Full operational electronic warfare testing at the flightline

The current mix of EW flightline testers depend almost exclusively on parametric and functional testing that are inadequate to properly test modern EW suites. They are all based on hardware-intensive architectures that inherently promote high life cycle costs. There is now an alternative: a mix of operational, functional, and parametric testing in a virtual instrument-based architecture. AlliedSignal´s FAST project demonstrates that all of the concepts discussed in this paper can be implemented now with low risk. Those who are developing the requirements for future flightline EW testers may take advantage of its dramatically improved performance and lower life cycle cost