The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Standardization Agency (NSA) published an update on the Standardization Agreement (STANAG) 4586 on Standard Interfaces of UAV Control System (UCS) for NATO UAV Interoperability.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become valuable assets in helping Joint Force Commanders (JFC) to meet a variety of theatre, operational and tactical objectives. But, currently, many UAV systems are not fully interoperable.

Current or “legacy” UAV systems have been designed and procured nationally and contain system elements that are generally unique and system specific. They do not have standard interfaces between the system elements. This results in a variety of non-interoperable “stovepipe” systems. Although commonality of hardware and software would be a solution to achieve interoperability and may be desirable from an economic standpoint, commonality is not mandatory.

To enable interoperability and increase NATO Combined/Joint Service flexibility for UAV systems, the implementation of standards for key system interfaces and functions is required. STANAG 4586 specifies the interfaces that should be implemented to achieve the operational requirements. This will be accomplished through implementing standard interfaces in the UAV Control System (UCS) to communicate with different UAVs and their payloads, as well as with different C4I Systems. The implementation of standard interfaces will also facilitate the integration of components from different sources as well as the interoperability of legacy systems.

To read the full STANAG agreement, click here. http://innuvativesystems.com/STANAG4586Eed02a2_PubliclyReleased.pdf