Where’s The Beer? A Paradigm Shift in Flight-Line Armament Testing

Knowledge Base Article # Q200237

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Summary In the Air Force world, armament testing is done with a small, battery-operated tester called an Armament Circuits Pre-Load Test Set (ACPTS), commonly referred to as a “beercan” due to its shape and size. The typical beercan is a rudimentary test set with few capabilities and limited performance.This paper discusses the requirements of flight-line armament testers and introduces a universal beercan, the MTS-3060 SmartCan with capabilities previously unavailable for the flight-line.

Abstract


Prior to loading live weapons on an aircraft, maintainers are required to verify that no stray voltage is present and that the firing signals are functioning properly. In the Air Force world, this is done with a small, battery-operated tester called an Armament Circuits Pre-Load Test Set (ACPTS), commonly referred to as a “beercan” due to its shape and size. The typical beercan is a rudimentary test set with few capabilities and limited performance. The beercan’s function is to verify that there is no stray voltage on the critical firing lines (squibs), and to verify the presence of firing signals including magnitude and timing during a valid launch procedure. The typical beercan only has one or two measurement channels, necessitating the manual switching of various adapters to enable testing of multiple signals. The typical beercans also lack the ability to emulate weapon signals, precluding any effective “smart” weapons testing by beercans.

A new breed of beercans has been recently introduced to address this deficiency by improving the test capabilities of the beercan, thus eliminating the flight-line testers and simplifying the maintenance logistics while increasing performance and reducing test and maintenance time. This paper discusses the requirements of flight-line armament testers and introduces a universal beercan - the SmartCan which offers capabilities previously unavailable for the flight-line.

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Article Date 12/12/2012
Keywords beercan, smartcan, MTS-3060, AME, armament, squib

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