Auston Vandersteen is the technical director at Universal Synaptics, as well as an active-duty military member.
Vandersteen notes that his military experience has informed his aviation career, sharing, “Joining the USAF and learning about all aspects of aviation, aircraft launch and recovery. Maintenance and sustainment operations, intermittent fault troubleshooting and root cause analysis to remediate No Fault Found (NFF) test results.”
Vandersteen is especially proud of earning honors like 2025 USAF NCO Maintenance Professional of the Year and leading the Universal Synaptics teams participation in the F-35 “Frankenjet” project. He notes that the project “saved U.S. Taxpayers $63 million dollars.”
On Auston’s work in maintenance, Kenneth Anderson of Universal Synaptics says, “Auston quickly diagnosed and repaired a leaking brake assembly, enabling the release of 40 PGMs and 3.5 thousand rounds of 25mm ammo during a two-week sortie surge. His leadership in resolving 321 MX actions, and 15 urgent MX issues directly contributed to the generation of 1.5 thousand sorties, 2.5 thousand flight hours towards the 419 FW's annual FHP.”
As the aircraft maintenance industry continues to evolve, Vandersteen hopes to keep seeing advancements in test equipment and tooling. He adds, “[I would like to see] industry-wide adoption of advanced capabilities to aid in the maintenance and sustainment of DoD and commercial aircraft.”
Discussing his favorite aspects of his job and the aviation industry, Vandersteen says, “It’s innovative, and what I do every day supports our nation and the warfighter as well as our foreign partners and allies.”
He adds, “[I enjoy] working every day to reduce the $5.5 billion non-value-added expense of intermittent and No Fault Found across the DoD.”
Vandersteen also highlights “the successful troubleshooting and repair of a complex issue and then seeing that aircraft return to air worthiness,” as well as, “training new technicians and certifying them as Intermittent Fault Detection & Isolation System 2.0 (IFDIS 2.0) and Portable Intermittent Fault Detector (PIFD) operators.”
To this next generation of aircraft maintenance technicians, Vandersteen advises, “Never underestimate what you can achieve through collaboration and hard work. Partnerships are a vital part of the defense and aviation industry, the right internal and external partnerships will help set you up for success.”
