THE FUTURE OF AIRCRAFT SURVIVABILITY


FIGURE 1


with a powerful opportunity to reduce costs, increase effectiveness and enhance survivability. Tese systems employ mod- ular and open architectures that simplify integration and enable rapid component upgrades as technology advances.


THE VISION Trough its


Intelligence and Informa-


tion Warfare Directorate (I2WD), the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineer- ing Center (CERDEC), a subordinate organization of the U.S. Army Materiel Command’s Research, Development and Engineering Command, has established Integrated Air and Ground- Survivability as a strategic focus for its S&T programs.


THE HIERARCHY OF SURVIVABILITY


Aircraft survivability relies on a series of stages to return the aircraft to service. If an aircraft cannot avoid detection by an adversary, it should try to avoid engagement. If the aircraft is engaged, it should then try to avoid or absorb damage and, if all else fails, at least attempt to avoid destruction. A variety of survivability systems and technologies address each stage of this progression. (SOURCE: U.S. Army CERDEC)


Tat strategic focus optimizes total plat- form survivability through the integration and coordination of individual systems, groups of systems and platforms. Te effort’s long-term vision establishes an intelligent survivability suite capable of coordinating all survivability systems’ activities on the battlefield, with the ultimate intention of coordinating dis- tributed platform-agnostic systems to implement the optimal countermeasure.


faces many challenges, the first of which is technical. Existing systems were not designed to be integrated and do not share common interfaces and standards. Te second challenge is programmatic: Developing electronics in a piecemeal fashion is less complex and requires less coordination between organizations. Te last of these challenges is systemic: Te Army acquisition process does not pro- vide an overarching technical framework that would require different program offices and technical areas to develop sys- tems in concert with one another, using


76 Army AL&T Magazine January–March 2015


common components and open archi- tectures, and transferring and sharing technologies that should be used together in disparate systems.


To overcome these challenges, the Army science and technology (S&T) community is redefining the concept for survivabil- ity from a systems level to a holistic or system-of-systems perspective. From this broader perspective, the S&T community envisions a next generation of intelligent systems that work together to protect the aircraft and provide Army Aviation


Te integrated air and ground surviv- ability concept allows CERDEC to overcome implementation challenges and plan unified S&T efforts in the elec- tronic warfare and aircraft survivability domains. Although some S&T programs focus explicitly on integration objectives, many programs focus instead on specific systems or technologies. Te integrated framework allows the Army S&T com- munity to categorize and conceptually orient programs with respect to the greater aircraft survivability picture, and allows decision-makers in turn to bet- ter assess how well current investments address long-term objectives.


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