Modernizing Instruments and Switching in Joint Services Military ATE

This paper discusses modernization strategies for joint services military ATE systems. The challenges faced include: Meeting legacy requirements from a wide variety of different systems, instruments, and switching with a single core system. Providing capabilities for testing new military equipment. Maintaining interoperability between services while preserving the investment in test program sets (TPSs). Currently deployed military ATE systems contain a wide variety of test instruments and switching configurations. The challenge is to meet the large variety of requirements with the minimum number of modules. Joint services ATE must also be capable of testing new assets that are developed and provide interoperability between the different branches of the service. The joint services common core ATE approach provides instruments with extended capabilities and highly configurable switching subsystems to meet future and legacy requirements, maintain interoperability, and preserve the investment in existing TPSs. This paper examines a contemporary approach to providing instruments and switching components that achieve these challenging objectives.