28 NOVEMBER 2016 MILITARY & AEROSPACE ELECTRONICS www.militaryaerospace.com
tems assisted the Marines in modernizing this legacy system, Tilley
explains. “After a trade study and
analysis, Astronics provided an updated configuration for the test
equipment, which included upgrading the digital test capability,
a modernized controller, some analog instruments such as a digitizer, and other equipment. The Marines will be rolling out a fresh,
updated solution in the coming year
for a Foreign Military Sales (FMS)
requirement.”
Mission-critical systems test
Military personnel understand well
the importance of reliable, capable communications. It is not surprising, then, that defense departments worldwide insist on accurate
test solutions to ensure communications equipment is functioning
as intended.
An undisclosed international military organization has selected the
GENASYS mixed-signal test system
platform from Marvin Test Solutions
in Irvine, Calif., to assure the mission readiness of audio, video, and
communications systems and other critical electronics on state-of-the-art armored infantry vehicles.
Marvin Test won a contract to deliver multiple TS-321 test stations,
as well as test programs, spares,
and training.
The GENASYS platform is designed for mission-critical electronics applications — at the board, box,
or system level — such as satellite payloads, platform management
systems, armament electronics and
subsystems, and flight management
and control systems, officials say.
“GENASYS offers a compact, flex-
ible, scalable system designed to ad-
dress the complex current and fu-
ture test requirements of military
and aerospace applications,” says
Stephen Sargeant, CEO of Marvin
Test Solutions and a retired U.S. Air
Force major general. “Designing a
system with future upgradeability
in mind provides the ideal solution
for customers whose test require-
ments evolve with every new ad-
vance in technology.”
The future of military radio like-
ly lies in long-term evolution (LTE),
the commercial cellular market’s 4G
mobile communications standard.
U.S. Department of Defense (DOD)
officials are investigating the fea-
sibility of LTE and LTE-Advanced
technologies to modernize military
communications. “As the U.S. DOD
begins to research and adopt com-
mercial LTE technologies for tactical
radio purposes, our R&S CMW500
has been readily adopted for many
of these advanced research needs,”
says McCarthy of Rohde & Schwarz.
Forward momentum
Aerospace and defense organiza-
tions are increasingly replacing test
systems that have gone obsolete, af-
ter being fielded for decades, with
modern, expandable test solutions —
and doing so to save money, says
Marvin Test Systems’ Sargeant.
“At some point, the cost of sus-
taining older, obsolete equipment
gets to be a number that’s too large
to continue to fund,” Sargeant ex-
plains. Aerospace and defense or-
ganizations, especially prime con-
tractors, are hitting that threshold
and are looking for a test solution
that can meet current specs, capture
a decade or more of requirements,
and offer the modularity, scalability,
and flexibility to support future ap-
plications and requirements.
Aerospace and defense officials
are looking for a test platform that
can “overcome the legacy problems
of cost, time, and less-than-efficient
use of engineers to keep the system
running,” Sargeant says. Two de-
fense primes have moved to Mar-
vin’s GENASYS platform, using its
software tools to transition their
test plan sets (TPSs).
“TPSs are extremely expensive to
create from scratch; [our software]
enables engineers to clean up those
TPSs to make them more efficient.
They are using their engineering tal-
ents to refine and build TPSs rather
The N-GEN Test System from Astronics Test Systems is a turnkey solution designed to provide a
complete test environment for any type of engine testing, at any location.
