Embedded Military Solutions
Over the years, Butterflyvista has worked on several military projects, the longest of which is the Chassis Control Module (CCM), which controls parts of the radar system inclusive of communication with the cockpit and ground control, deployed on three different aircraft using the radar system developed by Raytheon.
All our work is done in compliance with ISO 9001 requirements. We excel at documenting our source code and the work that was done. We strongly believe in release documentation, as well as source control. Our documentation skills not only meets government regulars but exceeds them.
We always take risk management into account during the development process by using all relevant tools and resources. We also believe in the verification and validation (V&V) process that is separate from engineering. We make sure that the software conforms to requirements and fulfills all requirements. We take safety into account on all products and work to minimize software errors.
Other projects include parts of the automatic test equipment used on the Northrop mobile air traffic control tower and project management for CMMI Level 2/3 accreditation for a client customer.
The mobile air traffic control tower used the Zilog Z-8002 and Litton L-3120 processor with the languages being Zilog Z-8002 assembly and CMS-2.
We spearheaded CMMI Level 2/3 accreditation for a client company, creating gap analysis, upper management presentations, and schedules with task assignments and costs. We located a SCAMPI partner and created the statement of work for the consultant. We also upgraded their QMS ISO documents for CMMI compliance.
Chassis Control Module (CCM)
Butterflyvista developed the original CCM software for the Lockheed U-2 aircraft, the same aircraft flown by Francis Gary Powers, who got shot down over Russia on May 1, 1960. Raytheon, which provides the radar system, received the contract to update the aircraft. We received the contract to update the software for that board. The original processor used a Philips microprocessor, and the updated one used the Intel 80386EX processor. Butterflyvista did have a hand in some of the hardware specifications.
Later, Butterflyvista received the contract to develop the software for two other aircraft, the British ASTOR and the Northrop Global Hawk. We started with the software developed for the U-2 and were able to augment that software to handle the Global Hawk and ASTOR. Pushing forward, all three aircraft utilized the same software. The code was object oriented written in C/C++ and compiled cleanly on both Visual Studio and using the Intel CAD-UL C++ compiler. The difference was in a configuration file particular to each air craft and in slight modifications in derived classes. This tact proved correct as later versions of all aircraft wound up using the features developed in the others. Time and money were saved, as debugging only had to happen once, not three times.