Technology branded 'essential' for avionics communications system

Lockheed Martin’s independently funded research and development effort, called Project Missouri, demonstrates how an Open System Architecture (OSA) enables quick and affordable integration of new capabilities on multiple platforms without major changes to the aircraft. The new communications system enables F-22 and F-35 avionics systems to communicate with one another, important as the latter is expected to enter service next year. The system can also enable communications to legacy avionics systems such as F-15, F-16, and F-18 families.

“Being able to leverage commercial processing hardware and software is a key element to meeting the affordability objectives of our customers by reducing software porting and development costs,” said Ron Bessire, vice president of Program and Technology Integration at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works®.  “The Wind River VxWorks MILS product helped us achieve this objective and still meet our Information Assurance requirements.”

VxWorks MILS Platform is part of the Wind River product portfolio for trusted systems. It provides an operating runtime environment designed for systems having high security, high assurance, and high performance requirements, and that run on modern, multi-core processors. The platform significantly reduces costs by enabling consolidated applications with mixed domains or security levels on a single multi-core processor-based hardware platform.

“Knowing that Wind River technology helped the Project Missouri team achieve up to a 60 percent reduction in the development, integration and test timelines is extremely rewarding,” said Dinyar Dastoor, vice president of product management at Wind River.  “Lockheed Martin’s successful flight test proves the maturity of VxWorks MILS, and we are very pleased to continue hearing from our customers that the platform serves as a critical secure foundation for a wide range of innovative projects and programs.”