National Harbor, MD. A DoD plenary session panel titled “Future Technology Needs” took place Tuesday morning at Autotestcon, following an opening keynote address by John Johns, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Maintenance). The key focus was constraining the cost of ATE, which had reached $51 billion during the Reagan defense-budget era, according to panel moderator Bill Ross of Eagle Systems.
A key focus of the panel was cybersecurity, which keynoter Johns earlier in the morning had called a pervasive threat, opening “…huge doors that anyone can drive through and shut down all the ATE.”
Ross and fellow panelists (he represented Naval aviation’s perspective on some issues as well as serving as moderator), cited cybersecurity as well as TPS standardization, ATS processes and frameworks, next-generation test (NxTest) technologies, and an ATS framework as key issues, with benefits to be had by sharing and leveraging information on test technologies among the services where practical.
Panelists representing all four U.S. services cited such factors as the penetration of FPGAs into test systems; anti-tampering technology; electromechanical, electro-optical (EO), and high-voltage weapons systems; net-centric diagnostics; and cybersecurity as sometimes overlapping issues of concern. Panelists described the status of a variety of past, current, and emerging programs, including the Air Force VDATS, Army IFTE and NGATS, Marine Corps. GRMATS and VIPER/T; and Navy CASS, eCASS, and RTCASS (with eCASS and RTCASS operating the same TPSs).
One conclusion was that success will require coordination with the test-instrument industry as well as among the four services. One panelist, not necessarily speaking for all the services, commented, “We consider all of our ATE [to be] weapons—not just the airplane that shoots missiles but the entire support system.”
