By Murray A. Hansen, Brig Gen (Ret), USAF — Executive Vice President, American Data Solutions
September 10, 2026 — As Air Force and industry leaders prepare to gather at the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) Air, Space & Cyber Conference next week, much of the discussion will understandably focus on new platforms, AI, autonomy, digital engineering, acquisition speed, and future combat capability.
I would add five questions from the sustainment side:
1. Why should a maintainer supporting one of the world's most sophisticated weapon systems still have to search multiple systems and static publications to find the information needed to troubleshoot it?
2. Do we have a truly authoritative, configuration-controlled digital technical-data environment—or simply electronic versions of documents created for an earlier era?
3. Can our maintenance information operate effectively at the flight line, depot, and forward location when connectivity is degraded or unavailable?
4. Are we collecting enough information from the maintenance process itself to improve troubleshooting, training, engineering, reliability, and fleet-level decision-making?
And perhaps most importantly:
5. If AI is going to transform military sustainment, is the underlying technical data structured, authoritative, current, and accessible enough for AI to trust?
Those questions matter because digital sustainment is not primarily an IT issue.
It is a readiness issue.
At American Data Solutions, we have been addressing these problems through MDDV and our work in interactive technical data and digital sustainment.
I look forward to discussing them with Air Force leaders, maintainers, program offices, OEMs, and industry partners at the AFA Air, Space & Cyber Conference. If you're working on these issues, I'd particularly enjoy hearing your perspective.
What would you add as Question #6? Tell us — or find the ADS team at the conference.
Murray A. Hansen is Executive Vice President of American Data Solutions. A retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General and Master Navigator with more than 3,200 flight hours, he brings 33+ years of aerospace and defense experience to ADS's work in technical data, maintenance, and logistics modernization. This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
