Open Standard Approach for Parallel Development of High Performance C4ISR/EW Capabilities for Ground Vehicles

Ground Combat Vehicles mission requirements challenge the Military and Aerospace community to provide the right amount of electronics into constrained size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) for any given capability. The military system integrator has to balance the physical, thermal and electrical constraints of the vehicle against the vast amount of compute power required to provide signal processing for C4ISR/EW applications. Due to processor silicon limitations, system integrators typically develop optimized proprietary box-level systems. The issue is that Moore’s Law and changes in mission can make these single-use systems already obsolete by the time they are finally adopted by the armed forces. Curtiss-Wright’s experience in open standard-based High Performance Embedded Computing (HPEC) provides a unique perspective for the use of open architecture scalable signal processing for highly SWaP-C constrained Military Vehicles. The open standard approach allows for well-managed and planned technology refresh that mitigates obsolescence, and provides the system integrator with parallel paths of software and hardware development to successfully meet the fielding milestones.