Case Study: US Air Force achieves rapid, microsecond‑accurate flight‑data processing with Dell EMC ILIAD

EMC FTRSEG develops web-enabled post processing system for C-130 AMP Program

The US Air Force at Edwards AFB needed to process and analyze massive IRIG‑106 Chapter 10 telemetry from C-130 AMP test aircraft—100–200 GB per flight and nearly 100 TB over hundreds of flights—while providing microsecond time correlation, configurable conversion algorithms, replicated storage between Edwards and Boeing sites, remote job submission, and real‑time onboard displays. Dell EMC (via its Federal Test Range Solutions Engineering Group) was engaged and supplied EMC ILIAD (ILIAD WebQLS), CLARiiON storage, custom software and EMC Professional Services to meet these requirements.

Dell EMC customized and deployed the ILIAD SQL Server solution on primary and secondary servers at Edwards and Long Beach, enabling web‑based job requests, user‑defined conversions of raw PCM to engineering units, real‑time processing from onboard recorders, and site replication. The implementation handled 100–200 GB per flight (nearly 100 TB archived), delivered data turnaround in under eight hours for engineers, was used by 60+ flight‑test engineers, and helped accelerate program milestones (including a test flight completed three weeks early), while providing microsecond time‑correlated results.

US Air Force

Brian Zeigler

Advisory Solutions Architect