Common test station design to support legacy applications

Recently we have seen much evolution in the area of military support equipment. As expected, newly developed systems require modernized test and support equipment. The issue is further compounded by the various approaches used by each military branch in order to maintain their equipment. The need for the standardization of test equipment was recognized and sanctioned by the Department of Defense (DoD) Automatic Test Systems (ATS) Executive Agent Office (EAO) policy in the early 1990's. Since then, programs have been formed to research what it would take to implement such an effort. Some of these programs range from re-hosting the legacy test program sets (TPSs) of one system, while other programs are trying to re-host up to 5 legacy systems. In any case, the unique nature of each legacy system, from the instrumentation to the interface, maximizes the complexity of this task.