Aviation parts, components and support products are crucial to maintain readiness on a global scale. The utilization of Advanced Manufacturing (AdvM) techniques provides an excellent opportunity to supplement the supply line to ultimately help improve readiness. The US Army mission for airworthiness related to AdvM is to ensure that the parts, components and support products made utilizing AdvM have sufficient information and process controls in place so that the components will operate effectively to support the attaining, sustaining and completion of flight. This policy provides users, commanders and US Army aviation enterprise stakeholders with the processes related to the categorization and types of supporting data necessary for airworthiness approval. The policy also provides the appropriate path to initiate an airworthiness assessment for these parts, components and support products.
About our speaker:
Mark Ratliff is an aerospace engineer who has been supporting US Army Aviation for the past 11 years as a member of the Systems Readiness Directorate (SRD). During his time he has served in multiple capacities at SRD including structural engineer on OH-58, systems engineer supporting both the US Army Fleet and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) partner AH-64 aircraft, and currently as the rapid response integration manager supporting the Prototype Integration Facility as an Airworthiness advisor on all platforms. He has also spent time at the Multi-national Aviation Special Projects Office (MASPO) as the technical lead for the AH-6i aircraft.