Conformity with military airborne systems crucial for SESAR integration

Posted by John McHale

The first presentation this morning at our Avionics Europe conference in Amsterdam covered how the military needs to be more involved in the standardization process for next-generation air traffic management technology in Europe -- the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR).

The first presentation this morning at our Avionics Europe conference in Amsterdam covered how the military needs to be more involved in the standardization process for next-generation air traffic management technology in Europe -- the Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR).

The speaker -- Dominique Colin, standardization and certification expert at Eurocontrol in Brussels, Belgium -- said if the different European militaries are not involved now and do not embrace these standards then "we will have to wait until 2050 before there is another chance."

Europe's situation is much more complicated than that of the U.S. because there are so many different countries with different military standards, Colin said. Complicating things even more is that the different services in these countries sometimes do not cooperate with each other, he added.

Colin said it is a bit of a messy situation but it can be resolved. He suggested that the military should move toward performance-base operations -- meeting ATM standards through performance benchmarks rather than equipage.

Colin also said that the different standards bodies on the civil side need to develop a better understanding of military processes and standards.

Most importantly both sides need to embrace the standards at the beginning of each program and not halfway through, Colin said. He noted the Airbus A400M tanker aircraft program has from the beginning embraced not only military standards but civil safety and ATM standards as well.

I spoke with one of our conference advisory board members -- Don Ward of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) -- and he confirmed that the U.S. military is easier to work with because it is only one defense department and that the different services within the DOD communicate much better than in years past.