Avionics product line software architecture flow policies

In 1995, an initiative was launched to assess the, potential for reuse of operational flight program software across multiple fighter aircraft platforms, and to define and demonstrate a supporting system architecture based upon open commercial hardware, software, standards and practices. The following year, this validation of the product line approach led to broader application of the techniques to the tactical aircraft mission processing domain. Key aspects of the component based logical architecture developed have been previously described. This paper briefly restates principle results from the previously published work to set the context for discussion. It then describes the flow policies, to be subsequently defined, developed on the project that substantively affect the product line reusability and suitability of the developed application components.