PIP-enhanced "at system" diagnosis on the flightline

Flightline component false removals are costly and add to the logistics tail of every weapon system. Integrating portable maintenance aids (PMAs) and maintenance information systems into the test repertoire can help significantly; however, these solutions do little to augment the information available for failure diagnosis. Adding conventional test instrumentation under PMA control would provide the additional information we seek; however, these hardware intensive solutions are typically large, heavy and expensive. VXI offers an opportunity to consolidate instrumentation into a convenient package, however, the majority of VXI products provide a single function. Therefore many VXI modules are required to provide the needed functionality, resulting in an instrumentation package that is large and awkward to use at best, and quite often just not useable on the flightline. This paper addresses false removals, the challenges involved in addressing this issue, and solutions that are being implemented on the RAH-66 Comanche program. The PMA Instrument Pack (PIP) approach to flightline instrumentation facilitates powerful test techniques that augment diagnostic capability at the weapon system.