Off the shelf gear in military a/c

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.


--
http://www.delversdungeon.dragonsfoot.org
Remove the X's in my email address to respond.
"Damn you Silvey, and your endless fortunes." - Stephen Weir
I hate furries.

When we were producing CPUs for the military we built all to MilSpec and
tested to that spec. Those that passed were sold to the military for one
price. Those that did not went for personal computers sold to the public at
a lower price. Both parties were happy

WDA

end

"Bill Silvey" wrote in message
...
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.


--
http://www.delversdungeon.dragonsfoot.org
Remove the X's in my email address to respond.
"Damn you Silvey, and your endless fortunes." - Stephen Weir
I hate furries.

Bill Silvey wrote in message
...
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.

--

Scott
--------
"Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded
reporters pulled out. Back when we got the news directly from Iraq,
there was victory and optimism. Now that the news is filtered through
the mainstream media here in America, all we hear is death and
destruction and quagmire..." Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2003/091703.htm

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

When I was still on active duty, we were doing some navigation experiments
with moving map technology in the MC-130E. Basically we took a handheld
Garmin GPS and cabled it to two Dell laptops running a flight planning
program. Additionally we did some radio tie-ins to get real time e-mail
over HF for inflight updates. besides text, we pushed photos from plane to
ground, plane to plane and ground to plane. All was commercial software,
and except for the secure HF radio it was commercial hardware.
--
Les
F-4C(WW),D,E,G(WW)/AC-130A/MC-130E EWO (ret)



"John Penta" wrote in message
...
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.

Not aircraft, to be sure, but the Marines in Iraq much preferred
civilian GPS models to military issue.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

"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

"Cub Driver" wrote in message Not aircraft, to be sure, but the Marines
in Iraq much preferred
civilian GPS models to military issue.

all the best -- Dan Ford
Haven't hearde from Tex recently?
"Tex Houston" wrote in message
...
Does it contain anything about military aviation?

Tex

Haven't hearde from Tex recently?

Perhaps he's in my kill file?

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at www.warbirdforum.com
and the Piper Cub Forum at www.pipercubforum.com

In article , "Bill Silvey"
wrote:

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 and No.
For systems intended for transport platforms where the environment is
fairly benign, ruggedized commercial or even pure commercial
may work. These systems do not usually meet long-term reliability
and life requirements though, and are usually larger and heavier than
purpose-built military systems.
For pointy nosed aircraft, it's rare to see COTS. The environment is too
severe, and space and power constraints too much.
Lots of co-ax, but usually better performing connectors than commercial
RJ45s.
From a functionality standpoint, networks need to be much more secure
that commercial hardware and software can provide. Often the airborne
networks and NICs are high-rel, secure derivatives of commercial
hardware and software. If you can get a copy of the Fibrechannel
Avionics Environment spec, you can see that it is a subset of the commercial
Fibrechannel set of specs, which defines those functions necessary for
avionics and military use that are not necessarily present in the
commercial version. We had to work with the commercial guys for years
to make sure certain things were in the commercial specs so we could
use them in the avionics spec, even though the commercial guys didn't think
they needed them. I mention FC because it is the most widely used high-
bandwidth network going into military fighters.
Real time performance and deterministic behavior are also crucial in
avionics applications. Much of what passes for "real time" in commercial
networks is woefully inadequate for military or even commercial avionics
use.
This is a huge subject with many details.

--
Harry Andreas
Engineering raconteur