Air Force Is Up, Up and Away on ETM Conversions

Status reports on a number of conversion projects involving U.S. Air Force electronic technical manuals (ETMs) were offered at the USAF XML Users Group meeting in late November.  For instance, for the B-52 aircraft program, 221 out of 360 Technical Orders (Air Force parlance for technical manuals) have already been completed.  Another 113 TOs are works in progress; and, with 26 remaining, there are about 29,000 pages still needing to be converted.  All the TOs are now being converted to SGML, with XML to be available in FY 2002.

 Boeing photo of the B-52 Stratofortress

The B-52 TO Improvement program, which began in 1996, is targeting such technical manuals as flight, weapon delivery, weapon load, and maintenance.  In the process, more than 123,000 pages were eliminated in FY2000 due to deleted pages or rescinded TOs.

The conversion-to-SGML portion of the project just started in March, and is now 10% complete.  Currently, there is concurrent support for both the existing paper format as well as digital delivery.

Boeing (Military Aerospace Support, Wichita, KS) is the prime contractor for the B-52 TO Program for the Air Force.  Data Conversion Laboratory is assisting Boeing with the initial data conversion work.

To view the B-52 conversion program presentation and other USAF ETMs status briefings, go to: http://www.pdsm.wpafb.af.mil/XML/Main%20Screen.htm and follow the menu items to the November 2000 Meeting and then Briefings.