The disruptive solutions process (DSP) is a form of iterative, low-cost, first-to-market development created in 2005 by fighter pilot and United States Air Force/Air National Guard Colonel Edward Vaughan. [1] It is primarily used by the Air National Guard to prevent mishaps during the combat operations process.
The typical defense industry bureaucratic approach to problem-solving involves long lead times and relative inflexibility. Long development cycles and lead times results in solutions that are no longer relevant. [2]
Recent attempts to resolve inefficiencies include overwhelming the problem with funding, resources, and manpower—for example, major weapon systems development, such as a new fighter jet or IT system. [3] Conversely, when resources are constrained, bureaucratic staff adopt continuous process improvement, similar to kaizen, total quality management, and Lean Six Sigma. This perpetuates low-value programs that should be eliminated, rather than "improved".
Because most preventable safety mishaps are caused by human factors, [4] safety should apply a disruptive, iterative approach that may not be appropriate in hardware-focused programs, such as aircraft production.
To address the cultural issues associated with mishap prevention in a large bureaucracy, the Air National Guard safety directorate used Boyd's Observe, Orient, Decide, Act Loop to assess the effectiveness of the process. This was the origin of DSP.
DSP is persistent and adaptive:
"Persistence is about refusing to give up even in the face of adversity. Adaptation is about shortening the time to success through ingenuity and flexibility. 'Adaptive persistence' entails alternating between anticipation, changing course, and sticking with it, deftly navigating that paradox with aplomb." [5]
The disruptive solutions process was first used in 2004, when a joint team led by Vaughan created Project Black Mountain. The project evolved from a combined requirement to share real-time tactical data among ground and air forces, as well as avoid mid-air collisions within the area of responsibility. The term 'disruptive' was borrowed from the marketing term disruptive technologies.
More recently, DSP has been used in the Air National Guard and the United States Air Force to field mishap prevention programs:
On September 25, 2009, Dr. John Ohab of the American Forces Press Service interviewed Vaughan about DSP. [13] [14]
Ada is a structured, statically typed, imperative, and object-oriented high-level programming language, extended from Pascal and other languages. It has built-in language support for design by contract (DbC), extremely strong typing, explicit concurrency, tasks, synchronous message passing, protected objects, and non-determinism. Ada improves code safety and maintainability by using the compiler to find errors in favor of runtime errors. Ada is an international technical standard, jointly defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). As of 2020, the standard, called Ada 2012 informally, is ISO/IEC 8652:2012.
DSP may refer to:
John Richard Boyd was a United States Air Force fighter pilot and Pentagon consultant during the second half of the 20th century. His theories have been highly influential in military, sports, business, and litigation strategies and planning.
The OODA loop is the cycle observe–orient–decide–act, developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd. Boyd applied the concept to the combat operations process, often at the operational level during military campaigns. It is now also often applied to understand commercial operations and learning processes. The approach explains how agility can overcome raw power in dealing with human opponents. It is especially applicable to cyber security and cyberwarfare.
A bird strike—sometimes called birdstrike, bird ingestion, bird hit, or bird aircraft strike hazard (BASH)—is a collision between an airborne animal and a moving vehicle, usually an aircraft. The term is also used for bird deaths resulting from collisions with structures such as power lines, towers and wind turbines.
Crew resource management or cockpit resource management (CRM) is a set of training procedures for use in environments where human error can have devastating effects. CRM is primarily used for improving aviation safety and focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership, and decision making in aircraft cockpits. Its founder is David Beaty, a former Royal Air Force and a BOAC pilot who wrote "The Human Factor in Aircraft Accidents" (1969). Despite the considerable development of electronic aids since then, many principles he developed continue to prove effective.
In military science, force multiplication or a force multiplier is a factor or a combination of factors that gives personnel or weapons the ability to accomplish greater feats than without it. The expected size increase required to have the same effectiveness without that advantage is the multiplication factor. For example, if a technology like GPS enables a force to accomplish the same results as a force five times as large without GPS, then the multiplier is five. Such estimates are used to justify the investment for force multipliers.
Pilot error generally refers to an accident in which an action or decision made by the pilot was the cause or a contributing factor that led to the accident, but also includes the pilot's failure to make a correct decision or take proper action. Errors are intentional actions that fail to achieve their intended outcomes. Chicago Convention defines accident as "An occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft [...] in which [...] a person is fatally or seriously injured [...] except when the injuries are [...] inflicted by other persons." Hence the definition of the "pilot error" does not include deliberate crash.
In aviation, a mid-air collision is an accident in which two or more aircraft come into unplanned contact during flight. Owing to the relatively high velocities involved and the likelihood of subsequent impact with the ground or sea, very severe damage or the total destruction of at least one of the aircraft usually results.
Maintenance resource management (MRM) training is an aircraft maintenance variant on crew resource management (CRM). Although the term MRM was used for several years following CRM's introduction, the first governmental guidance for standardized MRM training and its team-based safety approach, appeared when the FAA (U.S.) issued Advisory Circular 120-72, Maintenance Resource Management Training in September, 2000.
Fatigue is a major human factors issue in aviation safety. The Fatigue Avoidance Scheduling Tool (FAST) was developed by the United States Air Force in 2000–2001 to address the problem of aircrew fatigue in aircrew flight scheduling. FAST is a Windows program that allows scientists, planners and schedulers to quantify the effects of various work-rest schedules on human performance. It allows work and sleep data entry in graphic, symbolic (grid) and text formats. The graphic input-output display shows cognitive performance effectiveness as a function of time. An upper green area on the graph ends at the time for normal sleep, 90% effectiveness. The goal of the planner or scheduler is to keep performance effectiveness at or above 90% by manipulating the timing and lengths of work and rest periods. A work schedule is entered as red bands on the time line. Sleep periods are entered as blue bands across the time line, below the red bands.
Sustained wakefulness within military combat operations has long been an issue directly related to safety and its impact on those who enter battle. Fatigue remains a formidable enemy in theater operations due to its pervasive impact on cognitive effectiveness during flight. Incidents of fatigue-related errors continue to affect the stability and effectiveness of pilots engaged in 24-7 operations: approximately 20% of all Air Force/Air National Guard aviation mishaps have fatigue as either a causal or contributing factor.
The Air Force Safety Center is a Field Operating Agency with headquarters at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M.
The Wingman Project is a layperson, peer-to-peer suicide intervention program that shows U.S. military members and their families how to intervene to save a life. By promoting a Wingman Ethos, whereby military families and members take personal accountability for the well being of each other, communities can help strengthen the bonds that exist between veterans, their families, and ordinary citizens. Funded nationally in the U.S., the Wingman Project is executed state-by-state through a combined effort of chaplains, family support, safety, and other related support functions at local Air National Guard (ANG) units.
Aircraft self-separation is the capability of an aircraft maintaining acceptably safe separation from other aircraft without following instructions or guidance from a referee agent for this purpose, such as air traffic control. In its simplest forms, it can be described by the concept of see and avoid, in the case of human-piloted aircraft, or sense and avoid, in the case of non-human piloted aircraft. However, because of several factors such as weather, instrument flight rules and air traffic complexity, the self-separation capability involves other elements and aspects such as rules of the air, communication technologies and protocols, air traffic management and others.
Patterns of Conflict was a presentation by Colonel John Boyd outlining his theories on modern combat and how the key to success was to upset the enemy's "observation-orientation-decision-action time cycle or loop", or OODA loop. Patterns developed the idea of a "counter-blitz", a blitzkrieg in reverse, with numerous attacks followed by withdrawals to the rear. The aim was to confuse the enemy by presenting no apparent strategy, reveal the enemy's intentions through the strength of the response, and present a misleading picture of the defender's own actions in order to disrupt the attacker's future plan of action.
The term kill chain is a military concept which identifies the structure of an attack. It consists of:
Pilot decision making, also known as aeronautical decision making (ADM), is a process that aviators perform to effectively handle troublesome situations that are encountered. Pilot decision-making is applied in almost every stage of the flight as it considers weather, air spaces, airport conditions, ETA and so forth. During the flight, employers pressure pilots regarding time and fuel restrictions since a pilots’ performance directly affects the company’s revenue and brand image. This pressure often hinders a pilot's decision-making process leading to dangerous situations as 50% to 90% of aviation accidents are the result of pilot error.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) defines fatigue as "A physiological state of reduced mental or physical performance capability resulting from sleep loss or extended wakefulness, circadian phase, or workload." The phenomenon places great risk on the crew and passengers of an airplane because it significantly increases the chance of pilot error. Fatigue is particularly prevalent among pilots because of "unpredictable work hours, long duty periods, circadian disruption, and insufficient sleep". These factors can occur together to produce a combination of sleep deprivation, circadian rhythm effects, and 'time-on task' fatigue. Regulators attempt to mitigate fatigue by limiting the number of hours pilots are allowed to fly over varying periods of time.
Robins Air Force Base is a major United States Air Force installation located in Houston County, Georgia, United States. The base is located just east of the city of Warner Robins, 18 mi (29 km) south-southeast of Macon and approximately 100 mi (160 km) south-southeast of Atlanta, Georgia. The base is named in honor of Brig Gen Augustine Warner Robins, the Air Force's "father of logistics".