Solving the U S. Air Force’s ATS proliferation problem — the VDATS solution

Abstract

The Versatile Automated Depot Test Station (VDATS) is a major component in solving the U.S. Air Forcepsilas Automatic Test System (ATS) proliferation concerns. VDATS addresses the proliferation issue by providing the capability to replace an estimated 260 depot-level test systems that assume 150 different configurations, as well as a large number of intermediate-level test systems.The Department of Defense (DoD) has invested billions of dollars in aging and increasingly obsolete ATS used to troubleshoot and diagnose components of military aircraft and weapon systems. The issues of increased downtimes, test system obsolescence, and nonportable Test Program Sets (TPS) further contributes to the DoD's continued reporting of spare parts shortages and the increasing impacts that ATS obsolescence has on the readiness of military aircraft and weapon systems. The VDATS provides a viable approach to resolving these issues. VDATS has an extensible designed-in expansion capability intended to support present and future Air Force workloads by providing an organically-developed ATS platform with a modular, open-systems architecture that is Flexible, Capable, Tailorable, and Sustainable. VDATS makes it technically feasible to now realize the laudable 1994 DoD policy goal stated in: Military Readiness: DoD Needs to Better Manage Automatic Test Equipment Modernization," GAO-03-451, March 2003.[1] VDATS meets this stated DoD policy goal of producing an ATS capable of supporting multiple weapon systems, aircraft, and eventually being interoperable between DoD services. In 2007 the Air Force's VDATS was officially designated as a DoD Standard Family of Testers, supporting the 2005 ATS Master Plan requirement meant to reduce ATS proliferation and life-cycle operations and support costs. This paper briefly examines the present-day issues and how the U.S. Air Force is resolving these with the VDATS program. It also explains the strategy to preserve present-day and near-future TPS re- host investments, while enhancing system capabilities to meet the Air Force's depot and intermediate-level ATS requirements for the foreseeable future.