Vista ships UAV mission computer

Vista Controls Corp. of Santa Clarita, Calif., shipped five mission computers to Teledyne Ryan Aeronautical of San Diego for the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), the cornerstone of the U.S. Defense Department Tier II Plus reconnaissance program. Vista is building the Global Hawk`s integrated mission management computers, which performs the aircraft`s flight control and navigation functions. Each Global Hawk takes two of Vista`s computers, which package a Global Positioning System receiver, inertial measurement unit interface, control, and instrumentation in one VME card enclosure. The computer`s central processor is a mil-spec AMD 29000 32-bit RISC chip, but Vista officials plan to offer the computer with the Motorola/IBM/Apple PowerPC 603 chip as early as this April. - J.K.