Lockheed Martin has chosen CMC Electronics to provide a new flight management system (FMS) and GPS landing sensor for the avionics upgrade package it is producing for the U.S. Navy’s C-130T fleet. CMC will supply three of its CMA-4000 FMS units and a pair of its IntegriFlight CMA-5024 GPS systems for each aircraft, with deliveries due to start this fall to the Lockheed Martin System Integration Laboratory. The cockpit upgrade is intended to extend the life of the C-130Ts for 20 years by giving them capability for communication, navigation surveillance/air traffic management (CNS/ATM).

The CMA-4000 FMS features an Arinc-653 compliant real-time operating system, and its architecture meets the requirements of the FACE technical standard. This allows crew to have rapid access to enhanced software as well as giving the ability to host third-party user applications, decreasing the cost and timeframe for development and integration work.

The new FMS unit provides radio management, mission control, flight management and navigation through all phases of flight. The combination of civil flight plans, with multiple type search patterns, radio control and control of mission-specific equipment improves the C-130T crews’ ability to deal with more demanding operations, according to CMC (Hall 3 E7).

The IntegriFlight CMA-5024 gives the C-130T a civil-certified global navigation satellite system (GNSS) for IFR operations. It provides wide area augmentation system (Waas) GPS capability from departure to non-precision approach that will comply with the current and future CNS/ATM requirements.

Waas augments GPS to provide an extremely accurate navigation to support C-130T flight operations from the en route phase of flight through to making CAT-1-equivalent approaches with GNSS and Waas localizer performance. It provides a level of navigational integrity that could not be achieved with standard GPS.