Through Life Support

Due to the evolutionary nature of TDL Standards, there is a need to maintain an understanding of changes to those standards and to assess the impact on both developmental and in-service systems.  This will invariably require system upgrades to be defined for those changes that are considered to have sufficient impact on the interoperability of the subject system.  In addition, in-service problem reports need to be assessed and also, where necessary, changes to the system or operational ‘work-arounds’ pursued to address them.  Without SME Involvement, unnecessary changes could be pursued which offer little in the way of improved operational capability, thus wasting valuable resources.

JCSys Personnel possess significant experience of managing system upgrades.  Examples in the TDL domain include the assessment and appropriate implementation of Correlation/Decorrelation Protocols for Air and Surface Tracks; JCSys team members have also played an instrumental role in the development and implementation of the demand algorithm for use with Time Slot Reallocation (TSR) for MIDS/Link 16.

In-service Interoperability testing, such as that which is managed by the NATO Tactical Data Link Interoperability Test Syndicate (TDLITS) can provide the system with invaluable exposure to cost effective interoperability testing.  Again, experience has shown that to gain best benefit from this process, SME support is required to ensure that the platform agency focuses testing in key areas of interest, and issues that arise are adequately assessed to determine what action is required.

The JCSys team has considerable experience of working within this area of the process to ensure that the customer community get optimum performance and results from Interoperability testing and that they have clear and concise impact assessments from which to evaluate whether system changes are necessary.