Application of STANAG 4586 standard for Turkish Aerospace Industries UAV systems

STANAG 4586 [1] is the ground control station architecture and messaging standard for the interoperability of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) systems between NATO nations. The standard aims to provide a common architecture for UAV Ground Control Systems and provides a set of standard messages for communication. It has the concepts of Core Unmanned Control System (CUCS), Vehicle Specific Module (VSM) and Data Link Interface (DLI). Turkish Aerospace Industries has adopted STANAG 4586 first in its MALE class UAV, ANKA [2], within its payload system implementation. The concept is gone to a further point with Şimşek [3] (High Speed Target Drone System), and RIHA [4] (Rotary UAV) UAV system projects where all CUCS, VSM and DLI implementations for flight and payload systems are developed as STANAG 4586 compatible. In these projects, real time embedded hardware and software are used as VSM which converted DLI messages to UAV specific messages and the reverse. VSM also served for real time processing needs like external control device communication. CUCS included the Graphical User Interface components like flight displays, moving map and mission planning. For both VSM and CUCS software, a common architecture independent of projects was designed and common components (both GUI and infrastructure) were developed. The new UAV projects' Ground Control Stations are aimed to be based on this STANAG 4586 based architecture and aimed an interoperability and ease of developmentfor the system to be developed. By the use of common and already ready components, new UAV projects will be developed in less time and with less cost; users will learn the system in shorter time and effort and will have the chance to control more thanone UAV system from a ground control station at the same time.