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Recent changes in DoD procurement directives have encouraged the purchase of civilian products for use in certain military applications. One such application is the upgrade of avionics suites with the Global Positioning System (GPS) in military air transport aircraft to meet joint civil-military operational requirements. This paper reviews the Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) concept and the proper use of TSOs, ACs, and FARs in both the design and integration process.

Human factors issues involving the certification of today's transport flight decks are not limited to new aircraft design. To the contrary, most of today's certification activity involves upgrading the flight deck technology of “classic aircraft” or adding new after-market products to current designs. This can include such additions as Flight Management System (FMS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) interfacing to Autopilots and Flight Directors, Multi-Function Control and Display Units (MCDU), Satellite Communications (SatCom) and High Frequency (HF) Data Links, Heads-Up-Display (HUD) technologies, and even complete three-to-two pilot flight deck conversions. All of these changes impact the way in which crews are trained, qualified, and actually operate the aircraft. This paper reviews the background issues involved with minimum crew certification and describes current methods of workload evaluation in transport category aircraft.