Empowering Agile Warfighters into Future Combat Environments
Modern warfare is leveraging the latest, most effective technology like cyber attack, artificial intelligence, digital communications, and Smart weapons. Battles will be decided by important factors like the speed and accuracy of decisions and the ability to respond to threats as well as second order effects like speed of acquisition or upgrades. The US Military Services are now trying to acquire 21st century systems to sustain our national security for decades to come, and rethinking operational concepts to better achieve their objectives.
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Optimizing Support for the 21st Century
Major weapons systems, airplanes, ships, or tanks typically require a large amount of ground support equipment to sustain and repair in order to keep them at the required levels of mission readiness. While some of the support equipment is common, e.g., hand tools, vehicles and facilities, many are highly specialized. As weapons systems advance and become more complex, so must the required support equipment items such as test sets and calibration capabilities.
Training for Combat Operation
Currently, the U.S. Air Force prepares for combat utilizing different training scenarios. Many of the daily activities conducted on flightlines around the world are focused on pilot certification and upgrade training. Maintenance personnel have the challenging task of inspecting, servicing, and repairing most of the assigned aircraft many times a day to maximize the number of training sorties. Daily schedules may be comprised of a mix of fully mission capable (FMC) and partially mission capable (PMC) aircraft. This daily training environment won’t suffice during combat operation, where every aircraft needs to be in peak condition or risk mission failure.
Mitigating Risks to Readiness
The extensive amount of time and effort it takes to activate a unit for combat operations must be optimized to eliminate redundant activities and processes - for example, conducting electrical tests on the aircraft designated for the mission home station, only to repeat the process once deployed. The additional time spent retesting would most certainly be a limiting factor during a near-peer conflict.
Another factor that negatively affects the overall outcome of time-sensitive deployments is the quantity and size of the required support equipment. Test equipment can be one of the worst offenders, requiring some units to pack thousands of pounds of unique, single-system test sets. The result is a maintenance support equipment model which is not agile, and cannot handle a true time-critical mission demanded in a near-peer conflict.
 | Enabling ACE with SmartCan™
Agile Combat Employment (ACE) is a USAF operational concept that enhances warfighters’ resiliency and survivability through the use of a streamlined and reduced logistics footprint to support small, lethal, and survivable force packages via highly-maneuverable deployments. ACE demands multi-capable support equipment and Airmen who can perform tasks across a number of systems supporting aircraft as opposed to the traditional, single-focused Airmen. ACE provides faster response to threats, reduced vulnerability to attack, and the ability to operate from austere locations for extended periods supporting combatant commanders.
Currently deployed O-Level armament test equipment is unable to test multiple aircraft with a single system — handheld or otherwise — limiting the successful execution of the ACE CONOPS. Marvin Test Solutions’ MTS-3060A SmartCan Universal O-Level Armament Test Set is fully capable of replacing EVERY operational-level armament test set in use today across any Service. In fact, some customers are currently able to consolidate and replace their fleet of armament test sets across several aircraft with a single SmartCan configured to support their armament. To date, MTS has delivered SmartCans configured to support up to 4 separate aircraft to customers and many more could be added if desired. |
The SmartCan is a single handheld test set that utilizes active testing to ensure aircraft are fully functional by activating every part of the armament system with munitions emulation and monitoring, resulting in test times are similar to what it takes an operator to load and employ the munition.
Also, while all of these functions (launch functions, continuity, and stray voltage) are simultaneously being performed, the test set is recording the test results, enabling trend analysis and a predictive repair cycle vs. traditional reactive maintenance and supply predictions.
Finally, with the SmartCan, Maintenance Repair Teams (MRT) or forward-deployed crews could support multiple missions simultaneously in multiple locations -- a real-world solution that supports the principles of ACE today.
In the future, outcomes of near-peer conflict will come down to speed and precision within every aspect of the mission. The ACE concept preparation should include a hard look at the support equipment maintenance organizations are expected to use to generate combat sorties. Empower today’s maintainers to execute 21st century combat missions before the enemy does!
Resources to Explore
The SmartCan is part of Marvin Test Solutions’ comprehensive suite of armament and munitions test sets. Visit our website to learn more about why the SmartCan is the current choice of multiple air forces and supporting their fleets worldwide. Additionally, you will find links to our armament maintainer Blog.
Finally, while there you can explore our KnowledgeBase for informative white papers and articles on the subject of armament test, including:
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