Just more fuel for the fire Tarver, and backs up my firm belief that
all engineers should be locked up in rubber rooms at night. Or, better
yet, they should be made to go out to the front lines, or do a cruise
with a system of COTS and no support. Been there, done that. It sucks.
And I stand by my statements of excessive TAT's. Sure, when the stuff
is new, it meets MTBF, but after a coupla cruises and 100's of cat
shots/traps/salt water, it fails to meet MTBF. Then who's gonna buy
the spares while the gear is waiting on a shelf for a contract to fix
it? Been there, Tarver, COTS sucks from a frontline maintenance
manager standpoint. I'd rather have my Navy techs fixing the stuff
(with proper training and SE) onboard in IM3 or at the shore AIMD with
a short TAT than have something go to the states for months to get
fixed. Plus, COTS traditionally has a high false failure removal rate,
(due to inadequate 'O' Level training from the contractor that the
Navy rarely buys), so more gear is needlessly sitting on a shelf at
the depot or contractor facility waiting for money to pay some crab to
run it up on a bench and find out it really ain't broke. You have no
idea about the logisitics, support, and lack of training problems
that COTS involves. I'll give you this, the Program Managers are
turning our 'O' Level AT's into truly nothing more than "box
swappers". It's very degrading. Our AT's are smarter than that, and
their motivation for learning and maintaining a high tech COTS system
is unmatched. There are numerous current COTS systems getting ready to
go to OT in the program I am with that will be nothing but headaches
for us maintenance guys. My job is to act as a Fleet rep to try and
knock some sense into the engineer guys, and put some semblance of
maintainability into these systems. Talk to the Fleet people (you're
hearing from one now) about COTS Tarver. OBTW, we aren't talking about
testing solid fuels for an air force missle, the thread here is about
Navy Super Hornets. We have a difference of opinion on COTS, and I'm
thinking it comes from where you work and your background. Lets just
leave it at that.

On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 13:56:32 -0800, "Tarver Engineering"
wrote:


"fudog50" wrote in message
.. .
Tarver,
Nice of you to speak for the entire Navy,

Guys on boats like the F-18Es reliability.

but you must be only
speaking of the Contractors, PMA guys and bean counters that can't
see the forest through the trees. COTS is good if you have the sparing
and support, (rare).

LOL

OK

COTS allows engineers to buy parts, as opposed to designing to now expired
component Mil-specs. The first real benifit of COTS was seen in Desert
Storm, where the USAF had greatly improved missiles. Allowing engineers to
buy parts to test solid fuels created technology during the 1980s and the in
service reliabity data tied to Mil-Hbk 217F. Once an engineer adopts the
way of thinking that some parts/lines* count is directly tied to reliabilty,
(statistical) then they will "design for reliability by using less
lines/parts.

* software code.