AMSED understands the needs of our customers and connects directly with other universities and brings "innovation through collaboration" to our DoD customers. Many of today's aircraft are older than the pilots flying them and the industry must find ways to keep them in the air by extending the airplane's life while protecting the safety of crews and passengers. Aging aircraft sustainment is one of the most significant challenges facing the Department of Defense, yet there is no focused cross department effort to address aging aircraft problems or to train personnel to manage fleets of 60 year-old aircraft. Aging Aircraft sustainment costs are increasing at an unsustainable rate of 7-12% per year and the annual organic maintenance burden to DoD is now at an all time high of $13 billion. Rising sustainment costs are eating into operations, procurement, and other budget accounts in the same way that recent health care cost increases ate into government and private sector budgets. Aging aircraft systems combined are creating significant problems in sustainment and mission readiness and are especially visible in this wartime environment.
The Academic Center for Aging Aircraft (ACAA) is a partnership between The Texas A&M University System, The University of Dayton Research Institute and The Georgia Tech Research Institute. Activities to be accomplished through this initiative are directly in-line with the activities planned by the Joint Council for Aging Aircraft (JCAA), a functioning inter-service/inter-agency organization that is responsible for solving common aging aircraft problems jointly. The intent of the ACAA is to form a network of ad hoc teams and/or ACAA partnerships with other universities for long term efforts of interest to the JCAA and the sustainment of aging aircraft and to be a catalyst for new collaborative programs that stimulate technology transfer activities involving universities and tri-service programs.
AMSED is the Executive Agent for the ACAA and provides the program management structure with UDRI and GTRI to connect with other universities. The ACAA provides an independent source for information and analysis to support the DoD's efforts to sustain its fleet of aging aircraft. The ACAA enables broad academic involvement and leveraging with on-going efforts within the DoD to develop an academic support structure that will meet the needs of the DoD community in an efficient and effective manner. This Academic Center will also benefit the DoD by increasing competition and will provide the academic community with an understanding and direction for focusing research on solving the most critical aging aircraft issues. The Aging Aircraft problem and its associated readiness issues will be with us for the foreseeable future and AMSED has taken a proactive role to partner with other universities because Aging Aircraft is too big of a problem to be solved by one entity alone.
ACAA's capabilities include:
- Corrosion
- Fatigue
- Wear-out
- Material Degradation
- Obsolescence
- Avionics
- Wiring Systems
- Dynamic Components
Point of Contact
Dr. John Ayala, P.E.
Director AMSED
9350 South Presa
San Antonio, TX 78223
Ph: 210.633.2427, Ext. 224
Fax: 210.633.2923
Email:john-ayala@tamu.edu.
