Off the shelf gear in military a/c

"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.

ISTR reading about a roll-on/roll-off communications/network support
package designed for use on the KC-135, allowing it to serve a dual
role in theater as both tanker and data relay, and IIRC the racks were
specified to enable upgrades to take advantage of
commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology. I also recall that there
was talk of refitting the Navy's S-3B's with COTS computers; not sure
if anything came of it. Though not in the aviation vein, I do know
that our heavy division's tactical network (TACWEB) used plain old
Ethernet cards back in 2000, tied into the Mobile Subscriber Equipment
(think of a fusion of FM and cellular phone tech in a big green box)
system as a backbone, and a number of Army units were using various
civilian software packages to support their tactical needs (we used
Explorer on our TACWEB and purchased ArcView GIS for use in our
engineer HQ, and XVIII Airborne Corps/30th Engr BN (Topo) used
commercial GIS software for a lot of their mapping/battlefield
visualization support).

Brooks