Minot Painting and Corrosion Control

Painting Department of the Air Force (DAF) buildings is a manpower-intensive, time-consuming, and potentially hazardous activity for the Air Force. It is a familiar scene: teams of Airmen donning extensive personal protective equipment (PPE) with spray guns or rollers hoisted alongside structures to reapply paint. For example, at Minot Air Force Base (AFB), the 5th Civil Engineer Squadron (CES) deploys teams of 2-3 Airmen on lifts and hoists to manually repaint large walls and steel structures. This process can occupy multiple days and takes Airmen away from their routine work. This can also be hazardous. Paints often contain and expose Airmen to volatile organic compounds and fumes. Minot experiences 58mph winds on average. Such winds can blow Airmen off roofs or ladders and the cold causes frostbite while they perform these activities. Many air bases experience extreme weather throughout the year that deteriorates paint and necessitates frequent repainting.  Structural paint is a critical preventative maintenance tool that protects underlying metals from corrosion and masonry from freeze-thaw damage. The weather at Minot erodes away paint and coatings, leaving underlying structures vulnerable to accelerated corrosion. Undetected and unattended corrosion of a critical base building like a hangar can result in structural collapse that risks lives, aircraft, and millions of dollars worth of damage. Repainting is thus a critically necessary, time-consuming task to protect valuable capital assets and structures. A floor collapse at Malmstrom Air Force Base (AFB) caused a six month stoppage of training for nuclear maintenance technicians. At Eglin AFB, a fire suppression system burst from a valve failure and buried the interior of King Hangar with 17 feet of foam, damaging five aircraft, killing a contractor, and rendering the building unusable for three months. At Tinker AFB, an electrical substation exploded, causing $7 million in damage and an explosion large enough to be seen from space. The DAF alone faces a $30 billion maintenance and repair backlog. The labor-intensive necessity of repainting structures contributes to these costs. With Airmen lives, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment, and strategic aircraft at risk, manual structural painting is not an effective way to ensure Air Force structures are well-maintained, structurally safe, and operational.  The Air Force has an opportunity to modernize its approach to structural repainting through robotics process automation so that its buildings are safe and operational. NY-based aRoboticsCompany introduces that solution. For this proposed Direct to Phase II (D2P2) effort, aRoboticsCompany Inc (aRoboticsCo, aRc) proposes to partner with the 5 CES at Minot AFB to test and evaluate the feasibility of deploying a modified and enhanced variant of their Clean-R window and facade washing robots to repaint exteriors, mitigate damage, and reduce surface wear (version name: Paint-R).