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Avionics Testbed Helps Integrate Equipment for Air Force July 2003
As civilian airspace grows more and more crowded, worldwide air traffic control organizations are mandating that aircraft be equipped with increasingly sophisticated communications, navigation, and surveillance systems. This equipment allows planes to fly in preferred airspace, using the most efficient and fastest routes. To take advantage of these routes, the U.S. Air Force must update its cargo and tanker aircraft through the Global Air Traffic Management (GATM) program to meet new international standards for communications, navigation, and surveillance. Otherwise, Department of Defense air mobility forces will be restricted to slower air routes and altitudes that could impede their missions. An Integration Tool To help address the problem, the Air Force's Electronic Systems Center (ESC) and MITRE developed an innovative facility to test and reduce the integration risk of a broad range of air traffic control subsystems. The Reconfigurable Cockpit and Avionics Testbed, or RCAT (pronounced R-Cat), is a unique facility that both completely tests these systems in real time and can be reconfigured for different aircraft, regardless of whether they employ high frequency (HF), very high frequency (VHF), or satellite communications. And since it never leaves the ground, the RCAT doesn't incur the high overhead costs of using real aircraft. The RCAT is so realistic and complete with real-time aeronautical data links that it has its own aircraft tail number and is considered by its datalink service provider (DSP) to be a single-tail number airline. (A DSP is similar to an Internet service provider; instead of Internet messaging, a DSP delivers messages from the aircraft to the airline and vice versa.) The ESC-Global Air Traffic Operations/Mobility Command and Control program office is using the RCAT to help make the Air Force's aircraft compatible with worldwide air traffic control systems. This work involves adapting the avionics systems—which are designed for civilian aircraft—so that they contain the functionality needed by the Air Force to reduce or eliminate various risks. The RCAT has addressed the security issues associated with the commercial data network infrastructure; interoperability issues between different vendors' equipment; man/machine issues in the cockpit; and understanding operational and procedural issues of the new air traffic control data links.
Collaborating across operating centers, MITRE staff modified the design of a cockpit structure built for MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD). The staff created the RCAT cockpit from CAASD's original plans, with almost no additional engineering costs, and enhanced the CAASD configuration to make the RCAT similar to an Air Mobility Command military aircraft. In addition to the cockpit mockup, the RCAT facility includes an avionics equipment room, computers, and a VHF Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System ground station. Reconfigurable for a Variety of Aircraft A variety of equipment can be installed in the RCAT's cockpit, enabling users to simulate a wide range of military aircraft for testing equipment or software in a controlled environment. With the appropriate equipment, the RCAT can mimic just about any aircraft going through the GATM upgrade, such as the KC-135 tanker or the C-5 cargo plane. The ESC/MITRE team conducts RCAT testing in real time and uses real air traffic communication links. With its antennas, plus the proper approvals, the RCAT lab is essentially a completely qualified airplane with a tail number. When properly coordinated, an air traffic controller sitting at a workstation can communicate with the RCAT and view its position. Since the RCAT appears on air traffic control monitors as a real aircraft, actual air traffic control networks can be used to check communication system availability, throughput, and delay. Other labs that test avionics subsystems by simulating air traffic communications with computers cannot test as completely. The ESC/MITRE team showcased the RCAT's capabilities to a broad audience during the Air Force's Joint Expeditionary Force Experiments in 1999 and 2000, demonstrating the use of GATM communications systems for military command and control (C2). The team established how communications could be improved by using commercial data links in place of voice between an aircraft and the Tanker Airlift Command Center. Sending an aircraft's position report by voice over an HF frequency might take 100 seconds to send, whereas using data communications takes only two to three seconds. The exercise proved that C2 message traffic could coexist with air traffic control message traffic without interference. Great Collaboration The development and operation of the RCAT required extensive knowledge of both military and commercial avionics. The program also required a broad knowledge of aviation technology available today. Because MITRE is a not-for-profit organization chartered to work in the public interest, competing vendors feel comfortable sending their prototype products to us for government-sponsored interoperability testing. We can help mature their products before they are deployed by government organizations, such as the Air Force, thus avoiding expensive integration problems later on. The ESC/MITRE team continues to use the RCAT to improve air mobility for the Air Force by:
—by David Van Cleave |
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| Page last updated: March 19, 2004 | Top of page |
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