Augmentation of Remote Capabilities for Future Combat Systems

With the ever increasing demands placed on automatic test equipment for off system support in theater of operations, whether it be aviation or ground system specific, calibration can affect the readiness of these systems. It is within the framework of the Army´s aviation and missile research development and engineering center remote maintenance capabilities that many of the required calibrations on test equipment can be made remotely or the remote connection can be used to extended calibration beyond its normal intervals. The intent here is not to replace normal calibration procedures nor begin new doctrine, although it is a basis of augmentation which can be drawn from in the future design of test equipment. The AMRDEC has begun an initiative of placing conditioned based maintenance (CBM) into the army´s future combat systems, an (18+1+1) infrastructure, where there are (18 individual systems) plus the network (18+1) plus the soldier (18+1+1). In this structure of the future it is the intent to monitor and control many of these systems remotely since these systems are connected via a backbone of wireless, land based and satellite networks.