New Software Framework Coming to Army UAS Ground Stations
The U.S. Army will soon be able to integrate new avionics capabilities at a much lower cost than it currently does thanks to a new ground control station Open Architecture (OA) framework being developed by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems (GD-AIS) and Real-Time Innovations (RTI). GD-AIS selected RTI’s Transport Services Segment (TSS) software to serve as the abstraction layer in the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Aligned Reference Architecture to provide a standard interface between portable applications for the Army’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) ground control stations.
“The Army has not officially announced any plans to redesign their Universal Ground Control Station (UGCS) currently in theater,” said John van Dyke, senior director of sensors and processing at GD-AIS. “The [Army-UAS Control Segment] A-UCS program is a customer-funded prototype effort to investigate potential architectures that will facilitate the Army vision for Open Architecture, Open Business Model paradigm to realize greater capabilities at lower cost.”