Aerospace Software Ltd.

Projects

We have been involved with a wide variety of military projects, from submarine, to satellite systems and everything in between, in various countries. As part of the development teams, we performed project management, systems engineering, hardware and real-time software development. The following is a small sample of what we have worked on, the information is public and declassified and gives an idea of our wide experience in high reliability systems.

Fighter-Bomber

A Mirage based single engined fighter-bomber, similar in capability to the F16F, but with better low speed handling and larger payload capability, low cost and low maintenance. A bigger engine, improved radar, a couple of body extensions and canards added to the front air intakes.

Communication and navigation devices. Half ATR short, forced air cooled, 16 bit processors, RS422, Mil-Std-1553 and Arinc-429 interfaces. The equipment had to handle a 6g with gun-fire vibration profile. We were involved with the communication, navigation and fire control systems.

Attack Helicopter.

Gunner in front, pilot above and behind. This rotary wing platform supports a wide array of advanced missiles, guns and self protection systems.

A view of the AH cockpit. The displays have to withstand 6.5g vibration with gun-fire. We were involved with two of the panels as well as the frequency agile radio equipment. The helicopter also featured a large frequency agile HF loop antenna, which hopped synchronized with the radio. The radio equipment is not shown and the antenna is on the other side of the helicopter picture above - pity.

Some of the avionics suite of the helicopter and other aircraft. We designed about 5 cards and one of the panels, hardware and software.

Airborne Communication Control Panel

The circuit board for a night vision compatible, backlit control panel for a helicopter - bottom right of the above picture. Backlighting is one of the most difficult things to do. We used a large number of yellow LEDs behind a polycarbonate panel, painted with many layers of white and black paint, with the lettering and indicators machined through the black paint into the white. Nowadays, we would use an electroluminescent panel instead of LEDs. Those rotary switches were a nightmare, due to tolerance buildup in the assembly.

Airborne Radio Controller

This is the circuit board for the controller of a high power, airborne, frequency agile, HF radio transceiver. It used a mixture of surface mount and through hole technology. We did the hardware and software for this one. A big problem with radio controllers is that they produce noise in the same frequency band as the HF radio - putting a radio receiver and a jammer in the same box makes life very difficult.

Land Vehicle 100W HF Radio

This is a HF frequency agile man pack radio, strapped onto a 100W amplifier in a land vehicle configuration. We did the hardware and software design for the amplifier unit. These radios are used in a variety of armoured cars, tanks, self powered howitzers and trucks. The unit is mounted on shock mounts, since radios are susceptible to microphony, where the capacitors will cause shocks to be converted to sound.