Operational availability, reliability, and performance of Army aircraft are key factors in achieving mission success. The aircraft depend on health of their systems to perform reliably over extended periods of time. Monitoring of aircraft usage trends and time spent in stressful flight regimes produces the information needed to apply prognostic health management (PHM) knowledge to operational/maintenance decision-making at individual aircraft and fleet levels. Achieving the information architecture for maintainers and flight crews to apply new PHM technologies effectively requires an advanced, intelligent network. AVNIK Defense Solutions, Inc. proposes, with our subcontract team member Instrumental Sciences, Inc. (ISI), a flexible integrated intelligent network (FIIN) concept based on the new technologies of distributed work environments and cooperative intelligent agent architectures. This AVNIK concept will lead to a robust network to meet Future Vertical Lift (FVL) systems needs for automated handling and sharing of distributed information from aircraft operation and maintenance histories. The primary objectives of the Phase I research are to (1) determine the feasibility of the AVNIK FIIN concept and (2) characterize the potential of the FIIN implementation to improve aircraft/system availability.
