulation, the use of data processing in the study of equipment lifecycles, or the obligation of traceability, “digital is everywhere” and “there is no war economy without it ”.

While digitization represents a major weakness in terms of cyber security, there will be no “return to paper”, and Sopra Steria's teams have worked hard on these issues. The company is now in a position to provide “solutions for moving into the era of a combat Maintenance Planning Document” (MPD).

One of the recognized criteria of a war economy is to be able to devote at least 30% of GDP to defense. At present, therefore, we are not really in a war economy. On the other hand, it is possible to work on operational risk management and move away from the normative framework associated with airworthiness, which is ill-suited to high-intensity scenarios.
According to Sébastien Fabre, we need to balance repair, maintenance and return-to-flight considerations with the risks associated with the mission. The Orionis exercise carried out by the French Air and Space Force, as well as the work of the control and support centers, are helping to develop a common language between MRO players and to “ find solutions together ”.

Digital technology is in itself a tool for optimization and a source of innovation on several levels:
• by improving resource utilization and refining the ratio between predictive maintenance hours and flight hours;
• by using 3D digitization to provide repair solutions in the event of combat damage: the digital model can thus contribute to “finding the patch that will enable x flight hours to be flown”.

All the panelists agreed that it was urgent and possible to work together “with the DGA, the DMAé and the design offices of manufacturers” to “lighten the straitjacket of regulations”^[1] and “implement what is already possible by eliminating duplication”, which would save both time and money^[2].

For Olivier Tillier, a “combat or war” MPD can become a reality “at iso-risk ”, by defining the level of risk induced by the reduction in a part's service life. For him, the “patches” already exist in the form of simple technical solutions. Ultimately, we need to build a “right maintenance” model based on a virtuous circle whereby “less maintenance means less consumption of parts”.

4. National autonomy, an essential condition for coping with high intensity

The last point raised in the Q&A session was the need to “create a sovereign environment to deliver services to the right place at the right time”[3], (3)“national autonomy being essential to cope with a high intensity conflict hypothesi ”^[4]. 

The weaknesses in the supply chain identified by the DGA stem from the consequences of offshoring due to budgetary and stock market constraints, as well as from “the desire to reduce costs, the globalization of trade, the policy of offsets, etc ”^[5].Today, many efforts are underway to reverse this trend: “50 relocation projects in France”, as well as the development of a defense industrial reserve, are among the initiatives currently being undertaken by the DGA^[6]. 

Emeric Tamboise's final word went as follows: being ready for high intensity warfare also implies a radical change in mentality. For Emeric Tamboise, the quest for industrial, operational and economic performance has until now led MRO players to find solutions “to ensure that breakdowns don't happen again”.

While switching to “operational risk management mode” is necessary, because “high intensity combat exercises prove that we are not ready”, such a transition is disruptive for teams, in that it involves a “radical change” in terms of mentalities and “the formatting of mindsets – opposite to high intensity DNA - that took place over the last fifteen years”…

Notes
^[1] Bruno Chevalier
^[2] Olivier Tilllier
^[3] Sébastien Fabre
^[4] IGA Yannick Cailliez
^[5] General (2s) Jean-marc Laurent
^[6] IGA Thierry Rouffet

Photo © anelb.com, 2024