Development of a test program set on the consolidated automated support system for a redesigned AN/APG-73 radar receiver shop Replaceable Assembly

Raytheon Canada Limited (RCL) supports the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) by providing comprehensive, in country maintenance and support of the AN/APG-73 Radar System for the CF-18 Hornet aircraft. As part of a midlife upgrade to the CF-18 aircraft, the RCAF replaced the AN/APG-65 Radar with the AN/APG-73 Radar. The RCAF chose the Consolidated Automated Support System (CASS) to support the Radar Receiver (RR). 2 RF CASS stations and 2 sets of radar Operational Test Program Sets (OTPS) were provided to RCL to support the equivalent of second line and depot level support for the RR. The AN/APG-73 RR supplied to the RCAF is a later configuration than the majority of the fielded systems with the United States Navy (USN) and other Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers; specifically there are 2 Shop Replaceable Assemblies (SRA) that were redesigned due to obsolescence. (Note: The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) also has this newer configuration.) Although these newer SRAs are form, fit and functional equivalents to the older versions, they have a different board layout and components and require a different test program at the SRA level. The USN has not yet fielded Test Program Sets (TPSs) on CASS for the newer SRA configurations, since the majority of their fleet continues to run on the previous versions of the RR SRAs. This resulted in a gap for the RCAF in domestic diagnostic capability for both of the redesigned RR SRAs. Both SRAs are relatively complex and have several high speed signals that can be difficult to test. The Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) purchased two complete RR SRA OTPS sets and provided them to RCL for AN/APG-73 Radar support at their Calgary Electronics Facility (CEF). This included the TPSs for the previous versions of the redesigned RR SRAs, which were purchased in the belief that RCL would likely be able to adapt these TPSs to test the redesigned SRAs. RCL determined that this could best be accomplished by reuse of the existing TPS hardware and a combination of the existing TPSs software and Raytheon factory Special Test Equipment (STE) software that was developed for the Teradyne L353 tester.