Driving design - military vehicle digitisation

Tag : Voice Intercom System

Getting information and data to and from military vehicles on themove has always been a challenge and considerable time, effort andresources have been devoted to achieving this, often with mixedresults.
However, the complexity of modern platforms has seen further issuesarise in recent years - how to ensure the distribution, managementand access of information not only sent to the platform but alsothat generated by the vehicle's myriad systems.
Where once voice commands to crew members over a simplecopper-wired intercom headset were sufficient, and simpleautomotive management systems were state of the art, now onboardsensors, mission and weapon systems require ever more advancedinternal infrastructure to integrate and ensure coherence betweenall subsystems.
This requires an electronic architecture (EA) to host current andfuture systems seamlessly, the requirement for which is prompting aconvergence of technology and approach between vehicle electronics(vetronics) and the aviation sector.
The UK's new Terrier Combat Engineer Vehicle, for example, has halfthe software code of a Tornado aircraft, while contractor BAESystems has said that, in developing the Terrier's next-generationarchitecture, much of the technology and processes have been takenfrom the Eurofighter Typhoon fighter aircraft.
The development of EA is at the core of designs for the nextgeneration of armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs) including theUnited States' Future Combat Systems (FCS), the UK's Future RapidEffect System (FRES) and France's Scorpion programmes.
Steve Turner, FRES System of Systems Integrator (SOSI) director forThales Land and Joint Systems, outlined the approach to theprogramme's EA. "The key principles are what they have always been:open, modular and scalable. It has to be consistent with VehicleSystems Integration [VSI] guidelines," he said. "We don't want aproprietary architecture that locks a particular organisation in."
Turner said that the open architecture is central, adding: "We arenot expecting the architecture for FRES to be such a complex beastyou would need an enormous amount of configuration management forit."
The SOSI, together with the UK's Defence Science and TechnologyLaboratory and engineering consultant Atkins - the latter managingthe EA Technology Demonstrator Programmes (TDPs), which wereawarded in 2005 - have been evaluating outputs from these studies.
The TDPs were undertaken by two teams: Lockheed Martin UK's ISISteam, which includes Cranfield University, PA Consulting, SciSys,Smiths Aerospace and Ultra Electronics; and Thales teamed with BAESystems and QinetiQ.
These will be used to help establish a through-life EA strategy forFRES. The requirement will then be flowed down into the vehicleprovider teams for each of the vehicle types, beginning with theFRES Utility Vehicle (UV) integration contract.