US Air Force Leverages 3D Printing for MQ-9 Maintenance Training

At Creech Air Force Base (AFB) in Indian Springs, Nevada, the 432nd Wing is responsible for operating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in missions ranging from reconnaissance to surveillance to attack. The 432nd Maintenance Group has recently started to see benefits from the incorporation of additive manufacturing (AM) into the operations of the MQ-9 Air Force Engineering and Technical Services (AFETS) team, made up of civilian personnel responsible for maintenance work on the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper.

The MQ-9 AFETS supervisor, Kennon Nichols, along with 432nd Maintenance Group commander Colonel Joseph Deporter, secured funding for two 3D printers to set up the new lab. Despite the relatively minimal initial investment, the AFETS team and the 432nd Maintenance Group have already begun to demonstrate significant improvements to the logistics underlying the work at Creech AFB.

Specifically, the AFETS team has been using the equipment to print spare training parts that are indispensable for getting new maintenance workers up to speed on the MQ-9 MRO protocol. This not only addresses part shortages that had been hampering training efforts at the base, but also drastically lowers the cost of the end-use parts.

In a press release, Remington Young, an MQ-9 AFETS airframe propulsion and generation equipment specialist who serves as an instructor at the lab, said, “It’s a funny story, given that my first 3D printer was from my wife for Christmas in 2016. Now we are printing military training equipment. This tech equips our Airmen with practical skills, saves lives and takes what was a $10,000 part in the past and allows it to be printed at high-speed for $15.”

Eric Pavelka, an MQ-9 Avionics senior equipment specialist, said, “There are a lot of rules when it comes to money and what we’re actually able to purchase, but we all came to the consensus of a legitimate need for printers because we could see the added benefits that it would provide for all of our training. We researched, found some suitable items, and then I coordinated with the MXG Resource Advisor.”

The printing of training aids for the military is an often overlooked application, but because these tools represent such a niche market, they could be an ideal starting point — for both the DoD and its suppliers — for getting on-base AM programs off the ground. The work at Creech AFB is reminiscent of a story from a couple of years ago, involving the Maine Air National Guard’s use of Essentium printers to produce outboard aileron balance tab replicas for training purposes.

The beauty of this class of applications is that it fulfills a multiplicity of functions at once: in addition to enhancing the training operations of maintenance workers, it also serves to familiarize both civilian and military personnel with advanced manufacturing processes. Further, it enables the personnel responsible for the AM programs to play an active role in managing the finances of DoD MRO.

Finally, one curious thing about this story is that if you zoom in on the images of the printers the AFETS team is using, they appear to be made by Bambu Lab. With the incoming Trump administration already on high alert concerning Chinese products in US strategic supply chains, it is hard to imagine there won’t be a hard “Made in USA” mandate for all future purchases of 3D printing equipment by any US government entity, and especially those related to DoD.

Images courtesy of US Air Force/Renee Blundon