General Dynamics UK has been awarded a £4 million contract by the Ministry of Defence to deliver the British Army’s first Systems Information Exploitation / Health and Usage Monitoring System (SIE/HUMS). General Dynamics UK will integrate the SIE/HUMS solution into 578 vehicles covering six protected patrol vehicle (PPV) variants in the operational training fleet with the aim of improving the availability and utilisation of those vehicles. The vehicles to be integrated are Mastiff, Ridgeback, Husky, Jackal, Coyote and Wolfhound, all of which General Dynamics UK is familiar with through its Bowman integration activity.
General Dynamics UK won the competition to provide SIE/HUMS based on the cost-effectiveness of its solution, taking advantage of General Dynamics UK’s excellent track record in delivering UOR programmes on time and on budget, along with the pedigree of integrating over 15,000 vehicles from the British Army’s fleet.
General Dynamics UK’s SIE/HUMS solution will provide monitor on-board systems and automatically download data from each vehicle so that operators and fleet managers have accurate information to use in optimizing vehicle use and minimising maintenance. The visibility of vehicleperformance data will enable users to improve fleet availability thereby delivering better Army vehicle fleet-management capability.
The data collected and analysed by the SIE/HUMS will range from engine management-system data such as oil and water temperature, speed, distance travelled, and performance, to information about shocks and vibration, excessive vehicle speed or high fuel consumption. Once such data is collected, statistical time-based analysis can help users identify potential problems. This data also will enable conditioned-based maintenance where lightly used vehicles receive less work, thereby saving the costs of unnecessary maintenance. As more data is collected, prognostics also will enable better preventative maintenance practices, reducing costs and increasing fleet availability.
A key attribute of the General Dynamics UK solution is its ability to be modified through software configuration to record data as required, enabling specific items to be focused upon. In addition, it has been designed to be Generic Vehicle Architecture (GVA) compliant, enabling it to plug-and-play with other GVA-compliant devices to increase onboard capabilities, up to and including the type of complex electronic architecture used on SV. General Dynamics UK has played a central role in the team contributing to the MoD’s future Generic Vehicle Architecture DefStan 23-09 and has patented its electronic architecture solution.
Source : General Dynamics Corporation