CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL) and Tata Advanced Systems (TASL) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly develop applications for Mission Computer, a core aircraft computing platform, in various aerospace and defence systems.
The Integrated Global Bus Avionics Processing System (IGAPS) popularly called Mission Computer is a core aircraft computing platform with features like ARINC 664 global bus, ARINC 818 fibre channel video bus and ARINC 653 compliance. This sophisticated on-board computing system has been successfully designed, developed and integrated for the first time in India by CSIR-NAL, Bengaluru, for civil avionics requirements in line with ‘Make in India’ initiative.
CSIR-NAL and Tata Advanced Systems will now collaborate to take this development further to the Indian and worldwide market by incorporating application-specific upgrades and airworthiness approvals resulting into a certified product.
Mission Computer, a key electronic system on air and defence platforms for subsystem integration and control, and its variants will be manufactured in India and cater to the Indian and global markets. Further, Mission Computer will be used for wide ranging applications across various aerospace and defence platforms. The collaborative partnership with CSIR-NAL reinforces TASL’s continued efforts to develop, integrate and maintain critical pieces of technology for large aerospace and defence systems within India as part of the ‘Make in India’ initiative, and strive to become a preferred partner to the Indian and global aerospace and defence industry.
For CSIR-NAL, this MoU is a landmark achievement in realising commercialisation of developed technologies enabling Indian industries to compete globally and achieve self-reliance in a high technology strategic area. “This is one of the best examples of public private collaboration effort towards Make in India,” said Shyam Chetty, director, CSIR- NAL.
“This collaboration with CSIR-NAL reinforces TASL’s continued commitment towards indigenous design, development and manufacturing of key systems and sub-systems for aerospace and defence applications, leveraging the technology developed by major aerospace and defence labs in India,” said S Ramadorai, chairman, TASL.
IGAPS is one of the most technologically challenging aircraft core computing platform to be ever designed within the country for civil avionics requirements. This development is part of CSIR-NAL’s vision of achieving self-reliance in indigenous design and development of complex airborne systems for national aircraft programme needs. The avionics architecture whose life-cycle costs are currently estimated to be approximately in millions of dollars is an architectural change which will enable it to keep up with the growing demand of low operating cost and high performance requirements demanded by industry today.
As a leading player in India’s aerospace industry, TASL with its global transition programmes with global companies such as Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, etc has successfully demonstrated its ability to take complex aerospace programmes and has recently announced partnership with Boeing Defence. TASL has also entered into the domain of precision manufacturing of aero-engines for Rolls Royce.
