Enabling net-centric diagnostics in the F/A-18 automated maintenance environment

For the past eight years, the AN/USM-681 Electro-Optics Pallet/Pod Tester (EOPT) system has been the main on-aircraft support equipment (SE) item used to test and troubleshoot the AN/ASD-10 Advanced Tactical Aerial Reconnaissance System (ATARS), the AN/ASD-12 Shared Reconnaissance Pod (SHARP), and the AN/ASQ-228 Advanced Targeting Forward Looking Infrared (ATFLIR) Pod. Parts obsolescence issues have caused significant increases in the cost and time to repair and/or procure an EOPT. Developing a replacement for the EOPT was an opportunity to reduce maintenance costs and implement net-centric diagnostics within the F/A-18 automated maintenance environment (AME). This paper describes the first year of a two-year Technology Transition Initiative (TTI) in which the tester hardware was redesigned to mitigate obsolescence by leveraging Local Area Network eXtensions for Instrumentation (LXI) technology, and a net-centric diagnostics framework (NCDF) was designed to enable the bi-directional exchange of test data and maintenance data for smarter testing in both the on-aircraft and off-aircraft maintenance environments, leveraging existing technologies, such as Smart TPS.