Tuning Up Legacy Systems
Sidebar: Sustainment Earns USAF Wings
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The U.S. Air Force has used the Aviation Resource Management System since at least 1983 to track air-crew members' flight data. This is a critical capability for commanders who need to determine in a matter of minutes a pilot's total career flight hours or what aircraft the pilot is qualified to fly.
Because of the criticalness of the system, the Air Force has invested in the sustainment and continual evolution of the system. ARMS was originally developed for and operated in the Unisys mainframe environment. A modernization effort was completed in June 1997 to deploy ARMS on HP/UX with an Oracle relational database management system. Other, more recent efforts include the deployment of an encryption capability in April 2002 and an enhanced graphical user interface in May 2003.
The software currently uses a GUI and standard menus that let USAF operational resource-management personnel interact with the system. With centrally located servers, users have real-time access to information. The software continues to be actively sustained. Current efforts include implementing a browser-based interface and adapting the architecture toward the Air Force standard for greater interoperability with other existing and planned systems.
The sustainment budget for ARMS is roughly $3.2 million a year, which includes sustainment, enhancements to the application, hardware purchases, and modernization. However, the USAF says this investment is well-justified as ARMS supports a total of 2,800 operational users, who in turn support more than 66,000 air-crew members.
The Standard Systems Group at Maxwell Air Force Base Gunter Annex in Montgomery, Ala., performs the ARMS sustainment work. SSG, an element of the Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB, Mass., provides and supports secure combat-support information systems and networks for the Air Force and Defense Department components. SSG systems are used at virtually every Air Force operating base'both in garrison and deployed'with more than 200,000 users and 3 million transactions daily.
"SSG is committed to sustaining the ARMS program to support the war fighter and moving it forward as our customer directs," says Frank Weber, SSG executive director. "This program is an invaluable tool for ops commanders."
—Robert Seacord
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