ManTech’s ARDS: Keeping Radomes Functioning

The Advanced Radome Diagnostic System (ARDS) is advancing how the U.S. Air Force scans aircraft radomes for defects that need addressing. The system, in its third year, can test a radome’s performance mid-stream or even at the beginning to see what repairs are necessary.

Transcript

00:00:12 thank you the Air Force man Tech program is really focused on driving affordability into our Weapons Systems manufacturability into our Weapons Systems we're at Compass Technology Group they're running our project called the Advanced radome Diagnostic system arts for short what we have found is with the manual tap tests that the depot typically uses we don't

00:00:42 discover problems with the radomes not being properly repaired or missing areas that need to be repaired until we get out to test in the field after the Depot and then we have to do rework and it usually leads to 80 hours plus of free work that needs to be done radomes are very important to a plane's ability to locate targets to locate the ground terrain to make sure that it sees

00:01:09 weather ahead of it so we need to make sure that those radomes are at their Peak Performing capability and this system helps ensure that we're doing that it this system will allow us to test the performance Midstream or even at the beginning to give us a baseline to know how to best make those repairs we take millimeter wave of radio frequency measurements and by using

00:01:29 those measurements we can look at the transmission and reflectivity of different objects and materials so we use those to look at the paint thickness or the layer thickness of the radome and evaluate its health and performance this is about the third year of the project it started off as a handheld unit that we were using to measure rate on transmissivity WE transitioned that

00:01:52 to a robot and now what we're doing is using that data to go do further testing and proof of concept on radoms the ManTech program is important to Innovation because they pull technologies that are in the development stages they get them ready for prime time to allow us to then push that into production so they help us bridge that gap of Technology Readiness to get us to

00:02:15 a spot where we're ready to transition really for us to ensure that our war Fighters have the capability they need we need to invest the government dollars in building that industrial base we need to ensure that the suppliers exist that we have domestic suppliers that we have access to suppliers so that we can provide the capabilities that the war Fighters need