JSF Fleet Manager: an Automated Reasoner for Aircraft Operational Availability Decision Support

Impact Technologies, LLC proposes to develop and demonstrate the use of an automated reasoner to provide decision-making support for fleet management of military aircraft. The proposed work will adhere to open-systems architecture (OSA) standards and utilize operational data downloaded from each aircraft at the end of the mission. This information will be supplemented with system- and subsystem-specific maintenance and usage data. Thus a data mining module will be of paramount importance for this application. The module will collect and synchronize the operational, maintenance and usage data from potentially different data sources using different formats (CAG, SDRS, etc…). Data integrity will be checked and addressed when possible and as needed. The development will also include an automated reasoner that will use the data to determine current aircraft availability across the fleet. A prognostics module will also use upcoming mission profile and requirements to determine optimal asset allocation that will ensure high mission reliability. Specifically the core innovations of the proposed work include: 1) a data mining module that will collect operational, maintenance and usage data from a number of sources and address data problems whenever possible; 2) development of an evidence-based reasoner that will assess current fleet capability from individual aircraft operational, maintenance and usage data; 3) development of a prognostics module that will predict future readiness; and 4) use of an interactive data visualization approach to enable information display and allow the user to delve into the reasoner results to any desired depth to follow and validate the reasoning process.BENEFITS: This automated reasoner and decision support technology will help future Navy and DoD combatant programs, such as JSF, reach improved fleet readiness objectives and total ownership cost initiatives. The technology will play an important role in providing the warfighter with significant combat advantage. The reasoner will take full advantage of the large amounts of operational, maintenance, and usage data available. The objectives will be achieved through a fleet level automated reasoning architecture that will continuously assess current availability and forecast future readiness. Future readiness assessment will be made based on upcoming mission profiles and requirements as well as component and subsystem usage modeling driven by historical data and analytical models. Because effective military operations hinge on the ability to quickly and accurately assess not only current but also future readiness level on a fleet basis, there exist numerous potential military applications for the proposed fleet management reasoner in all branches of the U.S. DoD. Given the adaptable nature of the core analysis and reasoning techniques proposed, the developed approach and design products could be adapted for a variety of commercial applications. Such applications include: commercial airlines, land and marine propulsion systems, large utilities and independent power producers, oil and gas transmission companies, and processing industries.