MAJOR DEFENSE SUPPLIERS TO DEMONSTRATE Wind River VxWorks MILS Platform

18 Nov 08. Wind River today announced that four of the top commercial suppliers to the aerospace and defense industry have collaborated on a multilevel secure (MLS) demonstration utilizing an early access version of Wind River’s upcoming VxWorks MILS Platform 2.0. The MILS (multiple independent levels of security) infrastructure enables development of multi-level secure systems that process classified data at all levels simultaneously, including downgraders, guards, and other cross-domain applications.

At MILCOM 2008 in San Diego, Calif., Wind River will participate in a simulated combat search and rescue demonstration, in which enemy jet fighter aircraft and missiles are identified and destroyed by systems from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Rockwell Collins in order to enable the successful recovery of a downed pilot. The multi-vendor demonstration will feature the MILS approach to information assurance, which can use Common Criteria-evaluated off-the-shelf products as a base to achieve secure information sharing in battle space. An early access release of VxWorks MILS Platform 2.0 is one of the underlying technologies used in the demonstration. For more information about Wind River at MILCOM 2008 (booth #1231), please visit:
http://www.windriver.com/announces/milcom2008/.

Boeing, Lockheed Martin Corporation, and Raytheon Company are among the companies currently evaluating early access releases of VxWorks MILS Platform 2.0.

“We are pleased to be evaluating Wind River’s new VxWorks MILS Platform to develop our MILS system architecture, and look forward to its general commercial release,” said Darrel Price, software engineer at Boeing. “The VxWorks MILS Platform will enable multiple teams working in parallel to build multi-level secure systems running multiple applications, with many layers of security all on a single processor. Wind River’s VxWorks MILS Platform will offer us significant advantages in terms of time to deployment and also reduces later cost-of-change.”

“Lockheed Martin is pleased to see further development by Wind River in the MILS technology,” said Ben Calloni, Fellow, Software Security, Lockheed Martin Corporation. “The MILS architecture will enable us to dramatically reduce cost for the multi-level secure systems critical to national security, and Lockheed Martin wants to see a healthy marketplace for MILS COTS products.”

Raytheon is currently evaluating Wind River’s MILS offering. The two companies are teaming on the development of this emerging technology. MILS is expected to have multiple applications and will further enhance the ability of Raytheon’s customers to more effectively process and share data at different levels of classification.

When the general availability version is released, Wind River’s VxWorks MILS Platform 2.0 will provide customers with a robust operating system foundation and an award-winning development environment to build these MILS-based systems. The platform will also offer a single development environment for customers creating complex defense and aerospace systems that require extremely high performance and a high level of security assurance.

“The high performance and mature functionality of VxWorks MILS Platform 2.0 will be based on six years of customer experience with our time- and space-partitioning operating system for avionics, VxWorks 653 for complex ARINC 653 Integrated Modular Avionics systems, in use on over 100 programs worldwide,” said Marc Brown, vice president of VxWorks Marketing at Wind River. “Customers that will develop on the general availability version of VxWorks MILS will benefit materially from the reduction of development time, cost, and risk that our solution will offer, while also remaining confident knowing they have a comprehensive, secure, and stable solution backed by industry leader Wind River.”

The VxWorks MILS Platform 2.0 will inc