Performance-based certification for military aircraft

Evolving towards an air traffic management (ATM) system which allows for civil-military interoperability can only succeed if the challenges of technology and performance are tackled separately and if modern military aircraft can take advantage of capabilities already available to civil aviation. Taking a performance-based approach to tackling this is an option that has already been taken by ICAO with the Performance Based Navigation (PBN) concept (document 9613) and the ongoing work on Performance Based Communication and Surveillance (PBCS). When it comes to the military, performance based certification is one of the possible ways to comply with emerging ATM/CNS requirements. This has the potential to lower costs and to facilitate system integration in military aircraft.

EUROCNTROL in collaboration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Defence Agency (EDA) and following an official request from National Military Authorities, jointly started a unique 3-Agency approach.

The States agreed on a “Joint Framework Roadmap” describing the different steps of the process to progress the work in this domain..

At EUROCONTROL, we contribute to this tri-Agency effort by developing and updating relevant technical material.

The 3-Agency governance team is preparing the next steps including the evaluation of the results of a study conducted by the NATO industrial advisory group (NIAG), the update of the joint framework roadmap and potential validation plans.