Just wondering about the RSAF today.

With all the new aircraft platforms that they are buying that come with all the high tech stuff in it, it really makes me wonder whether our technicians or specialists can maintain them.

Do our people who maintain our F16s and all the other aircraft that we have go for special training? What kind of qualification do they have? Are they all qualified engineers? Or are the suppliers of the aircraft providing the technical manpower support?

Just a question only coz they are maintaining the very expensive toys that my income tax money bought.

I am sure they will be well-trained to handle the maintenance of these million-dollar toys :rolleyes:

When u say maintain, then which level of maintenance are you refering to?

At "Flight line" level, it's just pressing a button and waiting for the black box to light Green or Red. Red light -> change black box. Seldom you have to check the cabling etc. Then you push it into ST Aero.

At Depot level, they have this wonderful ATE machines. Take out faulty boards and plug into backplane and run the relevant test routines. Some older ones have these 'bed of nails' where the nails probes the tracks and inject test signals to the various IC. But nowadays the ICs comes with test loops burned into the design from day one. Just activate the BITs and the faulty components will be identified.

Sometimes though it doesn't work that perfectly.

Technology in my opinion, de-skills the technicians and simplify things to the point where they stop using their brains as much.

But turn around time improves drastically too.

I don't know about F-16s. But the general practise is that the technicians will be trained on a particular aircraft.

I don't really understand the question about whether technicians are able to maintain them. If you are trained and have the equipment you can maintain it.

Technicians are not engineers... the AEO(Air Engineering Officers) are.

The rest is really up to the person himself