NGC Selects Wind River for Black Hawk Cockpit Digitization Program

Wind River®, a world leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems, has announced that Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) has selected Wind River VxWorks® 653 Platform for its latest helicopter digitization avionics mission equipment package to be integrated onto the Black Hawk UH-60V helicopter.

Part of the Wind River product portfolio of safe and secure operating systems, VxWorks 653 is a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) platform for supporting delivery of safety-critical, integrated modular avionics (IMA) applications. It provides Northrop Grumman with a DO-178C certifiable, upgradable platform that is aligned with the latest government initiatives to reduce program lifecycle costs.

Wind River recently released updates to VxWorks 653, including support for multi-core silicon and robust partitioning for applications that enable multilevel RTCA DO-178C certification, as well as support for the Safety Base Profile of Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE™) 2.1 Technical Standard.

"Fully compliant with ARINC 653, VxWorks 653 provides customers with robust partitioning in time and space to facilitate fault containment—and enables reduced size, weight, and power, as well as a reduced bill of materials, on the industry’s most advanced aircraft," said Dinyar Dastoor, vice president and general manager of operating system platforms. "Wind River is proud to be a trusted technology supplier to Northrop Grumman for such an important program, and is very pleased to continue helping our customers drive innovation in their next-generation avionics platforms."

"By incorporating VxWorks 653 into our mission equipment package, we have achieved a system architecture that helps protect our customers’ long term investment for multiple platforms," said Ike Song, vice president, Situational Awareness Systems at Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems. "Our use of VxWorks 653 enables us to align with the FACE™ Technical Standard, achieve DO-178C certification, and consolidate our avionics technology on multi-core hardware, resulting in superior performance and lower lifecycle costs."

For more than three decades, Wind River has been a trusted advisor in the development of safety- and mission-critical products. Used in over 325 programs by more than 185 customers on over 70 aircraft, VxWorks 653 serves as a key technology in a wide range of commercial, military, and space safety- and mission-critical programs, both manned and unmanned, around the globe.