SAN FRANCISCO, 31 Jan. 2012. U.S. Navy and U.S. Army officials joined forces with aerospace and defense industry leaders, including executives from Lockheed Martin and Rockwell Collins, to help ensure warfighters can benefit from continued software innovations, both more quickly and more affordably, despite anticipated U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) budget cuts. The Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium has released the FACE Technical Standard, providing guidelines for creating a common operating environment to support applications across multiple DOD avionics systems.

ALAMEDA, Calif., 22 Jan. 2011. Real-time software specialist Wind River in Alameda, Calif., is introducing RTCA DO-178C safety-critical software capability to the company's VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) software. Wind River is adding DO-178C Level A certification evidence support VxWorks Cert Platform, for federated systems, and VxWorks 653 Platform, for ARINC 653 space and time partitioned, multi-vendor integrated modular avionics (IMA) systems.

Jan. 4, 2012 By Chris Murray.

When it comes to a sound certification practice, commercial and military avionics are light years ahead of the pack. DO-178 certification, first introduced in the 1980s, represents the gold-standard, requiring companies to comply with software processes that mandate requirements traceability, software architecture and coding guidance, comprehensive testing of all code, and the production of certifiable products. Both commercial and military industries boast the healthiest record on system safety. And, largely due to these processes, projects such as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) are recognized for the highest levels of design and safety integrity.

BOHEMIA, N.Y., 29 Nov 2011. Data Device Corp. (DDC) in Bohemia, N.Y., is introducing a hardware/software development kit that with tools to help avionics and other systems designers implement MIL-STD-1553 avionics databus boards using the DDC Total-AceXtreme MIL-STD-1553 single package. The kit provides support to accelerate development and deployment while capitalizing on the AceXtreme architecture, company officials say.

NEW YORK, 22 Nov. 2011. Advanced Micro Peripherals in New York is introducing the H264-ULL-PMC low-latency, dual-channel H.264 encoder on a PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) for time-critical applications in real-time control, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other defense applications, transportation, traffic monitoring and control, video digital recording and internet streaming, electronic news gathering, simulation, and remote video surveillance. The H264-ULL-PMC can capture and compress as many as two analog video inputs of resolutions as fine as 1,080 pixels to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Part 10) standard.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, 17 Nov. 2011. Qatar Airways engineers will install the new Electronic Flight Folder (EFF) from Boeing (NYSE:BA) on the company’s current fleet of Boeing 777 aircraft, as well as its future Boeing 787 fleet. The addition enables transmission of day-of-flight data, including flight plans and weather information, directly to the airplane’s electronic flight bag (EFB). Qatar Airways officials expect the carrier to begin using the EFF in 2012.

OKLAHOMA CITY, 10 Nov. 2011. The Boeing Company [NYSE:BA] won from U.S. Air Force officials a $57 million follow-on contract for additional upgrades to the B-1 bomber fleet avionics software. Boeing engineers are starting design and development work on Sustainment Block 16A (SB 16A), which includes changes to the aircraft's navigation, weapon delivery, radar, diagnostics, electrical multiplexing, communication/navigation management system software, and controls and displays. SB 16A will improve the B-1 crew's situational awareness via new color cockpit displays, data link, and sensor capabilities.

BOSTON, 28 Sept. 2011. Software source-code analysis tools specialist GrammaTech Inc. in Ithaca, N.Y., is introducing the next version of the company's CodeSonar tool for detecting defects in complex application software. The newest CodeSonar release has program-analysis algorithms that identify data races and other serious concurrency defects, as well as code-level metrics. GrammaTech made the announcement this week at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston. The GrammaTech CodeSonar tool can apply concurrency analysis to multi-threaded software for single- and multi-core programs. CodeSonar finds data races, deadlock, and process starvation by using symbolic execution techniques to reason about possible execution paths and interleavings simultaneously.

BOSTON, 28 Sept. 2011. Two major software design and development tools companies are joining forces to provide an integrated environment that offers independent verification and traceability of software artifacts involving requirements, model elements, or tests through the software to help systems designers meet the requirements of software standards such as DO-178B/C, IEC 62304, ISO 26262, IEC 61508. LDRA Ltd. headquartered in Monks Ferry, England, with U.S. operations in San Bruno, Calif., is teaming with The MathWorks in Natick, Mass., to combine the LDRA tool suite with Simulink modelling tools to assist in software standards compliance. The companies made the announcement this week at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston.

ORLANDO, Fla., 23 Sept. 2011. U.S. Navy helicopter avionics designers are looking to the Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control business unit in Orlando, Fla., to provide the Target Sight System (TSS), which provides fire control and targeting for the U.S. Marine Corps AH-1Z Cobra attack helicopter. Lockheed Martin will do the work under terms of a $49.9 million follow-on production contract from the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) in Washington, company officials announced this week. NSWC awarded the first TSS production contract in March 2008, followed by a second production contract in June 2010.

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin, 16 Sept. 2011. The Boeing Class 3 Electronic Flight Bag (EFB), for which Astronautics Corp. of America provides hardware, has flown on the certified freighter version of the Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet. The Boeing 747-8 freighter, for which the Astronautics EFB is an option, completed its final certification flight test on August 3 and received full certification on August 19. Luxembourg-based Cargolux Airlines is expected to receive the 747-8 freighter equipped with the Astronautics EFB this month.

STAMFORD, Conn., 2 Sept. 2011. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research engineers have revealed findings of a study on the fuel- and carbon-reduction benefits of surface departure metering performed at JFK International Airport. Representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the airlines operating at the airport, and PASSUR Aerospace, under the leadership of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, collaborated on the departure metering program.

WASHINGTON, 29 Aug. 2011. Raytheon Company (NYSE:RTN) officials demonstrated the company’s unmanned aircraft system (UAS) common ground control system (CGCS) technology for United Kingdom Ministry of Defence representatives. In a Scavenger unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) mission scenario, the Raytheon control station demonstrated simultaneous control of multiple dissimilar vehicles, sensor command and control, and connectivity to external systems, among other capabilities. Raytheon received International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) approval from the U.S. State Department to demonstrate its CGCS to U.K. and French governments last month.

ALPHARETTA, Ga., 25 Aug. 2011. Helicopter avionics subsystem integrators at Lockheed Martin Corp. needed 5-by-5-inch color active matrix liquid crystal display (AMLCD) assemblies for the U.S. Army's AH-64D Apache attack helicopter. They found their solution from the L-3 Communications (NYSE:LLL) Display Systems unit in Alpharetta, Ga. L-3 Display Systems won a Lockheed Martin contract to provide AMLCD assemblies to replace the AH-64D monochromatic display units to enhance the Apache's target acquisition and night vision sensor display capabilities. No dollar value for the contract was released.

ORLANDO, Fla., 24 Aug. 2011. Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT) won from FlightSafety Services Corp. a $5.8 million, one-year contract to manage C-5 aircrew training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, as well as to provide logistical support to six additional training locations, as part of the C-5 Aircrew Training System (ATS) program. The contract, if four one-year options are exercised, totals $30 million. Lockheed Martin personnel, in addition to managing the C-5 Training Systems Support Center and formal training unit at Lackland Air Force Base, will provide logistical training support at: Dover Air Force Base, Del.; Travis Air Force Base, Calif.; Martinsburg Air National Guard Base, W.Va.; Memphis Air National Guard Base, Tenn.; Stewart Air National Guard Base, N.Y.; and Westover Air Reserve Base, Mass.

ARLINGTON, Texas, 24 Aug. 2011. L-3 Link Simulation & Training (L-3 Link) won a contract to build and deliver to the Pakistan Air Force two of its F-16C Block 52 Aircrew Training Devices (ATDs). The company’s simulators are scheduled to be installed and networked at the PAF’s Shahbaz Air Base in 2013. Pakistan Air Force personnel will use the F-16C Block 52 ATDs to support new pilot, pilot conversion, and advanced skills training.

WASHINGTON, 18 Aug. 2011. The ITT Corp. Geospatial Systems segment in Rochester, N.Y., and Mercury Computer Systems Inc. in Chelmsford, Mass., are introducing the Federated Embedded inteL-server for Collaborative Operations (FELCO) processing solution to help transform raw sensor imagery and metadata from manned and unmanned surveillance aircraft into open-standards geospatial intelligence while the surveillance aircraft is still in the air. The sensor-processing tool helps reduce processing time lag and produces a DVR-like product that warfighters in the field can stop, rewind, review in slow motion, and resume live video.

WASHINGTON, 17 Aug. 2011. Pentek Inc. in Upper Saddle River, N.J., is introducing the RTR 2746 real-time data recording and playback instrument for avionics in manned and unmanned aircraft, as well as for other aerospace and defense applications in operation in harsh environments. The multi-channel data recorder can digitize analog inputs as quickly as 200 megasamples per second per channel and stream data to mass storage at an aggregate rate of 1600 megabytes per second. Pentek unveiled the RTR 2746 this week at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Unmanned Systems North America trade show in Washington.

FREMONT, Calif., 16 Aug. 2011. SGI (NASDAQ:SGI) has acquired OpenCFD Ltd., a provider of open-source computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. OpenCFD’s OpenFOAM software solves anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence, and heat transfer to solid dynamics and electromagnetics. CFD tools are commonly employed in the design, development, and testing of unmanned aerial and undersea vehicles, including the flow of air and water around the unmanned designs.