Background Paper on Aerospace & Missile Needs

Abstract : This brief background paper or overview focuses on the major known and anticipated needs for environmentally acceptable materials and processes used in the original manufacture (OEM), and subsequent maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of aerospace weapon systems, including missiles, and support equipment necessary for sustainability and mission readiness. The term environmentally acceptable is used here in a broad sense, and includes worker occupational safety and health issues, productivity, and compliance issues, as well as cost effectiveness. The latter is important, as will be shown later, because most changes are not driven by environmental issues alone. In addition, aerospace weapon systems in this context refer to rotary and fixed wing aircraft, for offensive, defensive, support, and training missions, and the ground support equipment needed to keep these assets available, ready and operational in a wide range of environments. These environments include cold weather, tropical, desert, and marine locations around the world, and the performance requirements associated with existing metal surface treatments cannot be compromised in the search for non-hazardous and non-polluting alternatives. As a corollary, for any given application (weapon system, surface treatment requiring an alternative, and operating environment) a satisfactory solution may not be appropriate for a different application. As a result, there may be a need for several alternatives for a coating replacement depending on the end use. The surface finishing of metallic materials is a broad topic. There are many pretreatments, coatings or surface modifications, and post-treatments that may be employed in defense MRO operations. In Figure 1 an attempt has been made to classify these different processes and summarize the main compliance and/or occupational safety and health associated with each.