AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar --
On September 8, the 379th Expeditionary Maintenance
Squadron’s avionics flight went 100 percent green across the board on repair
capabilities for the first time since the facility was established in 2003. The Avionics Flight houses the only avionics repair
facility throughout the U.S. Air Forces Central Command area of responsibility.
Since its
inception, the fight’s test stations have been plagued with software
discrepancies and intermittent firmware malfunctions. Through intensive troubleshooting and
engineering assistance, technicians were able to slowly resolve these
discrepancies, driving a new-high of 92 percent mission readiness in
March. Additional months of focused attention
by a new rotation of Airmen led to the final test station being repaired in
early September.
The Avionics Flight
supports multiple airframes throughout the USAFCENT area of responsibility. Collectively, it is responsible for repairing
163 components and providing electronic countermeasure capabilities for the
B-1B Lancer, C-17 Globemaster, F-15E Strike Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon and the
A-10 Thunderbolt.
Supporting five diverse airframes in one deployed
location takes a large amount of highly specialized equipment and an incredible
amount of stateside support. It is a
daunting task to maintain the hundreds of different pieces of on-site test
equipment and meet the associated ancillary requirements. Many of the test stations were designed and
built in the late 70’s or early 80’s, making replacement parts very difficult
to acquire. To
further complicate matters, there are nearly 100 pieces of test equipment that
require periodic calibration—at times driving off-station support to ensure
serviceability. The management of the
recalibration schedule requires very close orchestration to ensure equipment
availability is not degraded.
With Airmen
assigned from 11 different installations and contractor support that spans the
globe, the coordination required to maintain a high level of readiness is extremely
challenging. Strong relationships with stateside
test station engineers and monthly software and firmware upgrades are paramount
for in-country test station availability.
To define the
significance of the accomplishment for those outside the Avionics community,
the Avionics Flight Chief, Senior Master Sgt. Todd Langford, who is deployed
from Luke Air Force Base, Arizona said, “In 25 years of active duty service in
the avionics business, I have never had a facility supporting a single airframe,
reach this level of readiness. Here at
AUAB, we support five different airframes simultaneously. The current group of
maintainers has fine-tuned their internal processes and honed their skills
which resulted in an unprecedented level of mission readiness. I am very proud of them!”