MilitaryKeeping Secrets in Integrated Avionics In the not-too-distant future, military aircraft may receive and exchange classified data with a variety of systems, as nodes in a global network. At the same time, military aircraft are equipping with…
MilitaryPerspective: The MOSA Approach in Defense Acquisition In November 1994, the u.s. undersecretary of Defense for acquisition and technology charted the Open Systems Joint Task Force (OSJTF) to accelerate the acceptance and understanding of open systems for weapon systems…
CommercialOnboard File Servers A third, and perhaps the most significant, revision to an ARINC standard is being hammered out by the Airline Electronic Engineering Committee's (AEEC's) Aircraft Network and File Server (ANFS) subcommittee. "Security is…
CommercialSafety: Perils of a Lone Positioning Source A tiny but significant window into the sequence of a near-catastrophe at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, came from a passenger's naive question during a later British Mediterranean Airways flight to Beirut. By coincidence,…
ATM ModernizationScan U.S. Galileo Counter-Offer Worried about the impact of Europe's coming Galileo satnav system on the U.S. military's prized but not yet fielded M-Code for GPS, the U.S. government has proposed an alternative…
CommercialSynthetic Vision: No Longer Futuristic Little more than a decade ago, Gordon Pratt, president of Chelton Flight Systems, was asked why there were no new electronic flight instrument system (EFIS) products and why manufacturers of new-design aircraft…
Business & GAWireless Undeterred Despite a number of unanswered questions regarding interference risks posed by wireless Internet access or the use of personal electronic devices (PEDs) on board aircraft (January 2004), airlines and bizjet operators are…
Business & GAPaving the Way for Airborne Broadband Broadband–true broadband, prefixing bits per second with "mega" rather than "kilo"–is high on the wish list of people wanting to stay connected while on the move. Corporate executives and government officials, used…