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Over the last fifty years the Army’s Heavy Armored Vehicles/Tanks have become more complex. The need to survive on the battlefield against an enemy who may outnumber you has forced the Armored Systems to be smarter and faster to deliver the first lethal blow. Our tank systems today are able to seek out the enemy and destroy him before he finds you. This has been accomplished by the addition of many electrical/electronic target seeking/tracking, turret/gun control, countermeasure/detectors/sensors, and Combat Vehicle Command and Control (CVC2) equipment to our vehicles. This equipment and its associated wiring has added increased power distribution demands and added weight to the vehicles. In order to cope with this situation, the U.S. Army Tank- Automotive Command (TACOM) has taken on the initiative of formulating a Standard Army VETRONICS Architecture (SAVA) for combat vehicles.

Combat vehicles have traditionally been designed to provide increased capabilities in response to a real or projected threat. These capabilities always fell into the areas of shoot, move, communicate, and survive. Maintainability, Manprint, and Supportability were addressed secondary. An integrated electronic architecture is being developed to improve Operation and Support costs of combat vehicles. The architecture is comprised of standard hardware and software modules that are designed and fabricated in accordance with form, fit and function specifications. By standardizing the hardware and software interfaces the development process will be accelerated while allowing interchangeability of both hardware and software between weapon systems.