Open Call for Innovative Defense-Related Dual-Purpose Technologies/Solutions with a Clear Air Force Stakeholder Need

A significant concern for the maintenance community is the phenomenon of intermittent electrical faults that occur in the operational environment but do not manifest themselves in the static maintenance environment. Testing with traditional ATE results in an LRU or EWIS being returned as NFF and reinstalled on the weapon system only for the operational failure to occur again. According to a memorandum released 11 April 2019 by the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Mr. Kenneth D. Watson, 50% of electronic components entering maintenance are returned as NFF; “resulting in over 278,000 days of end-item non-availability and approximately $3 billion in non-value-added sustainment costs annually.� The memorandum goes on to say that, “intermittent electronics failures are a leading contributor to DoD’s NFF problem� and he has charged the military services to “rapidly promulgate intermittence detection and isolation capabilities, as defined by MIL-PRF-32516�. This proposal is to expand the benefits of intermittent fault detection technology and develop a test and evaluation (T&E) protocol by leveraging the Joint Intermittence Testing (JIT) Working Integrated Product Team (WIPT) recommended initial focus for reducing the rate of NFF, reducing electronic maintenance costs, and reducing weapon system non-availability caused by intermittent electrical faults.