WASHINGTON, Aug. 22 (UPI) -- Raytheon is developing a service-oriented architecture framework to allow rapid integration of weapons and sensors on U.S. military drones.
The SOA framework on an unmanned aerial system is analogous to the hardware and operating system used by a tablet computer.
A domain manager is analogous to a computer application. In this case, the framework provides the necessary infrastructure while the applications control the weapons, sensors, communications and other vital UAS mission-level functions.
"Raytheon's SOA solution could make expensive rewrites of UAS proprietary software a thing of the past," said Bob Francois, vice president of Advanced Missiles and Unmanned Systems for Raytheon Missile Systems.
"Our open, service-oriented infrastructure can exist separately from the flight-critical software of the UAS. Raytheon's system is plug and play, non-proprietary and platform independent."
Raytheon's framework resides on a computing platform sized to fit within the available space on a wide variety of unmanned aircraft.
Raytheon said it has completed development of an effects domain manager for sensor and weapon integration and is creating other domain managers for key UAS functions.
