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2.5.2 MilCAN
According to the official web site (http://www.milcan.org) : “MilCAN has been defined by a group of interested companies and government bodies associated with the specification, manufacture and test of military vehicles. The MilCAN working group was formed in 1999 as a sub-group of the International High Speed Data Bus - Users Group (IHSDB-UG) when a need was recognised to standardise the implementation of CANbus within the military vehicles community. The mission statement of this newly formed group was ‘To develop, for various application classes in all military vehicles, a common interface implementation specification based on CANbus’.”
Describing the MilCAN standard is not an easy task and the only reason it found its way onto this web site is due to the fact that it is partly based on J1939. It seems that the creators of the protocol tried to satisfy the protective demands of every European member (in this case especially the Germans and Brits) on one side and American companies on the other. One can only appreciate that the circle of members was not extended any further. MilCAN is an inconsistent mixture of CUP, a protocol developed by the German Army (Bundeswehr), SAE J1939, representing the American side, and CANopen, representing the European side.
As a resullt, there are two variants of MilCAN, MilCAN A and MilCAN B. MilCAN A is based on the 29-bit CAN identifier according to SAE J1939, the major difference being that MilCAN A supports deterministic data transfer and accommodates both, synchronous and asynchronous, data. MilCAN B, on the other hand, is based on the 11-bit CAN identifier and can, at least officially, make use of devices that have been designed for CANopen[1]. Also officially, it should be possible to mix J1939 devices with MilCAN devices on the same bus.
