Aircraft Maintenance Technology

MAY 2014

The aircraft maintenance professional's source for technological advancements, maintenance alerts, news, articles, events, and careers

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M I L I TA R Y 28 May 2014 AIRCRAFT MAINTENANCE TECHNOLOGY O nce upon a time in a far- off land where two mighty nations sat on either side of a frozen wilderness, each wait- ing for the other to attack first and obliterate them … all the money and resources that were needed to supply the military with anything it required to alle- viate that threat were provided. Today, however, the support for these bastions of peace and security are further down the pecking order when it comes to finances. This, drop in fiscal priority associated with other world and economic changes, has meant that the supply of parts neces- sary to maintain some of the quality kits that may be a few years old has dried up. Sadly the drive away from "MIL Spec" and toward the suicidal COTS (com- ponents off the shelf) has exacerbated a major problem. The electronic parts for today's military equipment are pur- chased from the manufacturers who design and manufacture the parts for a fast-moving and high-volume consumer- led industry. These parts are being used by all designers, including the military, apparently unaware that the electronics the device was designed for will only be on sale for a year, before it is replaced with the smaller, faster noncompatible technology. At this point there will only be residual stocks left and no more will be manufactured. The slow-moving, lower volume, and long life purchases have left the military and similar markets high and dry on many occasions. There was a belief that by using COTS any changes in specifi- cation could have been "got around" by changing the software to fix the differ- ences in result. As anyone who has been monitoring health care reform would see, the idea of fast software changes making things work better is an expensive fallacy; and sadly that follows down the line into all systems big and small. So many sys- tems now are software driven and very sensitive to changes in the electronics and how it performs. Proactive and reactive camps The fixes for these issues fall into two ver y distinct and opposing places. Firstly, there is the camp that believes in proactivity, i.e. monitoring every key component in the system by use of soft- ware geared especially for keeping track of the manufacturing cycle of the parts, and then getting early warnings for any forecast obsolescence. This is great in theory, and fails when the reason for lack of supply was not forecast. An example of this is when the sup- ply chain stops as a result of a factory in the Far East suffering from a tsunami or other major catastrophe. Two other rea- sons for failure would be people — and their inability to see how critical to sur- vival of the equipment, an item is going to become. The other failing is when not many parts were purchased and so the Alladin Conquers Star Wars New components for old — will keep the high tech fying, sailing and spying By David Purdie Retired military aircraft mothballed in the Arizona desert. TIM ROBERTS PHOTOGRAPHY, BIGSTOCK.COM AMT_28-29_MilitaryAlladin.indd 28 4/17/14 4:13 PM

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