Distributive Processing Techniques For Interconnected Embedded Systems

Smart munitions, including evolving miniature munitions, will be employed in significant quantities from future manned and unmanned combat aircraft. The requirement to concurrently initialize and sequence multiple munitions for release can place stressingloads on central stores management processing and supporting data buses in host platforms. This limits performance and operational effectiveness, and may dictate costly stores management upgrades to support additional store types or quantities. By movingsome store control functionality to station or carriage level processing, performance and growth flexibility can be increased at lower cost with lower overall system impact. The preceding Phase I effort defined a set of distributive processing functionsthat could provide an increased level of store control functionality at the store station (or carriage device) processing level. Weaponized UAVs such as the Predator were identified as an opportunity for further concurrent development and demonstration ofthis technology. An agreement was established with the Predator prime contractor (General Atomics - Aeronautical Systems, Incorporated) with concurrence from the System Program Office (ASC/RAB) to exchange information facilitating use of the weaponizedPredator as a real-world case for demonstration of distributive processing techniques in an example store control application, as described in this proposal.