Management Overview of System Technical Support Plan for the FIREFINDER System Support Center.

The Radar Sets ANTPQ-36 and ANTPQ-37 represent the state of the art in counter-mortar and counter-artillery radars. Both systems are computer controlled and depend on software for controlling hardware and processing target information. This dependency on software for operating the radar could lead to a major maintenance support problem. The high degree of interaction between the software and hardware makes it difficult to determine whether or not the cause of a fault is software or hardware. A field repairman could exhaust all of his hardware troubleshooting techniques and still not determine the problem is the fault was in the software. Field maintenance personnel must have a new method for dealing with software problems to adequately support FIREFINDER systems. Under this plan, the FIREFINDER System Support Center FFSSC is a part of the Electronic Research and Development Commands ERADCOM Software Support Center. The personnel at the FFSSC are trained in both the system software and hardware. The FFSSCs responsibilities are 1 to assist field personnel in determining if a problem is caused by a hardware or software fault, and 2 to correct any software faults. This can be done, depending on circumstances, through telephone calls or onsite visits. The FFSSC also assists the system manager in solving hardware faults.