Advanced Maintenance & Troubleshooting Suite

Excite the crowd and summarize your solution in a few sentences

Advances in cyber security monitoring tools now provide access to previously unknown data to empower MX with the tools to read available aircraft systems data and report ANY failures or degradations with far greater accuracy than ever before. Using these devices and working with our Mission Defense Teams (MDTs) our mx personnel will have access to 13K% more data from our aircraft databuses. This data will show failed, failing, and crashing acft systems that could otherwise go unnoticed.

What is the Problem, Opportunity, or Unmet Need (POU)?

The introduction of these devices have yielded an increase of over 13K% in available data for troubleshooting and maintenance records. In a 5 hour flight these new cyber monitoring devices are able to glean over 5 Gb of data compared to just 400 Mb of data from our current diagnostic tool (DTADS). This data allows us to monitor system status across the airframe, complete physical/digital switch position, and all messaging traffic to including pre-errors. This suite can recreate an aircrafts configuration during any time of its previous flights to take the guess work out of if buttons were pressed or systems activated in proper order.. not to mention if a cyber attack occurred.

Who has the Problem, Opportunity, or Unmet Need?

This innovation would prove revolutionary to mx techs with additional system info for troubleshooting. This would also help aircraft production by introducing Health of Fleet metrics such as mission computer traffic crashes per hour allowing for deployment determinations to be made with more information than flying hours till next inspection. Mx schedulers would be able to schedule mx utilizing data indicative of failing components. Finally, program managers will have usable data to determine impact of newly installed mods on aircraft.

What are the users doing now? What is the status quo?

Current troubleshooting techniques are based off either aircraft or pilot reported failures. With this information maintainers follow established troubleshooting steps to determine failed components. Many of the same techniques used from decades past are still commonplace today. There has not been a device that could analyze information traffic and report failures with actionable information that was easy to use, works on a majority of aircraft systems, and has an extremely low cost.

What is the solution?

The solution is the creation and development of a maintenance troubleshooting dashboard and information database. By working in synergy with small businesses such as Shift 5 and our Mission Defense Team (MDT) brethren we can program and permanently install cyber monitoring devices on our aircraft to enhance their cyber surety as well as maximize the side effect of providing a mountain of previously unavailable and unknown MX data. After generating this data, we must make sure we harness its potential by folding it into current and next generation databases such as ENVISION to use for CBM+ (predictive algorithms based on MX history) advancements that currently only supports 5 systems. 

Why/how is the proposed solution better than the status quo?

This solution will offer more three features that will set it apart from the status quo. It will offer more accurate failure data to technicians, saving thousands of hours in downtime for troubleshooting and millions in serviceable part replacement. This suite will offer much more detailed and accurate aircraft history and reporting, ensuring that information systems can expand capabilities while providing failure predictions for enhanced maintenance scheduling. Finally, this suite will allow maintenance and operations the ability to determine an aircraft’s current health status prior to a deployment/mission or upon returning from a mod to ensure our fleet stays effective.  

Are there known risks and barriers to implementing this solution?

The devices in question have already received authority to operate on C-146, MQ-9, MC-130J, F-22, F-35, and B-52. The small business at the tip of this implementation is still expanding its airframes but the program offices are allowing connections. There are classification concerns when passing weapon systems data to cloud locations. The technology in question however collects data from the aircraft in its raw form, basically ones and zeros. This data, at rest is not classified and can be handled and uploaded as such. Once the data has been processed the classified aspects of any mission data can be pared off and the remaining faults can be compiled to create a visual dashboard for maintenance use.

What resources do you have available to you currently to solve this problem?

Since this ideas inception my team and I have been tirelessly working to bridge the gaps between the Mission Defense Team (MDT) and maintenance as well as at the directorate level with A4 and A6.

We have briefed the maintenance benefits to the AC/MC-130J program office at Wright-Patterson. Finally, we’ve shared information and capabilities not only between the 1 SOW and 27 SOW but also to the small business involved in the project. All parties involved have arduous processes in place but all individuals that begin to understand and grasp the potential all share the same enthusiasm. The cyber protection perspective of this initiative is a must solve in order to meet compliance with 2016 National Defense Act but the maintenance angle is a request that needs to be nestled at the start of this project or it will be left too far in the dust to be an effective option to add later.

What is your "Ask"?

This technology originated as a cyber solution and as such has heavy A6 involvement with output data being created and flavored for Comm troops to more easily navigate this info. My ask with this project would be to realign AFSOC priorities concerning this subject to add a maintenance need onto the development of this project. With the dedication of time and effort into the generation of appropriate MX outputs we could create a program that customizes relative information into a usable set of data dashboards reporting near real time information. This data would need to have AI created to process, USAF manning to handle, and process/computer engineering to develop.

If we created a program that brings Mission Defense Teams (MDT), specialized small businesses (Shift 5), and maintenance together to generate products that create the desired data and then stores that data for easy reference at later dates the results would be astounding.

View the video here:

https://www.dvidshub.net/video/862740/mats-spark-tank-iii

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