CMC Electronics has announced that it has been awarded a contract by Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) to modernize the Republic of Korea Air Force’s (ROKAF) fleet of KA-1 trainer aircraft used for advanced mission training and light attack missions.

Based in Montreal, Canada, CMC Electronics designs and manufactures innovative cockpit systems and avionics and display solutions for military and commercial aviation markets.

To improve the capabilities of its KA-1 fleet, KAI sought a cockpit upgrade. Drawing from a long and fruitful business relationship with CMC, KAI chose the PU-3000 multicore mission computer as the basis for its new cockpit, which is installed on each aircraft. The PU-3000MCC features partitioned embedded software applications that offer great flexibility to integrate several conventional multifunctional displays (MFDs) or a single large area display (LAD) configuration as used in the upgraded KA-1 solution. The PU-3000MCC software development kit also allows KAI to develop specific proprietary mission applications on their own.

“This new contract is a timely and strategic development for all parties involved,” said Brad Nolen, Vice President, Sales and Marketing at CMC Electronics. “We believe that the upgraded KA-1 platform with a PU-3000 driven LAD interface will both increase aircraft availability and better prepare ROKAF pilots for their future modernized frontline fleet of KF-X fighters.”

“KAI is confident that the KA-1 avionics upgrade program will be successfully completed in a timely manner adding vastly improved system performance and capabilities to the KA-1 aircraft,” added Jae Min Park, Deputy Senior Manager, Aircraft Procurement team.

The solution offered by CMC enables KAI’s combat pilots to train using the advanced avionics of today’s cutting-edge fighter aircraft. The positives are two-fold: the pilots are provided with a more realistic training experience, which allows for more rapidly trained pilots at a lower cost than conventional training.

As the world’s first civil certified multicore mission computer, the PU-3000 avionics computer can host multiple avionics applications reducing equipment count and integration costs. Thanks to the fact that it can be modular by design, it can be used as a common computing platform able to host a large variety of functions into a single unit. In turn, this allows the computer to be capable of driving multiple screen sizes with the redundancy needed for flight critical functions.