DoD increasingly asking industry to find new ways to open up legacy systems: sources
NewsApril 10, 2024
NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland. The Department of Defense is increasingly asking industry to find new ways to make systems more open not just with new technology but also with legacy platforms, sources said at the annual Sea-Air-Space exposition.
While open architecture has long been a growing emphasis in the military, Luke Schmidt, senior director of business development at RTX subidiary Collins Aerospace, says he has noticed that it is a top customer request when designing systems for legacy platforms. The company is currently working on opportunities to open up systems on UH-60 Blackhawk, AH-64 Apache, and CH-47 Chinook helicopters, he said.
The Navy is trying to "get away from this black box mentality" and find ways to standardize a chassis where the operator can pull a card out and put a new card in depending on what kind of software they want on the platform, Schmidt said.
The company had a digital cockpit on display at the show demonstrating what an aircraft with a more open systems approach might look like. The digital cockpit had a range of displays that could be changed depending on what information the pilot wants to see. The cockpit would allow any vendor to develop software that could display on one of those screens.
The main goal of opening up avionics systems in this way is to improve pilot situational awareness, Schmidt said. The ideal end state would be to reduce the amount of manual flying and make the pilot more of a manager of the mission.
"So it's really about the sensors and how we provide that information to the pilots so they can make the right decision at the right time," he said.
