Vehicle Intelligent Performance Enabled Retrofit (VIPER)

The United States has a mechanized military that relies heavily on fuel availability. Delivering large quantities of fuel is a logistical burden. Besides the cost of the fuel itself, we must transport it, store it, and protect it. Fuel convoys are large targets moving along predicable paths. They expose soldiers and contractors to great dangers, and are a favorite target for terrorist attacks. Considering the difficulties of fuel logistics in our current conflicts, we need to think ahead to future conflicts and ensure that we are able to deliver whatever levels of fuel are required. 21st Century Systems, Incorporated is pleased to propose to research and develop a solution to the problem of development of vehicle fuel maintenance and powertrain prognostics system that can be easily installed, requires minimal hardware, and operates alongside existing logistics tools. We call our Phase I concept Vehicle Intelligent Performance Enabled Retrofit, or VIPER. VIPER will be a COTS based system where an embedded processor monitors, diagnoses, predicts, and offers advice to the operator. An off-board system builds vehicle performance models based on accumulated data uploaded from many vehicles. The offboard system also provides maintenance related prognostics and logistics reports.