Electrical Power System Upgrade Methodology for In-Service Aircraft

With today's trend toward reduced spending for new weapons systems comes the desire to extend the useful life of existing airframes, and to upgrade aircraft and mission avionics suites to meet the existing and future threat. While upgrades may include structural and avionics improvements, the electric power system usually remains unchanged; often becoming the major cause of aborted missions and aircraft down-time. A specific need exists to identify a systematic approach for developing improvements to existing electric power systems. This paper explores this problem and develops a methodology which could be applied to its solution.