British Army receives HUMS from General Dynamics UK

General Dynamics UK has announced that it has delivered the first fully qualified vehicle Systems Information Exploitation / Health and Usage Monitoring System (SIE/HUMS) ‘box’ to the British Army four months following the contract signing. The company made the announcement 9 August 2012.

The SIE/HUMS system will monitor on-board systems on the British Army’s operational training fleet of vehicles and automatically download vehicle data, simplifying the job of the army’s fleet managers. It will automatically monitor each vehicle returning to base from operations and identify whether it needs any repair or service.

The data is uploaded wirelessly to the fleet manager’s system, eliminating the need to check over each vehicle individually. The data can then be used to order the right spare parts for the right vehicles at the right time.

The system will lessen the load on the logistics system and lower maintenance costs whilst improving turnaround time across the fleet, ensuring they can be back in operations as quickly as possible.

According to the company, the SIE/HUMS boxes have been manufactured and tested to ensure the integration into the 578 vehicles in the operational training fleet can begin as quickly as possible.

The SIE/HUMS system will monitor on-board systems and automatically download data from each vehicle so that operators and fleet managers have accurate information to use in optimizing vehicle use and minimising maintenance.

The visibility of vehicle-performance data will enable users to improve fleet availability thereby delivering better army vehicle fleet-management capability. The vehicles to be integrated over the next two years are Mastiff, Ridgeback, Husky, Jackal, Coyote and Wolfhound.