Each new system has reduced annual operating costs by $50,000 and requires 117 fewer maintenance hours per year, he noted. In today’s constrained fiscal environment, the AN/URN-32 also provides welcome relief, Lack said. This is a vast improvement over the AN/URN-25’s 68 percent operational availability.” The AN/URN-32 is currently installed at 29 shore stations and on 14 ships, and provides an operational availability of 99 percent. “At 1,055 pounds, the new system weighs 500 pounds less than the one it replaces. “Additionally, system warm-up time has been reduced to one minute, from half an hour, and the mean time between failures has been dramatically improved from 4,819 hours to more than 11,111 hours,” Lack said. The AN/URN-32 system also delivers the same distance and azimuth coverage as the older AN/URN-25 system, but is capable of providing simultaneous information to 250 aircraft rather than 100, Lack said. In addition, the AN/URN-32 uses a software-based operating system that will ease future modifications and system upgrades.”
“If you look inside the AN/URN-32, it resembles the inside of a home computer and has proven much more reliable and easier to maintain. “If you were to look inside the AN/URN-25 TACAN, you would see a system consisting of wire bundles and vacuum tubes,” Lack said. PMA-213 manages two variants of the TACAN system - the AN/URN-25 (in service since 1978) and the AN/URN-32. “Installation of 92 systems for the shore stations was to be completed in fiscal year 2020 and now will be completed in fiscal year 2017.” “Our team is delivering these upgrades three years ahead of schedule, yielding $22 million in cost savings and enhancing the system’s efficiency, reliability and capacity,” he continued. “Every aircrew needs the confidence to find their way on a mission and know they can navigate home - especially those conducting their entire missions either over water or over hostile territory.
TACTICAL AIR NAVIGATION UPDATE
“In 2011, the Naval Air Traffic Management Systems Program Office began a full-scale modernization effort to update TACAN systems for the entire fleet,” said Capt.
The new TACAN system, with its modern, digital, solid-state technology, replaces legacy, vacuum tube technology, which was developed in the 1950s to provide bearing and slant-range distance to aircraft for more than 200 ships and 41 shore stations. – The tactical air navigation (TACAN) system used by all military aircraft recently received extensive upgrades, bringing the system state-of-the-art functionality. NAVAL AIR SYSTEMS COMMAND, PATUXENT RIVER, Md.
0 kommentar(er)
