2.1 HSI in Military Systems Acquisition

2.1 HSI in military systems acquisition

The beginning of the 21st century is witnessing radical changes in the way naval warfare is being processed. These changes extend to new ways of waging war, including use of joint, highly coordinated, quick response operations, and the associated need for information warfare and network-centric, open architecture, distributed combat systems. Changes in modern naval warfighting also include new threats, involving aggressive actions of smaller, dispersed, highly mobile and lethal forces of rogue nations and terrorists, such as the attack on the USS COLE. Another significant change is in the tactical environment for naval operations, from the "blue water" of the open ocean, with ample early warning on the onset of attacks, to the "brown water" of the littoral regions where tomorrow's sea battles will be fought, where reaction time is severely limited and where simultaneous multi-dimensional warfare (land, air, surface, and subsurface) can be expected. Another source of change is in modern demographics which point to the reduced availability of young men for recruitment in the Navy, leading to reductions in ship manning and higher utilization of women on ships (expected to reach 25% compared to the present 15% of the naval force). Finally, change in Navy systems of tomorrow is dictated by the severe and continual reductions of defense budgets, leading to increased automation of systems and further reductions in manpower.

The result of these changes in the nature the naval warfighting, and warfare systems, is a new appreciation for the requirements, capabilities, roles, and value of humans in Navy systems. The Director of Surface Warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) recently concluded that we must "change the way we design our ships and installed systems by institutionalizing human-centered design, human systems integration, and detailed front-end analysis of all manpower and training requirements". The CNO himself, in defining his priorities for the naval service, directed that the Navy must create a lifestyle of service that is attractive to bright, ambitious young men and women, and must enhance quality of service, which he defined as a combination of quality of life and quality of work.

According to DoD 5000.2, the Defense Acquisition System establishes a management process to translate user needs (broadly stated mission needs responding to a postulated threat and developed in the Requirements Generation System or business needs responding to new ways of doing business and developed by the appropriate staff office) and technological opportunities (developed or identified in the Science and Technology program based on user needs) into reliable and sustainable systems that provide capability to the user.

The Defense Acquisition System is a continuum composed of three activities with multiple paths into and out of each activity.

• Technologies are researched, developed, or procured in pre-system acquisition (science and technology and concept development and demonstration).
• Systems are developed, demonstrated, produced or procured, and deployed in systems acquisition. The outcome of systems acquisition is a system that represents a judicious balance of cost, schedule, and performance in response to the user's expressed need; that is interoperable with other systems (U.S., Coalition, and Allied systems, as specified in the operational requirements document); that uses proven technology, open systems design, available manufacturing capabilities or services, and smart competition; that is affordable; and that is supportable.
• Once deployed, the system is supported throughout its operational life and eventual disposal in post-systems acquisition using prudent combinations of organic and contractor service providers, in accordance with statutes.

There are four major system acquisition approaches in use today in the DoD. These include: (1) acquisition of a new system; (2) modification, modernization, and update of a legacy system; (3) accelerated acquisition from prototype to production; and (4) use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) non-developmental item (NDI). The requirements for HSI in each of the acquisition approaches are different by virtue of the quantity and availability of information, and the constraints placed on the acquisition program, and the HSI element of that program. The general HSI requirements by type of acquisition are as follows:

• acquisition of a new system - this represents the clean sheet of paper approach wherein the acquisition of the new system progresses through defined acquisition phases and milestones. The HSI requirements for this type of acquisition are as follows:
  • the identification, development, analysis, and integration of HSI requirements will proceed from a top down requirements analysis ;
  • interfaces between humans and hardware, software, information, environments, organizational elements, and other humans (human-machine interfaces) will be designed and developed through a process of human-centered design;
  • evaluation and verification of HSI design concepts and criteria will be conducted through HSI test and evaluation.
• modification, modernization, and update of a legacy system - in this acquisition approach the HSI emphasis is on evaluating the human performance, safety and health, manning, personnel management, training, habitability, and personnel survivability aspects of existing Navy systems, and modifying these systems to ensure that they conform to HSI principles and standards.
• accelerated acquisition from prototype to production - in this type of acquisition the HSI effort moves from analyzing requirements and developing human-machine interfaces for the prototype, to HSI criteria for installing and evaluating the produced system.
• use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) non-developmental item (NDI) - in this acquisition the HSI emphasis is on evaluating, and possibly modifying, commercial products acquired as non-developmental items. Each of these four types of acquisition is described in the following sections.

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