It is Not Just Hardware and Software, Anymore! Human Systems Integration in US Submarines

Abstract

Until recently, the Navy's approach to designing, engineering, and acquiring complex weapon systems did not routinely or completely include the human “warrior” as an integral part of the system. Rather, the Navy viewed systems as combinations of hardware and software. The results were often less-than-optimal capability and high life-cycle cost—and, sometimes, even mission failure. Given the high rate of technological change and the need to rein in cost in the face of increasingly constrained budgets, the Navy and the other services have increasingly embraced the need to consider human-performance capabilities and limitations up front and on an equal footing with hardware and software—as integral elements in both new-acquisition and technology-refresh programs. The US Submarine Force has championed human systems integration (HSI). HSI is a specialized engineering discipline that takes human limitations and capabilities fully into account to influence system design and engineering early in the research, development, and acquisition process, thereby helping to ensure the highest overall performance at the lowest total ownership cost. Implementation of HSI has involved new partnerships with unlikely partners such as the audio equipment company Bose, game-makers, the visual-reality industry, physiologists, and psychologists. Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the Virginia (SSN-774)-Class Nuclear Attack Submarine Program.