Navy initiatives to steer COTS instrument technology developments

The Navy has purchased commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) test instrumentation (general purpose electronic test equipment-GPETE) for over 25 years. Over that period, the Navy has actively engaged the test equipment industry in technical discussions to support technical requirements for instrumentation. A strong customer-supplier relationship has developed that has allowed the Navy to ensure instrument support for emerging requirements using COTS equipment. New Navy initiatives in instrumentation are focused on supporting improvements in training, extending calibration intervals, automation, and interoperability. These initiatives are being pursued to enhance the Navy's position for a future that will include fewer personnel on ships. The budget for training personnel will be radically constrained; thus, self-training instrumentation will be required. The limited number of personnel will require their instrumentation to be available for longer periods without calibration. Instruments of the future must accommodate automation in an integrated weapons system environment and be able to provide information and raw data back to centralized resources through advanced communications networks. This paper describes the focus of these initiatives for the future Navy.