ItaliAn Agency for Ballistics

Regulations and qualification plans are strictly related, that’s the reason why we discuss them in the same article but for a better clearness we will explain them separately.

Regulations

The Weapon Systems and Ammunition management, always correlated to some hazardousness, has required  the preparation of several national and international regulations  in order to reduce the dangerous effects that an accidental event can cause. The presence of explosive components inside the munitions makes this kind of item a dangerous one while the Weapon System, altough made with mechanical components, for their nature not dangerous, just for the fact that  they interact with an ammunition, sometimes also roughly, require a particular attention during the designing phase and the following use. The regulations that in national, international and particularly in NATO scope, deal with the matter of the Safety and Suitability for Service of a weapon system and of a munition are many: they concern the safety design principles, the operational use and the technologies and the tests to assess if a system is safety and suitability for service. The matter is commonly called wih the acronym S³ that means Safety ad Suitability for Service. Moving inside the current regulations, that is steadly updated, requires time and a  familiarity with the terminology and the procedures with which most of the publications has been prepared.

In the Regulations field, the activities carried out by the Agency are the followings: 

¨ review of law and regulations connected with the Weapon System and any item containing explosive;

¨  preparation of the necessary documentation in case  a new regulation is to be proposed;

¨ verification that a system or an item is conform to the law requirements.

 

The Italian Agency for Ballistics, with its personnel that contributed to edit and to manage part of the national and NATO regulations, is able to support the customer from a technical and organizational point of view. 

Example:  “I have to design a weapon system or a munition and I want to take into account the requirements laid down in the applicable regulations or  I have to procure a weapon system or a munition and I want that it conforms to the requirements laid down in the applicable regulations or I want to exam a particular regulation and to evaluate how it influences my activities or I want to propose either an amendment to a current regulation or a completly new regulation, but I dont know the applicable regulations or I dont have the resources to identify inside the current regulations the requirements that the item has to meet”.

 

The activities carried out by the Italian Agency for Ballistics in this branch are articulated as follows:

¨  Information gathering

The Agency makes at the customer facility a point of situation on the needs and the aim of the activity. It gathers, inside the current regulations, all the relevant publications. It makes a cognitive survey in international scope to verify how and if the same needs have already been performed in relation with the applicable regulation.

¨  Regulation evaluation

In this phase all the information gathered in the previous phase are compared and  all the no conformities between the regulation requirements and the customer documentation are highlighted.

¨  Conclusions

The Agency provides the customer with a document in which all the observed no conformities are listed. They are evaluated individually and a priority code is to be assigned. Later, all the cases for which the regulation is not completely applicable are evaluated and the ways to manage the related no conformities will be indicated.

If the aim of the study is to prepare a new national or international regulation or an amendment for an existing publication, the Agency will prepare the text that will be evaluated by the working groups that generally have the task to manage the new publications or their amendments. The customer will be supported in the discussion phases and during all the activities that arise from the meetings.

 

 Qualification Plans

 

With the term Qualification Plan it is intended that set of trials, evaluations and studies necessary to verify if one, more or all the characteristics of an item are conform to the requested requirements  in order to assign at the item itself a certain qualification. Sometimes the Qualification Plans are indicated with other terms: Type Trials Plan, Omologation, etc.. Seeing deeper, it is possible to verify that among the different terms, soft nuances in meaning exist; anyhow they can be  considered as a set of experimental verifications aimed to demonstrate that the item under examination has some of the characteristics defined a priori. These verification activities are carried out generally at the end of the developmental studies and before the item fielding. Subsequently, once that the Qualification Plan has been completed, a reduced set of trials, to demonstrate that the item manufactured in a certain lot keeps on to have characteristics equal to those of the first lot already qualified, will be performed. These last trials are called acceptance tests.

 

Among all the possible Qualification Plans that one regarding the Safety and Suitability for Service  (S³) of the Weapon System and of the items containing explosive has main interest for the Italian Agency for Ballistics. The purpose of such plans is to verify that an ammunition, as example: 

¨ has all the characteristics that prevent the worker in injuring himself;

¨ also if stressed with unexpected events does not produce damage in its around;

¨ behaves as expected from an operational point of view;

¨ also if damaged can be handled safetly.

The characteristics to be verified are obviously more and for each of them experimental trials come to be planned. It should be desirable to define the Qualification Plan since the item's first design studies. In fact, the design requirements are strictly related to the desired characteristics and with the ways to verify them.

 

In the Qualification Plan branch , the activities carried out by the Agency are the followings: 

¨ definition of qualification plans for Weapon System and items containing explosive;

¨ verification that plans already defined are in line with the current laws and regulations;

¨ analysis of a qualification plan's experimental feasibility;

¨ critic examination of law and regulations relevant for the definition of qualification plans.

 

The Italian Agency for Ballistics intervenes in this sector to support the Customer's resourches from a technical and organizational point of view. In fact, to define a S³ qualification plan it is necessary to known the current  regulations and inside them to highlight the applicable requirements, gathering a set of prescriptions that are conform to the law but also close to the reality; the possibility to prescribe verifications, technically not achievable, is not so far as people could think. Indeed the matter, particularly in NATO scope, is lively and it requires a continuos updating . 

Examples:  “I want to design a Weapon System or an item containing explosive and I wish to qualify it as Safe and Suitable for Service, or I manufacture a Weapon System or an item containing explosive but in the past I did not perform a Qualification Plan, as now it is intended, or, indeed, I wish to define the supplementary trials to be carried out in order to obtain a Safety and Suitability for Service qualification, but or I do not know the applicable rules or I have not the resources to define inside the rules the trials that shall form the Qualification Plan”.

 

The activities provided by the Italian Agency for Ballistics in this branch consist in:

 

¨ Information gathering

The Agency gathers all the information relevant for the object to be qualified from the point of view of its technical and operational characteristics. It identifyes the applicable national and international literature: generally NATO Stanags and USA Mil-STDs provide reference.

¨ Analysis

The Agency evaluates the item's life cycle and performs the Threat and Risk Analysis. All expected bad events, strains and incidents are highlighted. For each treath the right technical prescription, that let the item to work in the expected way, is assigned.

¨ Qualification Plan definition

The Qualification Plan comes to be defined on the basis of  the achieved information, the Customer's requests and the current law's requirements.

¨ Related activities 

At the end of the study the Agency, if it is requested by the Customer, suggests where it is possible to carry out the experimental verifications, the required tools and the required personnel. Furthermore, if it is requested, it can assist the Customer in the preparation of the trial procedures and in the supervision of the experimental activity.

 

Regulations and NATO Safety and Suitability for Service qualification plans

AGENZIA BALISTICA ITALIANA

Via Europa 16, cap. 19020  Follo (SP) - Italy

Cod. Fiscale BRSGNN64E06H501B  P.IVA: 01405330117

Tel: +39.0187599129

E-mail: bresciani@agenziabalistica.it

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- ITalian agency for Ballistics -