'Smart' instruments enhance Army's testing capabilities.

• Author: Cast, Mike

Army engineers are working to equip the service's new weapon systems with electronic devices that can sense and record critical information. The technology, product of the Developmental Test Command, is designed not only to improve the Army's testing capabilities, but also to help provide critical data throughout a program's entire life cycle.

The Developmental Test Command (DTC) conducts thousands of tests each year on new or upgraded military systems that defense contractors produce for the Army. Land vehicles and other military hardware, for example, undergo rigorous testing at DTC's Aberdeen Test Center in Maryland.

To enhance the Army's testing capabilities, engineers at Aberdeen have developed "intelligent instrumentation" that can sense and record a wide range of data, such as vehicle performance characteristics, parts reliability, wear and tear, and the rate of fuel consumption when soldiers operate systems in the field. In January, a group of engineers from the Aberdeen Test Center traveled to Fort Lewis, Wash., to install specially designed instrumentation packages in the armored wheeled vehicles loaned to the U.S. Army by Canada, Germany and Italy.

ATC engineers designed the devices to collect data on these vehicles, as two Brigade Combat Teams at Fort Lewis put them through their paces. The BCTs are the Army's new medium brigades and will use a Light Armored Vehicle (called the Stryker Interim Armored Vehicle), instead of ranks. Until the Stryker is fielded, soldiers at Fort Lewis will train with loaned LAVs.

The Fort Lewis project was an opportunity for DTC to demonstrate the merits of a program known as virtual information system integrated online, or VISION. This technology involves intelligent test instrumentation, the use of telecommunication systems to relay test data from remote sites and a digital library on the Internet--where program managers and other decision makers can retrieve the latest information about tests.

At the heart of VISION is a suite of devices known as the advanced distributed modular acquisition systems, or ADMAS. These instruments give test engineers and managers of military acquisition programs valuable data on vehicle performance characteristics such as turning radius, acceleration, engine heat, power output, fluid temperatures and the response of vehicle components to various shocks and vibrations.

The data acquisition systems installed in the loaned vehicles at Fort Lewis and embedded in the...