Family of Systems Connects Replacement and Spare Parts to Airframes Published April 19, 2022 By Jeff Haney Business and Enterprise Systems Directorate Are you curious about how the Air Force plans for, and projects, its needs for spare and replacement parts for airframes and munitions? The Requirements Management System (RMS) is part of the story. RMS is a family of four systems; two IBM mainframe systems, and two U.S. Air Force Cloud One Amazon Web Services (AWS) GovCloud hosted. It supports 1,156 users including maintainers, logistics specialists, and planners, and has 344 data interfaces with other systems. RMS D200 supports the warfighter by computing procurement requirements for spare and replacement parts and material. It also provides calculations and information to determine depot level maintenance repair needs for the Air Force weapon systems. The warfighter aircraft maintainers benefit by having the correct mix of spare parts available to satisfy planned weapon system availability. A second system, D040 War Reserve Material Lists Requirements & Spares Support Lists (RSSL) provides major commands with management tools and calculations to project materiel needs in support of base activations and mission deployments. Such activities include war reserve material planning to support forces, missions, and activations cited in U.S. Air Force war plans. Maintainers at the Air Logistics Complexes (ALCs) rely upon RSSL processes and reports to maintain a stock of replacement and repairable parts and material. “Without the RSSL system, Air Force war requirements for Consumable Readiness Spares Package (CRSP) for Air Force managed and DLA managed consumables would not be reported, or communicated, by the RSSL system to other Air Force systems and DLA. This can result in aircraft being grounded due to the lack of CRSPs,” said Brent Maxwell, the Functional Manager for RSSL.” D072 Other War Reserve Materiel Requirements (OWRMR) is an AWS Cloud One hosted system which provides the formal capability to forecast Air Force (AF) wartime requirements Budget Code (BC) nine items. These represent items used by the Air Force but managed by other DoD services/agencies such as the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), Government Services Agency (GSA), Army, Navy and Marine Corps. “Without the OWRMR system, no formal capability would exist to forecast Air Force wartime requirements to DLA, GSA, and the other services to support the needs of the Air Force,” said Maxwell. “DLA, GSA, Army, Navy and Marine Corps would not receive computations for BC nine consumable items. The Air Force will not have a creditable budget projection and will have no way to determine what items to repair or replace, reducing the ability to support the warfighter due to lack of the right spares at the right places.” The OWRMR system reporting capability is being redefined, and business rules edited, to utilize the Air Force’s Basing and Logistics Analytics Data Environment (BLADE). BLADE is a new data lake environment which will deliver innovate decision support throughout the AF enterprise. BLADE ensures data is visible, accessible, understood, linked, trusted, interoperable, and secure. The Data within BLADE will then be identified, pulled, and collated to reproduce the reporting requirement of the OWRMR system. The Data and Analytics as a Service (DAaaS) Environment, and tools, within BLADE will allow the AF to divest itself of the legacy OWRMR system. The divestment of OWRMR will allow the AF to redirect valuable staff and resources to other assets supporting the Warfighter. Lastly, the D040 Weapon System Support Program (WSSP) is an AWS Cloud One hosted system which provides capability to send & receive Air Force WSSP data necessary to assist DLA in making stock-related decisions on consumable parts requirements. WSSP data also assists AF personnel in making stock retention decisions. “D040 is a web-based tool used by Air Force personnel to manage 1.8M+ WSSP records (consumable DLA managed national stock numbers) loaded against 400+ Air Force Weapon System Designator Codes (WSDCs),” said James Whittaker, WSSP Functional Manager. “It allows users to transmit load, change, and delete transactions to DLA; and receive feedback. Transactions can be processed on an individual, or mass load basis. Each WSSP record links an NSN to the weapon system it supports. It also designates the impact non-availability of an item will have on a weapon system’s ability to perform its mission. WSSP uses a mix of automated and manual processes; there is no single manual process to manage this amount of data. The WSSP/D040 program has been elevated as a key enabler to the Nuclear Enterprise effort across the Air Force enterprise, including Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), and the Air Force Nuclear Weapon Center (AFNWC). The Nuclear Enterprise initiative by Headquarters Air Force (HAF) supports the WSSP program.” The organizations using the WSSP system are the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex (OC-ALC), Oklahoma (OK), Ogden Air Logistics Complex (OO-ALC), Utah (UT), and Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex (WR-ALC), Georgia (GA). Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command A4 (AFMC/A4/10/A4RM) at Wright-Patterson AFB Ohio (OH), manages the system. All four systems of the RMS family are currently undergoing major system and database software upgrades to maintain system operability in support of the Warfighter. These multi-month upgrades are necessary to eliminate end-of-life software, stay ahead of security vulnerabilities, automate system processes, and complete code quality improvements which are expected to reduce hands-on software developer resources. In 2022, upgrades are currently scheduled for April, May, and July – all before the end of the current contract. RMS evolved from the Requirements Data Bank (RDB) when RDB split into RMS and Logistics Management Data Bank (LMDB). For a while, both systems operated under one Program Office and one contract. Recently, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) assigned RMS and LMDB to individual Capability Delivery Teams (CDTs). In 2022, RMS and LMDB will have independent continuous capability delivery contracts which will allow them to implement agile development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) with continuous integration and continuous deployment of customer capabilities. The individual contract for RMS has afforded the CDT an opportunity to make significant strides in their journey to transition from a Waterfall software delivery model to one of Agile software delivery. The Air Force assesses Agile maturity annually for each CDT in phases named Crawl-Walk-Run-Fly. The RMS CDT leveraged the Agile contract transition as motivation to complete recommended Agile training, identify their Agile strategy, and construct a future contract performance work statement (PWS). After completing these items in 2021, the CDT successfully migrated from Crawl to Walk for their mainframe systems; and from Crawl to Run for their Cloud One hosted systems. The new contract and PWS will complete the Agile journey to Fly and support the successful operation, innovation, and integration of the RMS systems with its warfighter users, and Business and Enterprise Systems (BES) service provider teammates to leverage modern computing and software development concepts such as: Agile: A responsive and ever-improving delivery model emphasizing warfighter collaboration to deliver shorter timeframe production releases to support business needs Development Security Operations: A pipeline with security scanning, automated infrastructure provisioning and patching, and monitoring Continuous Integration/Continuous delivery: A pipeline with the ability to deploy from development through production in a fully automated fashion in short timeframes, integrating multiple active development and test baselines Open Source: Utilizing open source software thereby, reducing the total cost of ownership by using industry leading spring and apache products which enhances both stability while minimizing learning curves for new developers Enterprise Connectivity: Providing military network interoperability to sustain the 344 data exchange connections with other systems across a wide array of protocols minimizing external system integration efforts Automated Testing: Implementing a framework to enable automated system surveillance, software development testing, software deployment, and elastic system scaling The RMS CDT is thankful for the support they have received from historical Warfighting Users, Functional Managers, contractor industry partnerships, and BES leadership which has enabled the legacy family of systems to continue to meet, and delight, the needs of the warfighter for many years. The CDT looks forward to improved agility and flexibility from a new software capability delivery culture focused on the use of modern software lifecycle concepts and tools, when placed in the hands of a high-performing contractor development team and functional subject matter experts, will overhaul how the CDT operates. The RMS family of systems is in the operational sustainment life-cycle phase. The CDT functions under the AFLCMC Supply Chain Requirements (SCR) Product Line. SCR falls under the AFLCMC Enterprise Logistics Readiness Section (HIS). In turn, HIS is under AFLCMC Enterprise Logistics Systems Division (HI4). HI4 operates under the AFLCMC Business and Enterprise Systems Program Executive Office (BES PEO).