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The task of improving situational awareness for military pilots in a tough budget climate with little development funding available requires designers to use open architectures and common standards to keep costs down. This trend also has fueled the enthusiasm behind the FACE Consortium, which promises long-term potential savings of billions of dollars by enabling software reuse across multiple avionics platforms.
Department of Defense (DoD) leaders want their pilots to have the best technology possible to do their jobs – whether it is a new touch-screen primary flight display, night vision goggles, 3D flight simulation systems, or even a brand-new aircraft to replace a decades-old platform. However, today’s economic climate will not allow for new fighter jets or helicopters, so military program managers need to compromise and find ways to keep older aircraft platforms flying while still enhancing capability for the pilot.
** This article appeared in the March 2013 edition of Military Embedded Systems and features commentary from Simon Collins, Product Manager for GE Intelligent Platforms, GPGPU and Graphics product lines.