"The depot was overloaded, and we had a backlog of S-3s that were not flying," says Capt. Evan Piritz, commander of Sea Control Wing US Atlantic Fleet, the US Navy's remaining S-3 Viking wing. "The Integrated Maintenance Program changed the way depot-level maintenance was done. The program got aircraft out of maintenance and back into service quickly. It was a complete success." The S-3 Integrated Maintenance Program, or IMP, came to a conclusion on 1 November 2007, as workers completed the last phased maintenance inspection of a multimission Viking aircraft at NAS Jacksonville, Florida.
IMP was a groundbreaking effort of Lockheed Martin, the US Navy and subcontractors LSI and American Valley Aviation, and the US Navy. Under IMP, contractor and service personnel worked side by side to perform scheduled depot inspections and repairs on the S-3s to return the Vikings rapidly to the operational fleet.
"Rather than fly an S-3 to the depot, the required maintenance was performed in the shadow of the aircraft at the home station," notes Cmdr. John Sutherland, the maintenance officer for Sea Control Wing Atlantic. "The aircraft remained on hand, and the units maintained a pride of ownership. An aircraft away at a depot is out of sight and out of mind. It was just not the best way to do business."
The program began in 2001 primarily as a means of reducing the backlog at the Naval Aviation depots. At the depots, a Viking could be out of service for more than nine months every six years as it went through a full teardown and re-assembly. IMP divided the required inspections and maintenance tasks into three forty-eight-day phases spread across five years.
During each of the phases, specific areas of the aircraft were inspected and necessary repairs completed. The work got down to the level of inspecting and repairing the spring-loaded doors covering the handholds and footholds built into the aircraft's fuselage. These holds allow maintainers to climb up and check the top of the aircraft.
"In Phase 1, we remove the vertical tail and horizontal stabilizer from the aircraft as well as all the flight control surfaces. We also inspect the rear spars," notes Harold Roldan-Lemus, a Lockheed Martin maintenance controller at NAS Jacksonville.
In Phase 2, the aircraft is put on jacks, and the landing gear, tailhook, flaps, and weapons bay doors are removed. The wings from the wing fold mechanism to the wing box and the aircraft's hydraulic plumbing are thoroughly inspected as well. "We do a lot of nondestructive inspections on the aircraft," adds Roldan-Lemus, who is also one of four technicians to be with the program since the beginning. "For example, we X-ray some critical parts and perform eddy current inspections on others."
Phase 3 is a full external inspection of the aircraft. The exterior paint on the S-3 is stripped, and the outer wings, spoilers, and speed brakes are removed. The flight control system computer is also inspected. "A number of minor repairs are usually needed on the bell cranks and rollers because they wear from constant moving during operation," Roldan-Lemus adds. "We check the bushings and bearings on the wings and reinstall them. We make sure everything on the aircraft works properly before it is released back to the unit."
The partnership between Lockheed Martin and the Navy made IMP unique. When a Viking squadron would go to sea, a number of the unit's maintainers remained at the home station to work on the IMP line.
"We worked side by side with Lockheed Martin," notes Senior Chief Nestor Bautista, the last Navy on-site IMP lead. "The Lockheed Martin technicians would make the needed repairs, and our maintainers would perform some of the inspections. The Navy mechanics would reinstall the parts, rig the aircraft, and put it back together. How much work we did would depend on which phase inspection was being done. We worked as one big team. Whatever they needed, we'd help, and vice versa.
"Most of the work we did here we don't do at the squadron level, so we had a lot of opportunities for cross-training," adds Bautista. "Our people left here knowing a lot more about aircraft maintenance than they did coming in."
The program worked. IMP increased S-3 aircraft operational availability by fifty-three percent and reduced maintenance tasking by forty-seven percent over the previous scheduled depot-level maintenance plan. IMP also resulted in significantly reduced costs to the Navy.
At its peak, the contractor team of approximately thirty-five people and their Navy counterparts cycled up to twenty-five aircraft through the program per year. As the program wound down in 2007, a total of twelve aircraft were inspected. The last of the 149 aircraft processed through the IMP inspections was delivered nearly two weeks ahead of schedule, continuing a streak of 109 consecutive on-time or ahead-of-schedule deliveries back to the Navy.
Although the Integrated Maintenance Program is completed, Lockheed Martin's Prime Vendor Support, or PVS, program will continue to provide vital engineering and logistics support to the three remaining S-3 squadrons until the Vikings are retired from Navy service early next year.
"The S-3 is scheduled to be decommissioned in February 2009," notes Piritz. "The aircraft will be retired to AMARC [the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona] in preservation status. But we know the Vikings have significant service life left in them, and there are a lot of options." Several international countries have expressed an interest in operating the aircraft. The US Forest Service, US Coast Guard, and the National Guard have also expressed interest in operating the S-3 for their various missions.
Piritz concludes, "The next half of the S-3's life is still to be determined."
Jeff Rhodes is the associate editor of Code One.
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