10 octobre 2018 | International, C4ISR
By: Mark Pomerleau
The Army is nearing the finalization of its first set of requirements for a vehicle-based assured position, navigation and timing solution.
The six- to seven-page capabilities requirements document is waiting signature from Army leadership, Willie Nelson, director of the assured-PNT cross-functional team, said Oct. 9 at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Nelson described this feat as a somewhat watershed moment for the Army because the service has been trying for years to compete a requirements document. Previously, the approach was trying to come up with a systems-of-systems approach for the entire Army that ended up being too big and too expensive.
Now, the approach is to break off smaller chunks to be more manageable. This includes a mounted requirement, which is completed and awaiting signature, a dismounted requirement, which is also nearly complete, as well as others.
The program managers are now using rapid equipping contracting vehicles to get after solutions in this space immediately.
Nelson also said the plan for engaging industry is to ask for specific solutions within each of the position, navigation and timing sectors as opposed to only something that addresses all the above.
“I break it down because I think everybody has an area within that. Maybe you've got a specialty area where you've got a unique or innovative capability that can help in one of these areas, we're all ears,” he said.
The Army is planning an industry day in Austin, Texas, for February or March where it plans to provide industry with technical and program or record roadmaps in the the mounted, dismounted and aerial spheres of assured-PNT realm.
31 mars 2021 | International, Aérospatial
The US Army has granted Bell and a Sikorsky-Boeing team contracts to speed up the time it ought to take to complete preliminary design reviews for major subsystems and conceptual weapon systems on their Future Long Range Assault Aircraft proposals.
17 décembre 2023 | International, Terrestre
The DIA is revamping itself as the Pentagon shifts its geographic focus away from the Greater Middle East to confront Russian and Chinese ambitions.
29 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
By: Jeff Martin The KC-135 refueling tanker and the C-130J airlifter will be the next two aircraft to be part of the Air Force's predictive maintenance program, part of the service's effort to do maintenance before airplanes break--and improve mission capable and availability rates, according to Air Mobility Command's logistics director. "The bottom line is to get to where we are scheduling all of our maintenance, rather than reacting to the maintenance,' said Brig. Gen. Steven Blaymaier, who oversees Air Mobility Command's logistics, engineering and force protection, in an interview at the 2018 Airlift Tanker Association symposium outside Dallas, Texas. “We want our units to achieve their mission-capable rates on a sustained basis.” According to the latest available data, from FY2017, the KC-135 fleet had, on average, a 74 percent mission capable rate, and the C-130J fleet had a 77 percent mission capable rate. As for the rest of the mobility fleet, by that same data, the C-5M fleet stood at 60 percent, the C-130H fleet was at 73 percent, and the C-17 fleet was at 84 percent mission capable. The concept, known as conditions based maintenance, has already been rolled out to the C-5 fleet within AMC, and the B-1 fleet in Air Force Global Strike Command. It uses algorithms based on reams of data to create models to predict when a part might break, rather than waiting for it to fail. Its a standard practice in the commercial aviation industry, and is now making its way into the Air Force. Blaymaier says the KC-135 fleet will join the program in spring of 2019, and the C-130J fleet will follow in the summer. Blaymaier also added that the other aircraft in AMC's fleet would be joining the program eventually, like the C-17 and KC-10. “They're all in work at their program offices right now,” he said. “What we learn from C-5 will be incorporated into the other aircraft.” Blaymaier also said the Air Force was modelling their effort after Delta Airlines's Tech Ops division's procedures, and that the service was at the beginning or “crawl stage” of the process. He also noted that Delta took “eight years” to get achieve the results they were looking for, and that the Air Force was working on that path. In September, Lt. Gen. Robert McMurray, commander of the Air Force Sustainment Center, told Defense News that the conditions-based maintenance program was critical to increasing the readiness of the Air Force's aircraft. "Given the aging fleet situation that we have, we probably need to be using data better to take care of it — which is a drive toward what most everyone right now is saying is the right way to manage fleet sustainment, which is through condition-based maintenance and data analytics,” he said at the time. Another benefit Blaymaier described was that the service will be able to track maintenance needs by individual aircraft, rather than by a general fleet-wide standard. That could reduce time in depots and increase mission capable rates, a top priority of senior Pentagon leaders. “As we move forward with conditions based maintenance plus (CBM+) and predictive analytics, we'll be able to know by tail number which parts are going to fail on certain aircraft," he said."It'll be much more surgical [and] operational." Blaymaier added that while the transition to conditions based maintenance might be a long journey, it would lead to huge benefits for the Air Force. “Ultimately we want to achieve those aircraft availability standards that we established for each of our fleets that are required to meet our wartime taskings,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/airlift-tanker-annual/2018/10/27/kc-135s-and-c-130js-are-the-next-aircraft-to-enter-the-air-forces-data-driven-maintenance-program