ACE Common Aviation Support Equipment Challenge

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BLUF:

Help the United States Air Force conceptualize, design, and develop a highly mobile, multi-capable, resilient, and sustainable suite of aviation support equipment for the flightline.

OVERVIEW

The United States Air Force (USAF) is seeking an innovative suite of aviation maintenance and support equipment to address an important aspect of Agile Combat Employment (ACE), a scheme of maneuver that shifts operations from centralized, physical infrastructures to a network of smaller, dispersed locations, providing flexibility for friendly forces and complicating circumstances for adversaries. To learn more about the ACE concept, please check out this video.
The USAF recognizes the future of USAF maintenance and support equipment must be highly

mobile, resource efficient, multi-capable, resilient, and sustainable. Ideally, equipment and manpower demands will be reduced without degradation of operational capacity to swiftly execute missions.
The USAF encourages participants in this Challenge to offer technological solutions for

experimentation and/or feasibility study, as well as developed solutions. In either case, we’re interested in understanding all underlying technologies upon which the solution relies.

FA2280-23-S-C001-001

OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the Common Aviation Support Equipment Challenge are twofold: 1. The primary objective is to demonstrate the viability of equipment solutions that streamline and reduce the footprint of maintenance and support equipment necessary to service multiple types of airframes for Contingency Locations. 2. The secondary objective is to accelerate technology development that could lead to operational adoption of advanced capabilities by the U.S. Government.

CONTEXT

The USAF’s ability to effectively and efficiently operate at the edge of a battle area is essential to our superiority. Contingency Locations, also known as CLs, are located at or near the edge and act as non-enduring locations to sustain operations conducted to protect national interests. CLs are categorized as initial, temporary, or semi-permanent and rely on a “hub and spoke” model, wherein equipment and resources are transported from a “hub” or Main Operating Base (MOB) to “spokes” or Forward Operating Bases/Sites (FOBs/FOSes) and pre-positioned CLs. The suite of equipment on a CL flightline must be rapidly deployed to support sortie generation (missions to attack an enemy position and return to the CL or another base). The elements of support can include, but are not limited to, aircraft power, conditioned air, refueling, rearming,