RTCASS, a portable, configurable commercial ATE system

There are operational requirements within the DoD and foreign military organizations for greater maintenance performance with fewer resources, less deployment time, and lower budgets. These demands are expected to increase. RTCASS offers the promise of solving support problems which are otherwise unsolvable, or solvable at an intolerably high cost. In many support profiles, RTCASS is a much more efficient usage of resources than existing ATE systems. RTCASS supports the maintenance and test community through the application of modular commercial hardware and object oriented software components. Its capabilities are focused in the following areas: portable ruggedized enclosures, optional rack mount capability, reconfigurable test system configurations, instrumentation spares pool, surrogate operation for deployment and training missions, and maintenance support for tactical weapons. This paper describes RTCASS and suggests opportunities offered by an creative ATS solution. With its introduction, significant progress has been achieved toward advanced logistics support using a transportable, component based ATE System for forward maintenance of avionics and weapons systems.