The Global Reach Combined Test Force Enterprise Test Data Management System (ETDMS)

Abstract

The Global Reach Combined Test Forces (CTF), as part of the Air Force Flight Test Center (AFFTC) at Edwards AFB CA, is the AFFTC focal point for airlifter, tanker and special operations flight testing. The Global Reach CTF is putting tools in place and creating an architecture to better archive and retrieve flight test information for use by both today’s and tomorrows weapons development engineers and project managers. Today’s flight test teams generate huge amounts of data. A typical airlifter test flight will generate 20 gigabytes of data on average. In addition to the actual flight test data, there are associated test and safety planning documents, flight test cards, video, photographs, instrumentation calibration data, data analysis documentation, and both preliminary and final flight test reports. In the rush to quickly field capability to our warfighters, we sometimes are not good custodians of the information generated by our programs for use by future programs. Once we have completed our immediate tasks, we tend to quickly move onto the next hot project with little thought of reuse of our hard won knowledge. We have data located in many places using all sorts of media; hard copies, digital files on servers; flight test data on tapes, cassettes, or hard drives. In some instances, as with many aircraft test data, tapes are stored in such a manner that retrieval of a particular time slice of data is impossible. In other instances, files might be saved with no metadata, making future retrieval difficult. We have data stored behind our firewalls, behind other people’s firewalls, in limited access databases, and in unstructured server dumps. All of these conspire to make rapid access to information difficult, if not impossible. Our Integrated Test Team members are spending too much time searching for information needed for them to carry out their tasks. We need more rapid access to past and current test plans, safety plans, test cards, technical reports, program information, flight test data, instrumentation calibrations, and instrumentation history. In collaboration with the 412 Test Wing Range Division and a company called EMC2 of Irvine CA, we have developed a concept that we hope will help solve these issues. The Enterprise Test Data Management System (ETDMS) is a concept to use Microsoft’s Share point tool to organize and gain rapid access to data stored in many locations in various formats. This effort deploys commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology coupled with Government-off-the-shelf (GOTS) toolsets to support CTF airlift and tanker developmental test and evaluation (DT&E) activities at the AFFTC. This effort is hoped to concurrently build the test data management infrastructure for future programs. The results of this project reduces unanticipated risks in acquisition programs by ensuring the availability of historical test data to provide a documented baseline of effectiveness and suitability of data determined during Developmental Test & Evaluation (DT&E). The availability of this data is critical to enabling quick decisions on changes to system employments, additions to system capabilities, and determining root causes of unexpected results. In addition to improving the efficiency of test conduct, this system is hoped to dramatically reduce the re-test rates in ongoing programs. Using this approach, the Global Reach test data archive effort will establish a baseline for data management to address CTF project management objectives, but also addresses the broader concerns faced by future programs.