EVENDALE, Ohio - GE Aviation was selected by AVX Aircraft Company to provide a key airborne and ground Systems component asset management system for the U.S. Army Rotorcraft Automated Component Tracking (RACT) program.
GE Aviation’s solution will report the planned and unplanned movement of tracked assets from local aviation units to ensure better maintenance and logistics insights across the fleet, as well as accurate operational availability for individual aircraft.
This is part of a US Army Science & Technology program with the purpose of demonstrating a system that will allow aviation units in the field to better manage maintenance records in conjunction with higher level Army Maintenance & Logistics structures.
The RACT program is intended to explore new methods of tracking key components, including their usage, as well as overall aircraft health state. This will serve to aid better fleet management decisions and contributes to the U.S. Army’s vision of zero-maintenance and minimization of forward operating sustainment needs.
The airborne and ground system integrates decades of GE’s proven health management technologies on rotorcraft with their vehicle management system on fixed wing to drive increased operational availability and safety of the fleet.
GE Aviation will be leveraging existing hardware and software solutions to track key components and their actual utilization rather than a traditional operating hour tracking mechanism. Through consolidated on-board analytics, ground based software and emulated maintenance and logistics systems, the RACT program will demonstrate the complete health awareness state for modeled aircraft. GE Aviation’s team, led by their Avionics Systems business, will work closely with AVX Aircraft Company and Texas Tech University to provide an integrated solution that will be validated at GE’s VertiCenter Integration Laboratory in Lynn, Massachusetts.
