Where's the beer? a paradigm shift in flight-line armament testing

Abstract

Air Force armament maintainers like their beer and they definitely love their beercans. Prior to loading live weapons on an aircraft, maintainers are required to verify that no stray voltages are present on the armament systems and that firing signals are functioning properly. In the Air Force world, this is done with a small, battery- operated tester called an Armament Circuits Pre-Load Test Set, commonly referred to as a beercan due to its shape and size. The typical beercan is a rudimentary test set with few capabilities and limited performance. The beercan's function verifies that firing signals including magnitude and timing are valid for a launch procedure. The typical beercan only has one or two measurement channels, necessitating the manual switching of various adapters to enable testing of multiple signals. Typical beercans also lack the ability to emulate weapon signals, precluding any effective smart weapons testing by beercans.