A small Canadian company owning a technology prized by the US Air Force as a key enabler for planned avionics upgrades to thousands of fighters faces a surprise bidding war with a US aerospace giant.
Ottawa-based Edgewater Computer Services has been awarded a series of USAF contracts over the past five years to enhance greatly the throughput capacity of the ubiquitous military-standard 1553 databus, with the latest follow-on contract having been signed last month.
Now Boeing has moved to dislodge Edgewater’s lock on the vital technology by internally investing in an alternative.
On 17 December, Boeing and team-mate Digital Data (DDC) staged a demonstration that they claim shows their solution is ready to move to the next stage of development.
At stake for both teams is the opportunity of becoming the principal supplier for an upgrade needed by virtually all fighters in the USAF and US Navy inventories, as well as foreign militaries that operate fighters equipped with the 1553 databus. The upgrade is necessary to make the best use of a series of other planned cockpit improvements, such as the installation of wideband networking waveforms and advanced sensors such as active electronically scanned array radars.
The 1970s-era 1553 databus was designed to support a throughput capacity of 1Mb/s, while Rockwell Collins’ Tactical Targeting Network Technology datalink – which the USAF plans to mandate as an upgrade for most of its strike aircraft – will require the databus to share data at rates above at least 2Mb/s.
New aircraft, such as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, will address this problem by using an all high-bandwidth Fiber Channel databus. However, the air force prefers to avoid the expense and complexity of completely rewiring its legacy aircraft in favour of tapping into unused high-bandwidth frequencies on the existing databus wires.
Boeing/DDC has developed the HyPer-1553 databus using this method, which is similar to Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology. During the demonstration, a HyPer-1553 installed on a Boeing F-15E transferred data at rates of 40-120Mb/s.
Edgewater declines to describe its technical approach, but the company acknowledges it is also similar to the DSL method. “Using unused capacity in the wire is the only way to do it for both of us. That’s where all similarities can end,” says company president Duane Anderson.
Edgewater, however, claims its approach is far more powerful, generating a data rate up to the USAF’s minimum required throughput of 200Mb/s.
The USAF confirms that Edgewater is the only official provider for the 1553 upgrade technology, but welcomes the chance to compare it with the Boeing/DDC option.
“We look forward to assessing the Boeing/DDC results against our minimum requirements,” says Capt Bernie Beigh, programme manager for the extended 1553 upgrade at the Aeronautical Systems Center.
The USAF plans to stage a demonstration of the Edgewater advanced databus technology using a Lockheed Martin F-16 in August or September.
STEPHEN TRIMBLE/WASHINGTON DC
Source: Flight International
