Canada's CMC Electronics has launched a C$149 million ($122 million) government-backed research project, which should result in the development of new generation cockpit technologies and position CMC as a leading avionics integrator for commercial aircraft.
The Canadian government announced today it would invest C$52 million in the new five-year R&D initiative, which CMC is calling FronTier. CMC manager of government affairs Daniel Guertin says under FronTier CMC will develop a suite of "highly innovative and capable technologies" including new enhanced vision systems and paperless cockpit products.
CMC is already a leading supplier of enhanced vision systems and electronic flight bags in both the civil and military sectors. Guertin says FronTier will allow CMC to work on new generations of these technologies, "bringing it one step forward" and also give CMC the opportunity to develop an entire cockpit using an open architecture.
CMC previously only has taken a cockpit integrator role for new military aircraft, including the Raytheon T-6B trainer. It has served as integrator for several commercial cockpit modernization programs, including Boeing 747-200s at KLM, but has never developed an integrated cockpit for a new commercial aircraft.
The company expects to bring in other suppliers from both Canada and overseas to help in achieving its goal of developing an integrated cockpit for new commercial aircraft. "We'll be working with other partners on this," Guertin says. But he adds it is too early in the project to identify potential partners.
By the end of the five-year project CMC plans to bring to market an integrated cockpit based on the technologies developed under FronTier but Guertin says it is too early to say exactly when this will occur. CMC hopes the integrated cockpit product will eventually be used for several types of commercial aircraft, including helicopters, business jets and air transport aircraft.
CMC already has a team of engineers working on the project and several more employees will be assigned to the team now that funding has been secured from the Canadian Government. CMC, which has committed C$97 million of its own funds to the project over the next five years, has agreed to eventually repay the Government the C$52 million, but is not disclosing the repayment scheme.
The funds are being provided under the Canadian Government's Industrial Technologies Office's Strategic Aerospace and Defense Initiative (ITO-SADI). CMC is based in the Canadian province of Quebec but since 2007 has been part of Esterline, a publicly traded manufacturing company based in the US state of Washington which counts aerospace as its primary business.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
