Obsolescence Engineering

As the age of the aircraft, electronic systems, and supporting equipment in the DoD inventory continues to increase, our Government customers often require assistance in addressing aging and obsolescence issues. These issues may arise from a decision to extend the service life of a fielded system, from a diminishing supplier base for subsystems and/or parts, or from technology obsolescence. The source of the obsolescence challenge may be as small as a single electronic component or circuit board that is no longer being produced by a vendor. Yet, without the component, a major weapon system’s performance or supportability may be severely impacted. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and the Government’s organic depot repair facilities often have difficulty identifying component parts and subsystem providers, and problems maintaining the supply chain for aging systems exist across all of the services.

Bionetics offers a range of capabilities to support aging aircraft/system and obsolescence issues. We have effectively supported the NAVAIR obsolescence (FASTTRACK) team by providing technical expertise to help streamline the NAVAIR qualification process for new sources of manufacturers. We are also a regular source of obsolescence support to the United States Army Security Assistance Command (USASAC) to help resolve some of their obsolescence issues for Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programs. We have provided USASAC sources for obsolete electronic systems and components on several occasions, most recently for the government of Greece.

Bionetics is also working with Government depot facilities and industry partners to develop new types of working relationships to source and/or develop and field components, subsystems and systems. Our focus is specifically targeted toward those systems, subsystems and components that the OEM or vendors can no longer support, and relies on partnering with the Government to conduct the analysis, design, engineering and test activities required to improve a systems’ availability or reliability.