Armaments Research Company (ARC) will develop a predictive maintenance platform for crew-served weapons for the U.S. Marine Corps under the company’s recently awarded five-year, $60 million SBIR Phase III contract.
The SBIR Phase III contract with the Department of Defense and General Services Administration allows ARC to develop systems in support of the military’s Joint All-Domain Command and Controlw (JADC2) project portfolio, which aims to connect military service sensors into an integrated, centralized network.
ARC will embed its adapted Internet of Things sensor into crew-served weapons platforms to collect, synthesize and communicate diagnostics which will enable predictive maintenance and optimize unit readiness by allowing units to better assess overall platform health, the company said Thursday.
“Supporting the Marines’ leap forward from time- to conditions-based maintenance for their medium-caliber weapons creates an extraordinary potential for efficiencies,” said ARC’s CEO Michael Canty.
Canty added that non-age-related equipment issues typically comprise about 80 percent of total failures, and ARC’s work on the project will help the Marine Corps to understand, predict and prevent these issues.
Throughout this project, ARC will continue to develop its artificial intelligence and machine learning-powered weapons sensor, ARC-Response, scaling the sensor from small- to medium-caliber weapons platforms.
Data collected by the improved sensors will be used to develop machine learning algorithms to identify parts in need of repair and detect potential parts failures before they occur, ensuring operational safety.
Last month, ARC introduced two task orders under the contract, which focus on fusing data from ARC’s AI-enabled edge computing sensors with other data sources to utilize mobile and extended reality platforms to transmit information to tactical forces more quickly.
