Kevan Goff-Parker
Staff Writer
Maintenance units assigned to the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Complex led the way as the Air Force completed urgent, fleet-wide inspections of the B-52 Stratofortress fleet to ensure airworthiness and mission readiness for combatant commanders.
OC-ALC’s 76th Aircraft Maintenance Group’s Expeditionary Depot Maintenance flight and associated 565th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron have proven that collaborative teamwork and superior planning and communications can oftentimes overcome some of the most challenging tasks associated with the maintenance, repair and overhaul of the U.S. Air Force’s aircraft.
Tinker Air Force Base’s 565th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron Director Connie Davis said while reviewing their records about a year ago, the B-52 System Program Office discovered seven inspections that should have been completed and were now overdue.
Jackie Smith, 565th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, checks bolt holes on a TF-33 engine strut for potential cracks. Three Time Compliance Technical Orders identifying seven overdue inspections resulted in the formation of the B-52 Aircraft Structural Integrity Program team — made up of 76th Aircraft Maintenance Group’s Expeditionary Depot Maintenance Flight and the 565th AMXS — to plan out the urgent inspections with minimal interruption to Programmed Depot Maintenance. (U.S. Air Force photo/Kelly White)
As a result they levied three time compliance technical orders to complete seven overdue inspections that needed to be completed quickly to ensure the safety of the B-52 Stratofortress fleet.
“The seven inspections were rolled into the three TCTOs, which are divided by areas of the aircraft – the outboard engine struts, upper main longeron fitting and the trailing edge of both outboard wings,” Davis said. “The inspections were different types of nondestructive inspection in those three areas.
“Our System Program Office Engineering contacted our maintenance and our non-destructive inspection technicians and asked for their input on the best way to get access to the areas on the aircraft (that needed inspections) and how to issue technical orders in a way that made them easier to accomplish. It was a collaborative effort from the beginning on how to do these inspections on the aircraft.”
She said a plan was created, but the timeline was difficult to establish because it was uncertain what they would find during the unscheduled depot-level maintenance inspections. If problems were found, it could complicate the effort because more time could be needed for repairs.
“Now, it was Global Strike Command’s issue, but the thing that also confronted them was that they didn’t know the condition of the fleet,” Davis said. “If we let all the inspections happen during planned depot maintenance that would take four years because it is a four-year cycle and that wasn’t acceptable. We also didn’t want to negatively impact the Periodic Depot-level Maintenance line.”
She said 76th AMXG Commander Col. Michael P. Allison put his EDMX flight on the task to augment the 565th AMXS’s personnel and to minimize any impact to the PDM line. EDMX technicians worked with the squadron’s fuel, post-dock and non-destructive inspection technicians as part of the Aircraft Structural Integrity Program team. Allison also provided a shared resource maintenance hangar for the inspections of seven B-52s and made sure that everyone knew that completing the inspections was the number one priority for the Group.
“We knew that the hangar needed to go down for maintenance at the end of May, so our goal was to get seven aircraft inspected by then,” Davis said. “To ensure we had good planning for the B-52 ASIP team, we continued with our collaborative approach and got everyone together and did a process map. I assigned a supervisor to oversee that whole project and a scheduler and it was their jobs to pull in these entities that don’t normally work together and make sure everyone got what they needed to move the project forward.”
She said the B-52 ASIP team put things in place early to make sure the inspections went smoothly, including ordering fasteners and kitting them ahead of time so that if needed they would be ready and positioned for the mechanics to use. They planned every detail, day-by-day, with the master scheduler to ensure that each step was handled precisely.
Organic teams at Barksdale and Minot AFBs also inspected B-52s and the combined efforts of 565th AMXS’s post dock and fuel personnel, augmented by the EDMX flight and assisted by NDI technicians and movers, resulted in 75 inspections completed in an 18-week period from January 2 to May 7 on 15 aircraft – more than double the original requirement for the B-52 ASIP team at Tinker AFB.
Davis said the first of the seven planes at Tinker Air Force Base to be inspected took a little bit longer, but the work flow soon sped up as the team gained more experience and the average cycle time during the inspections moved from 14 days to 9.6 days. The inspections found some corrosion which was cleaned up and an engine strut that needed to be repaired on one of the bombers.
“The efforts to replace the engine strut is a good example of the enterprise cooperation between the 565th AMXS’s Commodities Maintenance Squadron and 424th Supply Chain Management personnel working in concert with the B-52 SPO Engineering and 565th AMXS’s structures, aircraft, planning and scheduling personnel to turn that aircraft back to the warfighter in 29 days,” she said. “The larger fleet-wide effort had similar success with 73 aircraft having inspections completed by June (and two remaining to be completed on bombers captured for PDM). This success is a great example of how quickly and efficiently the entire enterprise can be mobilized and leveraged to address a pressing readiness issue.”
Davis said now that the inspections are complete there is no danger to the fleet and they were able to keep assets readily available to the warfighter.
“The power of teamwork and relationships, you can’t underestimate it,” she said. “We weren’t in a crisis, but we were definitely in an urgent situation. If you’ve already built those relationships when you’re in an urgent situation you use them and collaboratively you will come up with the best solution as long as everyone is trying to do what’s best for the entire enterprise. We use that repeatedly every day in our overall business, but it is just so important to do it when you’re in an urgent situation.”
