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Astronautics to Upgrade Cockpit Displays on U.S. Customs and Border Protection P-3 Orions

The new glass cockpit equipment will keep the legacy aircraft compatible with modern system and will provide the opportunity for future avionics upgrades

(Image courtesy: Astronautics Corporation of America)

Milwaukee-based Astronautics Corporation of America  will update the U.S. Customs and Border Protection  (CBP) agency’s Air and Marine Operations (AMO) fleet of Lockheed Martin  P-3 Orion  turboprop maritime surveillance aircraft with new primary flight and navigation displays. The purchase order, which was submitted by Lockheed Martin, includes upgrades for both CBP P-3 Orion variants: the P-3 Orion Long Range Tracker (LRT) and the P-3 Orion Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft.

Each of the CBP’s 14 P-3 aircraft will receive Astronautics’ AFD 6800  electronic flight instrument system (EFIS), including four modern 6- by 8-inch digital multifunction displays, wiring harnesses, and additional spare displays for maintenance and repair. The four liquid crystal display (LCD) screens will be split into pairs of primary flight displays and navigation displays for the pilot and copilot.

Astronautics P-3 Program Manager Todd Andrus and P-3 Product Engineering Manager Barbara Hofmann in the cockpit of a P-3 Orion during a 6x8-inch multifunction display fit check for the CPB fleet. (Image courtesy: Astronautics Corporation of America)

In order to minimize training and display certification, the company will port existing software from current Astronautics EFIS displays that were installed in the late 1990s. Prior to those first-generation glass cockpit instruments, the P-3 flew with original Astronautics attitude direction and horizontal situation indicators.

Learn more about glass cockpits

“Astronautics is able to deliver the highest reliability displays tailored to meet our customers’ missions, ensuring they are able to operate wherever they need, whenever they need,” explains Robert Koelling, Astronautics director of business development. “For the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Astronautics provided an incremental, modular plan for upgrading its P-3 fleet that limited aircraft downtime and met budget and schedule needs.”

(Image courtesy: Astronautics Corporation of America)

The new displays will provide an improved viewing angle and color rendering using light emitting diode (LED) backlights that run cooler with less power and support more vibrant color. The AFD 6800 architecture supports night vision goggle integration and later transition to aircraft synthetic vision.

System delivery is expected in the summer of 2019.

The Orion P-3

The Orion P-3 – a high-endurance, all-weather, tactical aircraft – was first introduced to the U.S. Navy in 1962 to track Soviet submarines during the Cold War. Since then, the P-3 has continued to fill long-range aerial patrols and surveillance missions.

(Image courtesy: U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

The CBP currently operates P-3 aircraft in AMO law enforcement configuration out of Corpus Christi, Texas and Jacksonville, Florida. The CPB uses the aircraft to patrol the southern U.S. coastal boarder and Caribbean and Eastern Pacific waters. The aircraft’s specialized detection capabilities allow crews to identify emerging threats in an area that is almost 14 times the size of the continental U.S.

The cockpit update follows a CBP P-3 service life extension plan (SLEP) overhaul initiated in 2006 and completed in 2016. At the time of the 2006 analysis, the CBP’s P-3 Orion LRT aircraft had less than eight years of remaining service life and the P-3 Orion AEW aircraft had less than three years.

Each of the 14 aircraft was stripped to bare metal for comprehensive airframe fatigue inspection. Then each aircraft received new wings, tail, and paint.

Astronautics Corporation of America

Since its founding in 1959, Astronautics has designed, developed, and manufactured secure avionics equipment and systems for the commercial and military aerospace industry. Astronautics is the parent company of Kearfott Corporation  , headquartered in Woodland Park, New Jersey.

William Kucinski  is content editor at SAE International, Aerospace Products Group in Warrendale, Pa. Previously, he worked as a writer at the NASA Safety Center in Cleveland, Ohio and was responsible for writing the agency’s System Failure Case Studies. His interests include literally anything that has to do with space, past and present military aircraft, and propulsion technology.

Contact him regarding any article or collaboration ideas by e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Topics:
Aircraft Aircraft Aircraft displays Aircraft instruments Architecture Automotive Aviation Avionics Avionics Computer software and hardware Connectivity Connectivity Control systems Data Acquisition Data acquisition and handling Defense Displays/Monitors/HMIs Electronics Fixed-wing aircraft Flight management systems Integrated modular avionics Military aircraft Motion Control Navigation and guidance systems Pistons Software Vehicles

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    Transcript

    00:00:24
    >> The source in-transit zone. The wild and lawless open ocean of the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean, where smugglers of illegal narcotics and immigrants attempt to transit their illicit cargo from Central and South America north to the United States. This expanse of endless ocean is the place where the pirates of the twenty-first century make their first moves to unload their booty of uncut cocaine

    00:00:48 and heroin, marijuana, or illegal migrants to the next stop along the line of the international criminal chain. This is also where U.S. Customs and Border Protection meets them head on, stopping them, and breaking links in that chain one by one. The tool of choice – the P3 Orion Aircraft, CBP's eyes over the ocean.
    >> We're in the heart of the hunting ground,

    00:01:18 per se, of looking for drug runners, this location offers us a great opportunity to be able to go out, to prosecute, be able to come back, refuel, go back out if necessary.
    >> Most of the conveyances we follow nowadays are going to be surface conveyances, either small vessels, high-speed vessels, so we call them "Go Fast." They're modified fishing boats; two, three, sometimes even single engine.

    00:01:48
    >> Chasing a [INAUDIBLE] submersible, which is one of these [INAUDIBLE] submarines that they'll have out. We have a fishing boat with that all we [INAUDIBLE] are chasing a tanker or a container ship. You have to go down range and try to intercept these loads while they're still large, before they're dispersed. We're the best asset for that. People on this airplane

    00:02:32 have been doing this job for years and decades. It's what we do all the time. It's what we're really good at.
    >> The P-3 aircraft is flown by very experienced CBP pilots. They guide this aircraft over the ocean to a designated target search area commonly referred to as "the box." And behind them is a massive array of sensory equipment, which is the technological heart of the P-3 mission. Now, once the aircraft reaches the box,

    00:03:06 CBP officers and agents, who are detection experts, use that powerful radar to search for, pinpoint, trap and monitor any suspicious targets that they find in the air and on the ocean.
    >> You know, when you get a good case and you bring home that knowledge that you did something to stop bad people from bringing bad things into our country, I feel very, very happy about what I'm doing.

    00:03:33 If anything looks suspicious, and that's just according to knowledge that we've gained throughout the years, of what looks legitimate and what's not looking legitimate. Also aircraft, aircraft usually give themselves away by not doing what they're telling everybody that they're doing, or going into areas of possible suspect activity.
    >> The P-3 platform comes with two kinds of radar; one is an airborne, early detection radar system that was put on top of a P3 that came from an E2.

    00:04:13 The other radar system is a surface search radar, primarily, that looks for the vessels and vessel traffic that is approaching from the littoral waters of our Central and South American countries. Combined, they do a very thorough job of looking for air and surface targets as they approach from those countries and destined for the United States.
    >> This airplane and sister ship have the ability to patrol thousands and thousands of miles of open ocean on any given flight.

    00:04:57 During the eight hours that we'll operate today, we'll transit well over a thousand miles, and we have both the Caribbean and the Pacific hunting for narcotics . The farther away from America we can stop it, the more difficult we can make it for people who want to bring that up, I think the better the American public is. We're certain we're the most capable platform for taking this fight on well south and north,

    00:05:22 away from our shores. That's the advantage that we bring.
    >> U.S. Customs and Border Protection's Air and Marine operation's P-3 program. Watching, stopping and protecting the United States of America, 24-7. To learn more about a career with Air and Marine Operations, visit CBP.gov/Careers.

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