{"id":1650,"date":"2025-06-08T07:22:57","date_gmt":"2025-06-08T05:22:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=1650"},"modified":"2025-06-08T10:42:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-08T08:42:40","slug":"is-bad-data-to-blame-for-missing-weapons-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/?p=1650","title":{"rendered":"Is bad data to blame for missing weapons parts?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Lauren C. Williams<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Virtually all of the Army\u2019s weapons are affected by delayed or back-ordered parts\u2014and mismatched computer systems are largely to blame. And it\u2019s only been a month since a new digital tool has started to replicate that.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur supply chain is huge. The Army doesn’t buy all of its own parts. In fact, 90 percent of our parts\u2014mostly low-dollar, high-volume expendables, things that go pretty quick, consumable-type stuff\u2014we actually rely on the Defense Logistics Agency to buy them,\u201d Richard Martin, Army Materiel Command\u2019s director for supply chain management, told reporters on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing a Black Hawk helicopter as an example, the Army has the lion’s share. The Navy also flies a similar aircraft. The Air Force flies a similar aircraft. The Department of Energy, the Department of Justice, they all have similar-type aircraft,\u201d Martin said, at a media\u00a0event<\/a>\u00a0following the Association of the U.S. Army\u2019s industrial-base readiness event on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

But each of those entities has their own business systems. And just over a year ago, the Army realized that DLA\u2019s systems weren\u2019t showing data from the service\u2019s maintenance and supply systems\u2014and what they did get was unreadable.<\/p>\n

Over the last year, the service developed a tool\u2014Army Materiel Command Predictive Analysis Suite, or APAS\u2014that allows them to share information back and forth with DLA. They started using it in December.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s still some bugs in it, if you will. But it’s definitely allowing them to see\u2026the depth [of detail] that we’re trying to get to and lets DLA make that procurement decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt lets DLA recognize what we are ultimately consuming,\u201d he said. Before the systems were properly connected, the Army would need 20 of a particular part for a weapon every month, for example, but DLA would receive that data as needing 20 every few months. This created a backlog.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would see, \u2018hey, I need 100 [of this part]\u2019 and the reality was I not only needed 100 immediately, because there are weapon systems down for that part, I actually needed another 200 to replenish my stocks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

APAS also lets the Army see DLA\u2019s lead times for part delivery and how much the agency is buying, enabling the service to manage the parts needed to make weapons operational and replenish stockpiles.<\/p>\n

The Defense Logistics Agency handles about 5 million\u00a0national stock numbers<\/a>\u2014that is, individual parts\u2014across the military services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve started with DLA and the Army because we found that all the services we’re doing forecasting separately and differently and managing their systems differently, and we needed to have a way to share the data so we could see what they were consuming and have predictive analytics we could look at where we need to have parts bought ahead of need,\u201d\u00a0Kristin French<\/a>, DLA\u2019s deputy director for logistics operations, told reporters on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

This accountability is crucial for industry to have enough time to configure and startup manufacturing lines, French said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt takes them, sometimes a year, 18 months\u2014in munitions, two years or more\u2014to get parts or items,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The DLA and the Army started a data-sharing working group, and now uses a system with API interfaces that allows the two organizations to see supply needs and availability.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to do it through protocols, because the systems are different, but we do it through API Interfaces where we can talk to each other and see what they’re consuming so we can predict what we will need to procure the future requirements,\u201d French said.<\/p>\n

Sharing data is one of the biggest challenges in sustainment and logistics, said\u00a0Steven Morani<\/a>, the acting secretary of defense for sustainment. The Pentagon has been using its main data analytics platform, ADVANA, for logistics data from across the services.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that actually accelerated our ability to get the weapons systems performance data into a shared environment. And it allowed us to make progress on an area that we had been quite honestly struggling to get agreements on, and that was performance metrics,\u201d which details the health and status of various platforms, Morani told reporters during a Defense Writers Group event on Friday.<\/p>\n

Today, all services are putting in that\u00a0data<\/a>\u00a0in the same way thanks to guidance issued last year. \u201cWe\u2019re using that data to see ourselves better,\u201d Morani said. In 2025, the Pentagon plans to add supply data metrics in hopes that it will \u201cmove us from this pool system, where the units are having to send that demand signal, for us to see the demand signal through data, understand consumption rates, and now push materiel there before you know a unit runs out. And that’s really the goal of what we’re trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Lauren C. Williams Virtually all of the Army\u2019s weapons are affected by delayed or back-ordered parts\u2014and mismatched computer systems are largely to blame. And it\u2019s only been a month […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,37],"tags":[338,339],"class_list":["post-1650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-military-tech","category-opinions","tag-data","tag-weapons-parts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/MISSING-WEAPONS-PARTS.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1650"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1726,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1650\/revisions\/1726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}