MK-92 Fire Control System

Sierra is currently assisting the Navy in producing an "Expert System" to allow repairmen on ships to repair the MK-92 Fire Control System much more efficiently by running the expert system to help guide them in repairing and calibrating the MK-92 Fire Control System.

Currently the system has three major modules (MOD 1, MOD 2, and MOD6) for each of the different type of Fire Control Systems.  The initial modules were implemented using an expert system shell from Symbologic called Adept.  Symbologic abandoned the software, thus would not totally support OSs beyond Windows 98.  Subsequent versions of the modules were written in Visual Basic.  The newer version of the expert system "launches" the Adept versions of the software and has been written to run either from the hard drive after installation or directly from a CD so that it does not install a single file to the hard driver.  As a result the software does not have to be validated to run on the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI).  While Adept provided a means to construct interface screens that are attached to a node, the Visual Basic version uses VISIO drawings to determine what nodes to "jump" to and from.  The hybrid was created so that the Navy would not have to pay to convert all the Adept programming to Visual Basic.  

Additional capabilities are being programmed into the modules and a proposal has been submitted to the Coast Guard by the Navy to produce an expert system for the M75 Gun.

The goal of these systems is to save time, repair parts and most importantly to reduce the amount of training the Sailors have to have to repair this Fire Control System.