Title: Why MIL-STD-1553 and What's New?
Recorded: August 15th, 2024
The 5-Decade Standard for Flight Control & Weapons Systems Sees No End in Sight
MIL-STD-1553 data buses have been ubiquitous on military aircraft, helicopters, drones, ground vehicles and spacecraft for the past 50 years. 1553’s longevity is due to its physical layer robustness, redundancy and deterministic and reliable command/response protocol. Further, 1553 enjoys an extremely large installed base (virtually every military aerospace platform globally utilizes the 1553 communications bus), with dozens of suppliers of components, IP, boards, software, testers, couplers and cables. Over recent decades, there have been various communication standards vying to be “the next 1553”, yet 1553 remains the de facto backbone for aerospace/defense and space systems that will be prevalent for decades to come.
1553 interfaces can take multiple forms based on specific application needs. These include integrated components and IP/FPGA implementations. Integrated components provide ease of use, small size and high reliability. FPGA and IP implementations enable processors, 1553 interfaces, and other functionality to co-exist on the same silicon, while also providing flexibility.
Other considerations include:
- Power consumption and board space.
- Avoiding transmission of residual voltages (“tails”).
- For example, for weapons applications, these can include intrusion detection and protection systems (IDS/IPS) against “spoofing” (impersonating) bus controllers (BC) or remote terminals (RT). Such systems can leverage various strategies, including methods operating at the physical, protocol and data layers. Further, for preventing illicit data bus “eavesdropping” (surveillance), data encryption is another possibility.
- Is an RT spoofing attack a realistic threat for MIL-STD-1553?
- What is the potential for a MIL-STD-1760 cyber-attack and what are the vulnerabilities?
- Are there methods to detect BC spoofing attacks?
- The need to detect open and short circuit wire faults in data buses. Ideally, such detection can detect such faults while they’re still intermittent; i.e., before they can become catastrophic. In addition, it’s highly advantageous to determine the type and locations of detected faults.
- After 22 years in service, what percentage of an F15 squadron’s weapon busses become damaged and need repair?
- Are there technologies for finding and locating wiring faults in a MIL-STD-1553 bus, other than the good-old ohm meter?
- This webinar includes an impactful war-time example of the use of such technology. How did we find and fix a MIL-STD-1760 Apache bus failure during war time?
- Packaging and screening. While plastic packages are acceptable for many platforms and environments, some applications such as deep space require hermeticity.
In this webinar, experts in MIL-STD-1553 interface and systems design share their many decades of knowledge and experience to provide system designers and engineers with an end-to-end overview of this fail-safe data bus protocol, and the best practices for its use in embedded military and aerospace applications. Attendees and viewers will gain deep insight to leverage the value and performance of 1553 for their high-reliability data bus communications.
Featured Speakers:
Mike Glass
Proposal/Product Manager of Micross Hi-Rel Components
Mike is Proposal and Product Line Manager for Micross Hi-Rel Components, located in Apopka, FL. Prior to that, he was a Sales Engineer for Sital Technology USA of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and held several positions at Data Device Corporation in Bohemia, NY. During that time, Mike worked as a design engineer, application engineer, Product Line Manager and Principal Marketing Engineer. Mike was involved with a number of industry standard committees, including with IEEE, SAE for MIL-STD-1553 and the ANSI T11 FC-AE (Fibre Channel for Avionics Environment) working group. Mr. Glass holds BSEE and MSEE degrees from SUNY at Buffalo, and an MS in Computer Science from Polytechnic Institute of New York.
Ofer Hofman
Chief Technology Officer at Sital Technology
Ofer Hofman is a hardware engineer with a passion for finding the best ways to improve the world. He holds a degree in software engineering from the Technion Institute in Haifa, Israel. In 1995, he founded Sital Technology and has been serving as its CTO ever since. In 2019, he founded Sital USA and now serves as its CEO. Holding both Israeli and American citizenships, Ofer specializes in MIL-STD-1553 serial communication, designing components, cards, IP, and systems. He takes pride in the extensive application of his designs in space, jet aircraft, nuclear plants, and other environments requiring the highest reliability.
Robert (Bob) McBride
COO / Vice President of Sales at Sital Technology
Bob has a diverse background in many aspects of Sales, Marketing, General Management through his 30 years in Electronics. Bob started out testing power supplies for NEC then moved quickly to inspection of their PBX phone systems, then on to production planning PBX systems. From there Bob's experience was with Miltope's as their production manager for digital tape drives and ruggedized hard drives for Military applications. Bob has been involved in running companies for Test Equipment Sales and Calibration as well as Semiconductor Distribution. Most recently Bob worked for DDC as a Regional Sales Manager and now is with SITAL Technology as COO and VP of Sales. Sital Technology is the leader of Cyber security technology in Military Aerospace and Avionics Databus protocols.