Platform Misdiagnoses, NEOFs, and the ATE Perspective

Abstract

The most costly phase of a military platform's lifecycle historically can be its Operations and Support phase, in which the majority of maintenance occurs. It is prudent that the management of every platform consisting of Line Replaceable Units (LRU), Line Replaceable Modules, and sub-component Shop Replaceable Units includes an effective and efficient support strategy with highly accurate diagnostics at multiple levels of maintenance. Effective platform support strategies require the understanding of ever-increasing system complexities, critical temporal dependencies, and operational environmental conditions, all of which contribute to the challenge of developing diagnostics. Due to these challenges, Automatic Test Equipment (ATE), which are general purpose tools, and, when coupled with platform specific software are often utilized off-platform to verify, diagnose, and provide feedback of the LRU condition to provide accurate and repeatable diagnostics. ATE provides a much needed component of support, however, there are other factors which are also critical to the support process and can lead to misdiagnoses. These types of misdiagnoses include, but are not limited to, a frequently debated metric within the Department of Defense (DoD) commonly called “False Fails” or “No Fault Found” or “No Evidence of Failure (NEOF).” As seen for many years, making an incorrect diagnosis, for whatever the reason, can lead to numerous scenarios of unnecessary expenditures of resources due to the component's unnecessary removal, replacement, handling, shipping, processing, and transportation. The loss of these resources represent a significant cost across the Service in which they operate. As the DoD budgets are already strained and the operational tempo is ever-challenging, we must provide every advantage to the Warfighter by keeping their weapon platforms fully operational and free from misdiagnoses and unnecessary downtime, which adversely affects our nation's readiness and warfighting advantage. This paper describes some of the types and sources of component misdiagnoses at different levels of maintenance, plausible root causes, and recommendations for reduction and mitigation, including the role of ATE in a platform's support structure as a combat force multiplier and its (often misunderstood) effect on mitigation of misdiagnoses and NEOFs.