Private Data Clouds and Operational Data-sharing Leverages Big Data Experience

Airbus Defence and Space, together with Airbus Helicopters, has launched SMARTFORCE at Farnborough this week – a suite of services aimed at enabling military operators to exploit the data gathered by their aircraft to enhance operational safety, boost mission availability and reduce maintenance and associated support costs. Bringing the power of data to military operations, Airbus is extending its highly successful introduction of advanced data analytics in the civil aviation community to the defence market with the launch of SMARTFORCE.

The system incorporates on-site private data clouds to support specific military security requirements and also lays the ground for operational data-sharing between willing allies.  The resulting enhanced decision-making reduces the maintenance burden and boosts fleet availability. It will enable substantially more efficient maintenance by drilling into the wealth of data acquired by new generation helicopters and aircraft, such as the NH90, A400M and A330 MRTT, resulting in new standards of aircraft availability and the freeing of resources to focus on mission execution. SMARTFORCE builds on the successful experience of Airbus with its SKYWISE open data platform for the civil sector, which now hosts the data of more than 2,000 aircraft at over a dozen airlines following its launch last year.

To satisfy military security requirements, SMARTFORCE incorporates robust security measures such as geographic isolation, the use of accredited personnel, and monitoring by national cyber-security authorities.

“SMARTFORCE helps military operators to accelerate their own digital transformation in order to allow them to improve their operational readiness. Our vision is to enable data-driven new capabilities to support our customers in extracting more value from our in-service products. By breaking information siloes, Airbus teams can more rapidly perform root-cause analysis and faster trouble shooting, providing our customers with more efficient customer support […] Our digital analytics services support the goal of enhanced mission readiness of our operators’ aircraft. They optimise maintenance practices, enable better informed and data-driven decision-making, and provide predictive solutions which all contribute to reduced workload and costs,” explained Head of Military Aircraft Services at Airbus Defence and Space, Stephan Miegel.

“SMARTFORCE will play a key role in fulfilling our greater goal of supporting our customers by leveraging the value of data for simpler, safer and more efficient operations […] Our Connected Services offer will now be able to encompass the diversity of our customers with both SKYWISE Connected Services for civil operators and SMARTFORCE for military operators,” added Airbus Helicopters EVP Support/Services, Matthieu Louvot.