Page 164 - Cyber Defense eMagazine September 2023

six-year period. It also found that the DoD did not meet its MC goals for FY 2021 for 47 of the 49 aircraft
in its review, with most aircraft more than 10 percentage points below the goal.

With national security depending on the safety and reliability of critical defense assets – predictive
maintenance is key to ensuring operational readiness. Predictive maintenance refers to the use of
hardware, software, and service components to provide predictive analytics for mechanical assets,
infrastructure maintenance, and reliability objectives. Used to monitor emerging failures, predictive
maintenance uses real-time condition-based monitoring and artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning
(ML) inferencing to identify expected failure points and determine remaining asset life. This intelligence
enables military organizations to enhance operational readiness, enable cyber survivability, lower costs,
shorten sustainment cycles, and increase platform availability [i.e., MC rates].

The DoD issued an interim predictive maintenance policy back in 2002. But in a December 2022 report
on improving military readiness, the GAO found that in the 20 years since, military services have made
limited progress in implementing it – despite pilot programs and evidence of improved maintenance
outcomes. In a recent survey, 73 percent of DoD operations, maintenance, and IT leaders said they feel
the lack of predictive maintenance across the DoD directly correlates to a low platform
readiness/availability. However, if implemented and utilized correctly, the DoD can use predictive
maintenance to its full potential, boosting the resilience and readiness of critical defense assets.

From Reactive to Proactive

In the absence of predictive maintenance, unplanned or reactive maintenance leads to more operational
downtime and higher costs in the long run. DoD officials report that reactive maintenance often requires
more materials and a higher level of effort than planned maintenance. In fact, by waiting until things break
to fix them, the DoD spends $90 billion a year to keep ground systems, ships, and aircraft combat-ready,
according to the GAO.

Downtime of critical defense assets puts personnel and national security at risk – but it is preventable.
Minimizing downtime is key to improving operational readiness. In the same survey, 62 percent said they
experienced weapons systems or aircraft downtime that could have been prevented with the use of
predictive maintenance in the past year.

Turning Data into Intelligence

DoD operations, maintenance, and IT leaders need real-time knowledge of what is happening across all
equipment and systems, unfortunately 73 percent say their current tooling fails to provide the data access
and observability needed for effective predictive maintenance. Often, that’s because sensors, log files,
and recording devices capture data at prescribed intervals, rather than in real time, because of storage
limitations. As a result, when an anomaly pops at a millisecond, it often escapes detection by a sensor.

The problem underpinning these challenges, however, is access to this onboard data when digital
anomalies arise. Weapon systems today lack an onboard sensor capable of capturing, storing, and

Cyber Defense eMagazine – September 2023 Edition 164
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