EADS CASA Selects AdaCore Toolset for nEUROn Unmanned Aircraft

The GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition, which encompasses AdaCore’s development environment and accompanying support services, helps develop Ada systems that need to achieve the highest levels of safety and/or security certification. EADS CASA selected AdaCore and GNAT Pro based on the Ada programming language’s suitability for developing critical systems and AdaCore’s previous experience with high-integrity projects, including the Eurofighter, MRTT, Airbus A400M, and Barracuda projects.

“Software development is central to the success of our role on the nEUROn project,” said F. Mijares, EADS-CASA nEUROn Chief Engineer. “AdaCore, GNAT Pro, and its integrated support services provide an ideal environment to produce these high-integrity systems. AdaCore’s ability to bring innovation to its toolset and to stay at the forefront of the Ada language evolution and implementation, as well as our existing experience working together, made AdaCore the natural choice for this strategic project.”

The delta wing nEUROn UCAV project began in 2006 and is a technology demonstrator for future European combat aircraft. It is one of the largest and most advanced unmanned air vehicles in the world, with a similar airframe size to that of some of the existing fighter aircrafts. Led by Dassault Aviation of France, the nEUROn project is a pan-European co-operation among EADS CASA (Spain), HAI (Greece), Saab (Sweden), RUAG (Switzerland), Alenia Aeronautica (Italy), and Thales (France). Test flights will take place in France, Sweden and Italy. The maiden flight is scheduled for mid-2012.

EADS CASA, which began software development planning at the end of 2007, is responsible for the nEUROn wing, ground control, and data link segments of the project. The company selected AdaCore and the GNAT Pro High Integrity Edition for DO-178B to develop the critical ground stations software and the data link management software, which will run on the Wind River VxWorks 653 Platform. The finished project will create over 500,000 lines of code.

With the GNAT Pro High-Integrity Edition for DO-178B, the EADS CASA development team benefits from a complete toolsuite that simplifies compliance with the various certification levels of the DO-178B avionics standard on the same hardware. This includes code standard verification (GNATcheck), static stack size analysis (GNATstack), and a choice of several certifiable Ada run-time libraries. Smooth and industry-proven integration with Wind River’s Workbench platform means an environment oriented towards the needs of the safety-critical industry, whether the application is developed in Ada 83, Ada 95, Ada 2005, or a combination of Ada, C or C++.

“The nEUROn is a flagship project for the European defense industry, acting as a testbed for future techniques and technologies,” said Michaël Friess, Sales and Business Development Manager, AdaCore. “EADS CASA’s use of GNAT Pro demonstrates the product’s importance to the marketplace, particularly for projects that combine multiple safety levels within the same system.”