On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 17:06:09 -0500, "tscottme"
wrote:

Bill Silvey wrote in message
m...
Hey all...

Has there been a move towards using consumer goods, particularly
electronics, on military a/c? I was watching something about the
AWACS
recently and I thought to myself "I wonder how those systems are all
networked." - which set the ball rolling and I began to wonder if
indeed
there were coax or RJ45 connectors someplace underneath all of that
leading
into 10/100 or 10BaseT network cards.


Yes, there is a push to use more COTS (commercial, off-the-shelf)
equipment where possible.

Such that the ANR (Active Noise Reduction) equipment (and I believe
much else) on the modern US combat vehicle crewman's helmet/headset is
basically Bose's commercial gear, only ruggedized, AFAIK.

Apparently, the sound quality (and the improvement in hearing
protection) is measurably better than the previous version used with
the VIC/3. I BELIEVE variants of the same helmet design are due to
find themselves in the helmets of helo pilots, but am unsure. The
basic pattern is the same, anyhow: Where they can pull it off without
a quality difference, usually the military will just buy ruggedized
versions of commercial gear. So, not ENTIRELY the stuff one can buy at
CompUSA (namely, the government gets their cabling manufactured by
white-collar criminals at your friendly neighborhood medium-security
prison for a lot less than minimum wage (whereas CompUSA's cabling is
made in China for a lot less than minimum wage)), but close.

John