The coexistence of MIL-STD-1553B-equipped legacy combat platforms and STANAG 4586-compliant unmanned aerial systems (UAS) represents an unresolved interoperability deficit spanning every armed force operating mixed-generation fleets. Existing solutions—proprietary hardware gateways from Western vendors—are opaque, non-auditable, and incompatible with national indigenisation requirements. This paper presents a software-defined middleware architecture bridging MIL-STD-1553B and STANAG 4586 Edition 2 Amendment 1 through a protocol-agnostic Common Internal Representation (CIR). Four contributions are presented: (i) a systematic gap analysis identifying 49 field-level incompatibilities classified by a six-category taxonomy (DIRECT, LOSSY, APPROXIMATE, STUB, DROP, UNTRANSLATABLE) and grouped into fifteen architectural gap identifiers; (ii) a five-component hub-and-spoke middleware architecture reducing translation complexity from N×(N−1) to 2N adapter implementations; (iii) a structured comparative analysis demonstrating superior field-level auditability and indigenous modifiability relative to commercial gateways; and (iv) a simulation-based validation confirming sub-millisecond Translation Engine latency with zero silent information loss, assessed at Technology Readiness Level 4 with a concrete roadmap to TRL 6. The architecture supports Link 16 and Data Distribution Service extension and is aligned with India’s Atmanirbhar Bharat and iDEX defence innovation frameworks.
Om Arora (2026) studied this question.