In my previous post I had remarked that innovation is half the story; proving an innovative concept is the other half.
The Aerospace and Defence (A&D) sector needs products that are well designed, efficient, cost-effective, long lasting, upgradeable, easy to operate while, at the same time, be cheap and easy to maintain. The specs are quite exhaustive and the product, very challenging to design and produce. Unlike a missile, an aircraft, a tank and, to a lesser extent, a battleship needs to be developed with user interfaces that allow the man-machine combination to become potent and lethal.
And so there are two elements that go to make up a successful weapon - the basic product design itself and the systems' man-machine interface. While the former is mostly about design philosophy and sophisticated trade- offs between conflicting requirements, the latter is a lot more 'iffy' and deals with subjective issues like look, feel, comfort, workload management, intuitive interfaces etc... Put differently, the former is the Science and the latter, the Art of weapon system Design and Development (D&D). These subjective parameters are what make a good design, great. They bestow the elusive 'X' factor to a particular weapon system. Favourite weapon systems operated by the Army, Navy and the Air Force, have all possessed this 'X' factor. Not surprisingly, the Science of weapon D&D is relatively easier to master than the Art.
As discussed in my previous post, our A&D weapon system design and development eco-system is quite adequately staffed for the Science part of the task but not, I might add, for the Art part of the job. Mostly, test crew and representatives of user Services (Army, Navy or Air Force) attached to the D&D establishments ensure that the quantitative, qualitative and subjective requirements of A&D weapon systems are met. For this to happen consistently and get institutionalized, a major attitudinal shift needs to occur - surprisingly, in the user services themselves.
We know that the product development lifecycle of A&D weapon systems is rather long drawn out. Ensuring that user requirements do not change after project kicks off (or, if they do, the modified specs are taken on board only during development of a succeeding variant of the same weapon system) calls for a high degree of discipline from all concerned - the user, the development team and the manufacturer - if project timelines are to be maintained. This suggests that the D&D team should be capable of standing up to programme pressures brought upon it by higher formations like Service headquarters. This further suggests that the test crew and user reps (the 'artist' team!) be experienced, be relatively senior and be assigned to a project till its completion. This never happens. The user service neither 'invests' in its own long term good by toning down its 'change' wish list after project has kicked off, nor is it able to assign an unchanged test crew and user rep team (who also provide crucial user interface inputs to the D&D team during the prototype build process) right through till the user trials phase is completed. The net effect of this unfortunate myopia results in the A&D weapon system D&D team being asked to play on a playing field in which the goal posts are constantly shifting and the players themselves being changed with alarming regularity!
Change and continuity is the need of the hour. Change in the attitude of user services and continuity in the test and user rep teams associated with A&D weapon systems' design and development. If we are unable to bring about this change our A&D innovation value chain will continue to churn out weapon systems that shall have a great future behind them!
The NICE (National Innovation Centre of Excellence) suggested in the previous post, needs to be seen in this context. It will provide the missing link in the (broken) innovation value chain for our A&D weapon systems' D&D. By virtue of its independent command and control structure it will be freed of the well meaning but self defeating influence of the user community. NICE has the potential to provide the A&D weapon systems' D&D team with a level playing field - a field with fixed goal posts and players who are enabled to work their magic, till their job is complete.
Jai Hind!
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