By John McHale
U.S. Navy leaders are tapping McDonnell Douglas Aerospace in St. Louis to integrate a tactical aircraft moving map capability (TAMMAC) into the F/A-18 fighter-bomber, AV-8B jump jet, UH-1 helicopter, and AH-1 helicopter gunship.
TAMMAC consists of a Digital Map System (DMS) and an Advanced Memory Unit (AMU) - essentially a PCMCIA card disk drive. The company is under contract for 32 engineering, manufacturing, and development systems.
The system uses a scaled Fibre Channel and a 1553 interface with diode output, says Ervin Pagel project engineer at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace. The system uses four different displays at the same time with two independent pictures.
The new system is to replace existing systems to save money, Pagel says. McDonnell Douglas TAMMAC designers are working under supervision of Naval Air Systems Command experts in Arlington, Va., under a $22.75 million contract.
The original device, which the new TAMMAC is replacing, had two boxes for the moving map, in addition to its removable memory - one for the map and the other for the map`s internal memory.
The old system had only one megabyte of memory, while with the new system the aircrew will be able to pick and choose the density of the new card from five megabytes to 85 megabytes, Pagel adds.
A Global Positioning System (GPS) interfaces with TAMMAC to relay the plane`s position to the map about 20 times a second. It is the same speed as the previous system.
Building the DMS is the Harris Corp. Military & Space Products division in Melbourne, Fla. Smiths Industries of Grand Rapids, Mich., is building the AMU. Work is to be completed by June 2000.
