Sesar and military: Towards ATM integration

Abstract

Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) is the on-going European research program aiming at designing and validating a reformation of the Air Traffic Management system. In order to maximize the benefits of Single European Sky it is very important that the innovation involves the largest amount of the Airspace users. For this reason SESAR research program involves also military airspace users. Dedicated Work Packages are working in order to investigate and solve the civil-military interoperability problem. The need for interoperability is due to the potentially different avionic architectures and functionalities which often concern civil (e.g. Main-line and Regional categories) and military aircraft (e.g. Transport-type and Fighter-type). The WP's are working together so that in the future military avionics could be able to implement selected functionalities (i.e. Initial 4D and ASPA S&M) defined in the Single European Sky context. The aim of the paper is to present results of the work performed for solving the civil-military interoperability problem. SESAR context is described as far as Initial 4D and ASPA S&M functionalities are concerned. A reference airspace use of military aircraft is presented and related Communication, Navigation and Surveillance requirements are highlighted. The approach and the proposed solution to the interoperability problem are then presented. The assumption at the base of the work is 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. The aim of the paper is to present results of the study.