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Support
Equipment (SE) element is made up of all equipments
(mobile or fixed) required to support the operation and
maintenance of a system. This includes ground handling
and maintenance equipment, tools, metrology and
calibration equipment, and manual and automatic test
equipment. During the acquisition of systems, program
managers are expected to decrease the proliferation of
support equipment into the inventory by minimizing the
development of new support equipment and giving
attention to the use of existing government or
commercial equipment.
Most programs
are a mix of common and peculiar (commercial and new
design) SE. Equal emphasis must be placed on the
identification, funding, and acquisition of both. A
program office may be making a serious mistake if they
think the SE that is currently in the inventory will be
available when needed. It may take longer to get some
of the existing inventory items, than it would for new
design items provided by the contractor. The
availability of the prime system can be heavily
influenced by the SE used for fault detection/isolation
and repair. Most SE items are repairable assets as well
and, therefore, requires the timely development and
fielding of their own logistics support system. This
means that SE also needs maintenance plan, technical
orders, spares, facilities, trained manpower, support
equipment, etc. It should be obvious that if the
support equipment isn’t available because it cannot be
repaired, the availability of the prime mission item
could be affected.
Credit to Richard A. Andrews, CPL
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