The goal of the 12-month project is to get repairable military equipment back into battle as soon as possible and at a lower cost.
"It's a technical demonstration to improve the maintenance and readiness of a very important aircraft, the F/A-18 Navy fighter jet," said Kenneth Gabriel, senior research scholar at the University of Maryland Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise.
Gabriel is the engineer and policy expert serving as principal investigator on the project.
The developers will integrate several technologies to demonstrate that the aircraft can be maintained more efficiently by using wireless communications; predictive algorithms, or prognostics; and automatic identification technologies such as radio frequency tags, smart cards and biometric systems. The technologies would be linked to the transportation, distribution and acquisition of parts needed to repair equipment or enable a mission to proceed, Gabriel said.
"It's an IT network that uses technology in [those] three areas," Gabriel said. Integrating these pieces through a secure Web portal "will enable the Navy to do the mission better" by making an aircraft available at a lower cost, he said.
Pulling all these technologies together in a military context can add efficiency, flexibility and maneuverability to U.S. forces, said Jacques Gansler, director of the university's Center for Policy and Private Enterprise. Gansler was undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics in the Clinton administration. Unique Prognostics Use
A unique element in the proposed system's technological chain is the use of prognostics -- the warning systems built into the F/A-18s and other advanced military hardware that can detect unusual mechanical performance and analyze a likely cause, Gabriel said.
"The goal is to develop sensors within the platform -- in this case, the F/A-18 aircraft -- to detect failures and to broadcast the failures to the maintenance crew before the aircraft lands" on an aircraft carrier, he said.
That gives the carrier's crew "enough time to understand where that landing aircraft ought to be located on the shipboard, or to be prepared for what is needed to repair the aircraft very quickly, if that's possible, so they'll have better management of the fleet activities," Gabriel said.
If the project is successful, the U.S. Navy could use the system to improve logistics support for its entire fleet, according to Gabriel. He estimated that the effort could save the military tens of millions of dollars.
"If we get smarter about what we put into the supply chain, we can help transform the way military units operate," says William Lucyshyn, co-investigator on the project and director of research at the Center for Public Policy and Private Enterprise.
"With the F/A-18s, the goal is to reduce the downtime and maximize the fighting force -- while still reducing the support costs," Lucyshyn said. "This can make a significant difference in military effectiveness."