Organizational Level Armament Test Reimagined

Organizational Level (O-Level) Maintenance personnel face tremendous pressure to maintain the mission readiness of aircraft and weapons systems in some of the most inhospitable conditions imaginable. Whether deployed on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic, or on a remote airbase in Alaska, maintainers are only as effective as their training and test equipment. This can be especially challenging for the armament maintainer as new weapons systems and munitions are developed and fielded, and commonly utilized alongside legacy munitions. Test equipment must not only address the legacy test requirements, but must include new capabilities; this results in the proliferation of multiple types and generations of test equipment that impacts test execution performance, training, logistics and ultimately aircraft mission readiness. O-Level armament maintenance includes scheduled and unscheduled activities; scheduled test occurs after installation or scheduled maintenance, and unscheduled test occurs in support of fault analysis and troubleshooting. For this reason, the USAF has employed two versions of O-Level testers for most fighter aircraft. The first is a simple reliability tester most often known as the Armament Circuit Preload Test Set (ACPTS), and the second is an advanced tester (COLT, SST, 198, etc.) used for functional checkouts. Furthermore, O-Level armament support for the F-16 may require up to five different testers (5060, SST, FIST, MBFI and Viper), with each tester being employed for a different function or mission. Clearly this poses significant training and proficiency challenges for the maintainer, but also impacts logistics as any deployment must also include each of these test sets along with associated cable assemblies. This paper will explore the need for a universal O-Level armament test set that combines all O-Level armament tests into one test set, and identify the reliability and functional test requirements that must be addressed to support legacy as well as new and emerging aircraft armament and weapons.