A team at Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Georgia believes it has developed a high velocity maintenance process that will increase aircraft availability. At heart of the HVM effort is shared information—between the home station and the ALC—about each aircraft, enabling the ALC to have specific parts and equipment in place when an aircraft arrives at the ALC for programmed depot maintenance. The WRALC team plans to test its process with much-in-demand Air Force Special Operations Command C-130s, beginning in late spring or early summer 2008. If successful, the team would extend the HVM process across USAF’s entire C-130 fleet and on to other weapons systems. (Report by Lisa Matthews.)
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…