The UH-60M Black Hawk modernization program was established to meet the new requirements for supporting the US Army's Future Force. This includes increased lift, range, reliability, maintainability, survivability, and digitized capability for the future battlefield. The UH-60M crew station and avionics improvements represent the most significant changes in the Black Hawk configuration The modernization program has already produced a fully digital "glass" crew station that is designed to enhance tactical and flight situation awareness and decrease pilot workload. The UH-60M 'Baseline' completed initial operational testing in early FY07 and will be fielded to Army Aviation units starting in FY08. In 2005, the Army's Utility Helicopter Program Office (UH-PO) moved forward with the UH-60M 'Upgrade' program. The heart of this follow-on program is the move to the Common Avionics Architecture System (CAAS) and a fly-by-wire (FBW) flight control system. The CAAS configuration includes four portrait-style MFDs, a flight director control panel (FDCP), two control display units (CDU), and two data concentrators. This paper will detail the design and evaluation of the new UH-60M Upgrade crew station during the System Development and Demonstration phase of acquisition. This highly valuable Crew Station Working Group (CSWG) process has provided the opportunity to influence the design of the cockpit early in the acquisition cycle and allows significant user input to the acquisition process. The UH-60M CSWG process has shown to be a highly valuable part of the design and development of the modernized Black Hawk program. An invaluable enabler to the CSWG process has been AMRDEC's Advanced Prototyping and Experimentation (APEX) Labs and the rapid-prototyping, reconfigurable UH-60M crew station.
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