Interoperability of Military Aircraft versus Future Air Navigation System (FANS)

The aim of the work is to study the problem of civil-military interoperability in a future Air Traffic Management environment defined by the research project SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) in Europe. The result of the work has been the evaluation of the potential impact of the civil-military interoperability directly on the avionic architecture of modern military Transport, Fighter and Trainer aircraft. The study has been conducted at first analyzing the Mission Trajectory concept which represents the operational scenario where the military aircraft shall operate in the SESAR concept. From operational to functional level of the analysis particular attention has been paid to SESAR Initial 4D functionality. Functional analysis of Initial 4D has been conducted in order to identify potential requirements for the avionic architecture. Result of the study is the analysis of technical solutions for military avionic architecture in order to cope with Initial 4D requirements. The authors assumed that the best solution to the interoperability problem is not a retrofit solution but a solution based on the upgrade of existing avionic equipments. The reason is that an upgrade solution could be more attractive in terms of costs for military end users.