Future Vertical Lift Digital Backbone, Navigating Technology and Implementation Details

The current US DoD has recognized that their asymmetric advantage is eroding1. Adversaries have had over 25 years to counter the US playbook and weapon systems (Ref. [1]). The US Army Future Vertical Lift (FVL) programs have identified several key tenets that their airborne weapon systems need to ensure they maintain asymmetric advantage. (1) New and upgraded mission capabilities of their airborne platforms need to get to the field faster (Ref. [2]). One of the current roadblocks to achieving this is the extensive full-system regression testing that ends up being required when there are mission system changes (Ref. [3]). (2) More competition is needed to help generate "quicker, better, faster" capabilities (Ref. [4]). "Vendor lock" inherent in current system designs hinders the speed at which technology advances (Ref. [4, 5]). (3) Improved portability of mission capability across the FVL and enduring fleet (Ref. [6, 7]). The ability to more easily reuse technology will help maintain advantage by eliminating the time needed to develop platform specific solutions (Ref. [4, 6]). The request for Modular Open System Architecture (MOSA) solutions has been a practice to try to address the items above (Ref. [8]). Most air vehicle and mission system providers are today providing MOSA solutions but the required benefits have not yet been fully realized. MOSA standards as they exist today do a very good job of identifying electronics hardware and software architectures. However, they fall short on physical aircraft integration and consistency in architecture among aircraft systems. Minimizing aircraft wiring and structural modifications, increasing speed to fielding, and portability among multiple systems types are all part of integrating highly MOSA compliant solutions. The US Army FVL programs have required a "digital backbone" (Ref. [7, 9, 10]) to address these integration issues and ensure that they can maintain asymmetric advantage. Unique requirements affecting the digital backbone include: - Power and power distribution (Ref. [9]) - Thermal management (Ref. [9, 11]) - Packaging and installation (Ref. [9]) - Air Vehicle data distribution (Ref. [9]) - Mission System data distribution (Ref. [9]) - Isolation of air vehicle and mission system (Ref. [9]) This paper will provide an introduction to the envisioned digital backbone for US Army, Future Vertical Lift aircraft. The paper will also offer discussion of digital backbone impacts on aircraft and avionics size, weight, power and cost, as well as technology considerations to address interoperability, safety, security, qualification, and accommodations for new, as well as, legacy avionics technology.