The European ATM Master Plan (Edition 2015 – Military Executive Summary) identified the need for SESAR to seek “Infrastructure interoperability on the basis of solutions/synergies that enable the maximum level of reutilisation of existing military capabilities.”
Military operators permanently strive for the recognition that the capabilities available onboard modern military aircraft can sustain civil Air Traffic Management/Communications, Navigation and Surveillance (ATM/CNS) requirements. A Dual Use CNS approach is paramount to optimise equipage and to drastically reduce the technical impact and cost upon military from civil aviation infrastructure modernisation initiatives.
The civil-military technical solutions defined and validated within SESAR follow, in many cases, such Dual Use CNS concept. Dual Use represents simply the optimal use of military capabilities to sustain civil requirements. Nevertheless, it is important to underline that the equipage priorities of military platforms will always be determined from their primary military mission requirements.
The present document is partially derived from a EUROCONTROL paper awarded at the 2018 Integrated Communications Navigation and Surveillance (I-CNS) Conference in Washington U.S. on 10-12 April 2018. It describes the EUROCONTROL understanding of the Dual Use CNS concept for Military, as it is usually applied in SESAR research, and identifies potential interoperability opportunities for future research, notably SESAR, in that domain.