India Develops its Own Cyber Threat-Eliminating Operating System for Aircraft

India was importing real-time operating systems (RTOS) for its military and civil aircraft that provided limited flexibility in incorporating new features and adapting to new hardware platforms. However, locally-developed RTOS would also address potential network vulnerabilities.

New Delhi (Sputnik) — Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) — a state-owned firm has claimed to have developed India’s first indigenous real-time operating system (RTOS) which was successfully tested on the Hawk-i trainer aircraft on Wednesday.

The RTOS is the system software which provides a standard run-time environment for the real-time execution of applications in a safe and reliable manner.

“The imported RTOS may also be vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which may compromise the safety and security of the avionics system. To overcome this dependency and achieve self-reliance, HAL had taken up the onus of designing an indigenous RTOS for safety-critical and mission-critical avionics systems,” HAL said in a statement.

The HAL-RTOS provides a comprehensive feature set based on international specification — ARINC-653 — to support Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) architecture.

“The RTOS is a key technology for the concurrent execution of multiple applications and optimal use of hardware resources, which is of paramount importance for the increased complexity of modern avionics software,” the HAL statement read.

A RTOS provides for the predictability, safety, and workability of several functional applications at once in aircraft, both civilian and military.

Sourse: sputniknews.com