PLC´s for millitary use

Im just a bit curious.. I wonder if armies are using plc´s in any of their vehicles.

And is there any PLC´s that is made for millitary usage ?

//jim

I don't know about army use, but I seem to remember seeing a press release somewhere when Siemens did a refit on a US Navy aircraft carrier. There were a couple of hot-standby PLCs controlling fuel delivery to the flight-deck, and the system was widely distributed within the ship: multiple storage tanks, multiple take-off points etc. I think they used Profibus everywhere with fibre optic redundancy and the weight saving in going from copper cable to FO allowed the ship to carry an extra few thousand gallons of JET-A1 for the F-16s or whatever.

I guess vibration, temperature etc would be as bad as you get on-land with the added problem of the marine environment.

Regards

Ken

I was in the US Navy and we had PLCs aboard one of the ships which I was assigned to (which was eight years old at the time). And the USS Wasp, as well as others, has several systems in use as Steve Bailey posted earlier this week. It's amazing how similar that ship is to one of the ships I was on.

PLCs pose no different problems in a marine environment than the other tons of electronic gear already in uses.

Very intressting. I can imagine that a PLC-system suits a big navy ship well..
Im sitting here and thinking about how usable a PLC could be in a Main battle tank or armored recovery vehicles.
Its just an interesting thought for me.. I served as gunner on the Leopard 2 MBT i the army. And I think that theres a lot of things that could be controlled by a compact and robust PLC system in a tank..

It would be easy to replace,program and locate errors... hmm or maybe not.

IFM Efector makes a plc for mobile equipment. I don't know if they've been used on military equipment yet, but their specs are the closest I've seen to mil-spec.

http://www.ifmefector.com/ifmus/web/mobile_info.htm

Kevin

Most Military devices that I have had contact with are considered "Black Box - Devices", and are actually single board computers running embedded OS's. (HMI's,...etc are small touch screens) There are I/O boards that plug into most Single board PC's and are fairly small.

These systems are very specific to the protocols and requirements. They are usually written in C++ or some machine language code. They are usually locked and cannot be uploaded, changed or modified in any way.

This is my experience, and based on 5 years ago.....I'm sure that nothing has really changed.

Some manufacturer of military equipment take PLCs and other civilian equipment and make them more rigid.They changed the outside adding cooling and seal the boards.The inside is a same as the civilian stuff.
I was visiting in place they buying HP IPAQ strip the cover and install it in AL frame, water and dust seal.and 3 time of the original weight.
They also do so for laptop, this laptop install in tanks and arm vehcles.
They sale it all over the world.
It is not so common but sometime is cheaper then developing new system.
Before few years I installed in my militry unit some PLCs which work pretty good until this days.
Before few years . Friend of mine he was engineer on one of our navy ships . he told he replaced almost every electonic card on the ship, the only thing he never touch during his service is old black and white TV in the dining room.
Military equipment is not always rigid and reliable as we tend to think.

At AB automation-fair in 2004 they had a large army truck on display that used a ControlLogix PLC and multiple AC drives. The wheels were driven electrically - each wheel had its own motor. Power was generated by a large onboard diesel generator (like a locomotive). When not being used to haul things, the truck could be used as a mobile power plant for electricity generation.

As was mentioned elsewhere, the US Navy uses ControlLogix plcs on many ships.

Bus Pictures

Here are some pictures of a hybrid bus in Chatanooga TN. The drive said he thought that he heard it had a "PLC" in it when I asked him about it, but he wasn't sure. I can't imagine putting in panelviews without a plc though.

The company that I used to work for was building some type of military generator cart. They were using GE plc's.

In my experience on Air Defence Radars in the Royal Air Force we used dedicated electronics. This isn't to say that a PLC couldn't have done the job, but it was more down to security.

It would be much easier to rob a program from a standard PLC and send it over to the ruskies (the threat at the time) as oppose to a specifically developed black box system...

Saying all that... we also had a sledgehammer and axe in what was called the 'destruction kit'. The idea being that if you saw the ruskies coming over the hill you would start smashing as much stuff as possible.

Needless to say, we were never allowed to test the 'destruction kits' effectiveness whilst on exercise.....

Hello,

If you are considering to use an Industrial PLC in a Military vehicle you have to consider the problems you run in to in any vehicle such as vibration, humidity, variations in supply voltage, variations in temperature.

We are using the Sauer Danfoss Plus1 system in mobile applications for different types of vehicles. It is kind of a PLC but it was designed for the above conditions. It can be mounted in harsch environment and does not need to be placed in a cabinett. It also use CAN bus.
Have a look at: http://www.sauer-danfoss-plus1.com/

The closest I saw when I was in the Navy was the 8033 board in the computer used for diagnostics on the CIWS Phalanx anti-missile defence system.(Obsolete even then, Early 90's) Most of the hardware were proprietary cards from the manufacturer, (I think the biggest reason was so they could charge so much for replacements.)

I think PLC's would work in a limited capacity, but this particular system had 2 radars, one for target acquisition and one to track the outgoing 20mm rounds. That would be bit for your average PLC to handle.

The VLS Missile System I worked on had a monochromatic terminal that was used for system diagnostics. It ran some type of dos based software. They really didn't let us get into the guts too much beyond repairing cards by replacement. Even though we were trained to repair components on the cards if need be.

I have a shooting buddy that works for General Dynamics Land Systems on the north side of Detroit and without being specific, he told me they are using CPU boards similar to VME and programming still in DOD's ADA. He's familiar with PLCs and told me that he didn't think they'd have the horsepower for the applications he's working on. Which in a few words he's let on are tank style vehicles. (He's not exactly open about what he does exactly or what they're for)

Anybody that has landed at Dulles International Airport and boarded a shuttle was riding on a Sherman Tank body and engine retrofitted with hydraulic planetairy wheel drive and hydraulic servo-drive on all mechanical movements.

It run on Mitsubishi PLC. I should know my code runs it