HOUSTON - U.S. Navy shipboard weapons experts are capitalizing on the Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA) to upgrade the Aegis weapon system for Navy cruisers and destroyers.
Navy officials are looking to Artesyn Embedded Technologies in Tempe, Ariz., to enhance, upgrade, and insert new technologies into Aegis, and are considering ATCA for future upgrades to the Ship Self Defense System, says Rob Persons, field applications engineer at Artesyn. Using ATCA for Aegis is part of an Artesyn project to adapt the Network Equipment-Building System (NEBS) design guidelines shipboard electronics in Navy surface warships.
The Aegis combat system uses computers and radar to track and guide weapons to destroy enemy targets. More than 100 Aegis-equipped ships have been deployed in five navies worldwide. Aegis was developed by the Missile and Surface Radar Division of RCA, now part of the Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training segment in Moorestown, N.J.
Artesyn's Aegis-related work is through the Navy and not specifically tied to Lockheed Martin, Persons says. Managing the Navy's Aegis systems are officials of Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington.
Navy officials refresh Aegis electronics about every four years. Previously designers had relied on the non-standard BladeCenter architecture for Aegis designs, but wanted to move toward the kind of open-systems architecture with ATCA they had used with VME, Persons explains.
To adapt ATCA and NEBS building blocks to the Aegis Combat System, Artesyn engineers first stiffened an ATCA chassis sides and back, after having adapted the chassis top and bottom to the Aegis shock-isolated rack, Persons says. Experts also screwed boards into the chassis to resist the effects of shock and vibration. Navy officials say they would like to use this architecture aboard surface warships for eight years or more before considering new technology insertion approaches. The Artesyn ATCA architecture is useful for adapting third-party embedded computing products, Persons says.
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