A HIGH-DEMAND TELEMETRY SYSTEM THAT MAXIMISES FUTURE EXPANSION AT MINIMUM LIFE-CYCLE COST

Abstract

The Aircraft Research and Development Unit (ARDU) of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is the only agency in Australia that performs the full spectrum of military flight testing and is the new custodian of the instrumented weapons range at Woomera. Receiving early attention will be the upgrade and integration of ARDU's telemetry systems with the meteorological and tracking data acquisition capabilities at Woomera to minimize overhead and data turnaround time. To achieve these goals, maximum modularity, extensibility, and product interoperability is being sought in the proposed architecture of all the systems that will need to cooperate on the forecast test programmes. These goals are also driven by the need to be responsive to a wide variety of tasks which presently include structural flight testing of fighter and training aircraft, weapons systems performance evaluation on a variety of combatant aircraft, and a host of other tasks associated with all fixed and rotary wing aircraft in the Army and Air Force inventory. Of all these tasks however, ARDU sees that responsiveness to future testing of F-111Cs fitted with unique Digital Flight Control Systems along with USAF standard F-111Gs may place the most significant demands on data handling —particularly in regard to providing an avionics bus diagnostic capability when performing Operational Flight Programme (OFP) changes to the mission computers. With the timely assistance and advice of Loral Test & Information Systems, who has long-term experience in supporting USAF F-111 test programmes, ARDU is confident of making wise design decisions that will provide the desired flexibility and, at the same time, minimize life-cycle costs by ensuring compliance with the appropriate telemetry and open systems standards. As well, via cooperative agreements with the USAF, the potential exists to acquire proven software products without needing to fund the development costs already absorbed by the USAF. This paper presents ARDU's perception of future needs, a view by LTIS of how best to meet those needs, and, based on ARDU data, a view of how LTIS' proposal will satisfy the requirement to provide maximum extensibility with minimum life-cycle costs.