Modern tactical aircraft subsystems face challenging weight and volume limitations. In addition, power and thermal subsystems have grown increasingly flight critical with each successive generation. Consequently, next generation power and thermal systems must reliably operate under narrower margins to enable electrically and thermally demanding capabilities, such as directed energy weapons. The ability to narrow these margins is ultimately limited by the ability to guarantee mission objectives despite variations and uncertainty in power and thermal system performance. This paper demonstrates online prognostic methods applied to a fuel thermal management system. Furthermore, this paper highlights the need for future research to quantify the effects on mission objectives caused by discrepancies between nominal and actual conditions for aircraft designs based on models of highly integrated systems.
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