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Maintenance & repair

DLS has an experienced organization that can provide support for our customers integration support, upgrades, repairs, spares management, software, and reporting

Maintenance and repair

Alternative maintenance and return to service testing options are now available to most international owners and operators of DLS terminals and other products.

Maintenance concept

A three level maintenance concept may be implemented:

  • Organizational
  • Intermediate
  • Depot

DLS has established aftermarket support facilities in regional locations throughout the world. Each facility has the capability to verify Line Replaceable Unit (LRU) failures, troubleshoot to the failed Shop Replaceable Unit (SRU), remove and replace failed SRU, perform verification testing and return the repaired LRU to the customer. Only failed SRUs, not LRUs, need be returned to DLS in the United States for repair. The LRU will be repaired by replacing the failed SRUs with working SRUs from a customer-owned spares inventory. This greatly improves repair turn-around times, and reduces the quantity of required spares.

Security considerations

Current U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) policy states that equipment containing embedded crypto is considered a COMSEC item, or Controlled Cryptographic Item (CCI). A controlled process for receiving and handling Terminals with embedded crypto will allow maintenance to be performed on MIDS hardware under a defined support arrangement.

Security must be in accordance with the government-to-government agreements related to COMSEC Release in Specific (RIS) between the United States, end-user nation, and the host facility country.

Organizational Level

For Organizational Level (O-Level) Maintenance, Terminal BIT will be used at the flight line or forward area to detect failures in the MIDS Terminals. Maintenance Test Sets, available from DLS, may be used by maintainers to provide greater visibility into verifying and troubleshooting problems, minimizing the cost of No Fault Fount (NFF) tests at an Intermediate or Depot Level facility. The same test set can be used to reprogram Link 16 Terminals on the flight line as software updates become available through the U.S. Government.

A supply of terminal spare LRUs will be required to allow rotation of failed terminals in order to maintain the customer-required level of availability. The quantity of spares is dependent on operating hours and availability requirements. DLS can provide a recommendation for the quantity required based on those operating hours and availability requirements.

Faulty LRUs will be removed at the flight line or forward area and shipped to the I-Level maintenance facility for fault verification, SRU swap, and return-to-service verification testing.

Intermediate Level

As noted earlier, the Intermediate Level (I-Level) maintenance support facilities will provide a regional repair center for DLS terminals and other products. DLS customers will ship faulty products to the support facility where they will be screened for faults. The facility will be used to:

  • Identify No Fault Found (NFF) or Can Not Duplicate (CND) faults and prevent these LRUs from being sent back to the DLS Depot Level (D-Level) facility
  • Identify faulty SRUs within the LRU and replace the faulty SRUs with functioning qualified spares
  • Ship faulty SRUs to DLS for repair and receive repaired SRUs into stock

Current I-Level facilities

I-Level support facilities are located in:

  • Heidelberg, Germany
  • Williamtown, NSW, Australia
  • Kanata, ONT, Canada
  • Waddington Royal Air Force Base, United Kingdom

Note: Support facilities not located in MIDS LVT member nations are only authorized to repair that country’s MIDS LVT terminals

Additional services available our regional Service Center facilities include:

  • Field service engineering support
  • Training
  • Integration support
  • Engineering support

Advantages of the DLS Regional Service Centers include:

  • Faster fault identification screening
  • Faster return of repairs to customers
  • Reduced investment in terminal (LRU) spares
  • Ease of transportation
  • Central location for many European countries
  • No duty restrictions within EU and cooperating countries

Note: I-Level repairs performed at Regional Service Center facilities require formal third party approval from the U.S. Department of State. See below for additional information on the approval process.

Regional Service Center Documentation Requirements

There is required documentation (third party approval) that must be completed prior to each Country utilizing our Regional Service Centers. DLS has examples of every required document and will assist each Country through the process. Required documentation is outlined below:

  • Contract and Statement of Work (SOW)
  • Transportation plan and cover letter
  • MIDS IPO Notification
  • U.S. Department of State Documents
  • TAA
  • End User Assurance (EUA) Letters

DLS will:

  • Provide examples of all documentation
  • Prepare the necessary information within each document, to the extend DLS has the information (Country ultimately responsible for accuracy of all documentation)
  • Coordinate all face-to-face meetings and communication with the Country and respective agencies involved
  • Assist the Country with what documentation can be done concurrently versus step functions

Future I-Level Facilities

Future I-Level support facilities are planned to be located in:

  • Japan
  • Saudi Arabia

Field Service & Support

DLS Field Service Engineers (FSE) are highly trained technical experts who are routinely involved in every phase of program development. Their participation begins in design, continues through test and integration, and matures into post-delivery support. This depth of involvement ensures an unsurpassed level of proficient customer support.

Field service engineering will perform at any time and in any environment. The level of support can be tailored to meet the needs of each customer from telephone support up to and including full-time on-site support.

Field service engineers have direct access to DLS design and systems engineers and the manufacturing teams.

Field service capabilities include, but are not limited to the following:

  • System integration and test support
  • System installation and checkout
  • Operational and maintenance support
  • On-the-job training / refresher training
  • Field modifications and updates

Depot Level

D-Level facilities

Depot Level (D-Level) repairs can only be performed by the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM’s) facilities. D-Level support facilities are located in:

  • Wayne, New Jersey - DLS East
  • Cedar Rapids, Iowa - DLS West

These two D-level repair facilities provide vital support to U.S. and Coalition warfighters around the world for:

  • Component level repair of SRU’s
  • SRU level testing
  • Terminal (LRU) level testing

In addition to the above services, DLS’ D-level Repair Facilities offer:

  • Product improvement
  • Sustainment engineering
  • Supply chain management
  • Integration support
  • Maintenance training
  • Telephone support

D-Level facilities have the authorization and capability of repair the components within the SRUs down to the piece part level. The repaired SRUs can then be tested at the SRU level for proper functionality, and, if necessary, tested at the LRU level for further verification of functionality.

The SRUs that are identified as faulty at an I-Level facility must be shipped to the DLS D-Level facility for repair and testing. Once the SRUs have been repaired and tested, they will be shipped back to the I-Level facility and returned to the customer’s spares pool.

Sales & Repair

DLS can provide complete spares and repair parts solutions by providing recommended levels or by participation in logistics planning conferences and provisioning meetings.

Spare LRUs

A recommended level of LRUs will be prepared and submitted to the customer for approval. This recommendation will consider operating/on hours, operating environment, predicted reliability, repair pipeline times, repair turnaround times and other factors in order to provide an optimized quantity recommendation.

Spare SRUs

Recommended SRU spare lists will also be prepared and submitted for customer action. All relevant factors will be included in the spare SRU model to provide optimum sparing activity.

Repair parts

Batteries and other expendables/consumables will be included in our repair provisioning recommendations. The MIDS has no routine maintenance requirements and batteries are the only consumable. DLS recognizes however, that some customers may have special operational considerations and we are prepared to offer support to cover all contingencies.