Cliff Bilbrey
Solutions Engineer II
Veli-Pekka Heinonen
Senior Product Lead
It is well known that Qt's technology penetrates virtually every sector of consumer and industrial technology. Over the years, with its graphical UI libraries and a wealth of functionality for handling networking, sensor data, media, and more, Qt Framework has defined the standard for human-machine interaction across industries.
We all know of mobile applications or entire desktop systems built with Qt, and Qt Framework's solid presence in Automotive and Industrial Vehicles, with dedicated solutions spanning beyond cluster displays and encompassing connectivity with companion apps, digital twins, and autonomous driving. Even in highly regulated industries, like Medical Device Manufacturing, 90% of the world's largest OEMs build their products with Qt.
What is perhaps not so widely known is that even in one of the most heavily regulated and high-stakes industries—Aerospace and Defense—Qt Framework plays a critical role in powering a wide array of applications, ranging from drone ground control stations and radar systems to ground vehicles, simulation platforms, and even autopilot systems.
Qt plays a critical role in powering a wide array of applications, ranging from drone ground control stations and radar systems to ground vehicles, simulation platforms, and even autopilot systems.
Aerospace & Defense | Built with QtWell-known Qt-based products in the sector include the widely used QGroundControl for controlling and monitoring unmanned aerial vehicles. This open-source software offers full flight control and mission planning for MAVLink enabled drones and owes much of its ease of use for professionals and developers to Qt technology, enabling:
Lag-free UI updates—telemetry, maps, video streaming.
Customizable UI/UX—tailored for drone operators.
Cross-platform consistency—for field use on tablets, laptops, and control stations.
Scalability—from hobby drones to defense applications.
Ease of development—for a small team developing on a single codebase and rapidly deploying to a variety of platforms.
A variety of Command, Control, Communications, Computers (C4), Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems—C4ISR, for short—in the A&D sector are built with Qt, both due to its features and capabilities, and to its tooling that speeds up production, reduce costs, and shortens time-to-market—here as in other sectors.
Let's look into more details of the framework's capabilities and tooling for enhanced productivity.
Read how Yuneec and NXP use Qt and QGroundControl for commercial and research applications.
Framework's CapabilitiesWith ready-to-use resources covering not only the UI/UX aspect of software, but also dedicated libraries for connectivity, graphics, mapping, database interaction, and so much more, it's hard to call out a feature of Qt Framework that comes before others for importance. Perhaps the primary advantage of using Qt Framework is its architecture, providing modularity, platform independence and openness at its core.
By abstracting over the complexity of the underlying system, Qt libraries make it easy for developers to port advanced functionality to varied devices selectively (only providing what's necessary) and consistently (behaving the same across devices), and to easily integrate third-party solutions. In a sector seeking to reduce costs through a Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) such features represent strong competitive advantages that we'll discuss further in upcoming posts.
Modularity, platform independence, and openness are key factors of Qt Framework's success.
The advanced UI/UX capabilities of Qt Framework—developed through 30 years of experience across consumer and industrial electronics—play a crucial role in the A&D sector. With the pervasiveness of smartphone-like experiences in our daily lives, modern and intuitive HMIs are now an expectation also for applications in the Aerospace and Defense sector. Such expectations are not easily fulfilled by competing UI frameworks, which are typically dedicated to specific applications and therefore limited in their UI/UX functions.
Concretely, several Qt libraries support mission-critical applications for ground control stations, digital twins, and simulation systems.
Qt Quick libraries—for ready-to-use, optimized UI components.
Hardware and RTOS Support—for seamless compatibility across Windows, Linux, and leading RTOS platforms like Integrity, QNX, and VxWorks.
High-performance Graphics—delivering highly optimized advanced graphics for maps, radar, and simulation systems—backed by libraries like Qt Location, Qt Positioning, and Qt Graphs .
Efficient data handling—for sensors, control, and mission management—via Qt Multithreaded Execution for optimal data processing and lag-free remote monitoring.
Safety-critical systems—via Qt Safe Renderer ensuring uninterrupted visibility for alarms and critical warnings in ships, ground vehicles and defense platforms— helping meet industry-grade certification requirements, including ISO 26262.
Optimized for embedded systems, performance and reduced footprint are also a major advantage in using Qt for applications that rely on graphics—among others, digital twins or simulation systems.
Then there is a set of tools designed for maximizing teams' productivity from design to deployment on target with reduced time-to-market and cost.
It's a lot of code that's already been vetted, and you can just grab it, instead of writing from scratch.
Software Development ToolingSupplemented by dedicated tooling for each stage of the product lifecycle (design-to-code conversion, logic implementation, debugging, profiling, deployment, and beyond), Qt helps developers—and designers, system integrators, and more—realize advanced Aerospace and Defense systems in an efficient way. Development licenses come with dedicated tools for all stages of the developer's journey:
Qt Design Studio—for seamless design-to-code conversion, visual UI editing, and design-oriented usage.
Qt Creator—for backend development, data integration, cross-compilation, and debugging on a variety of targets.
Boot to Qt—for simple and fast deployment onto a variety of embedded devices.
To eliminate exposure to remote attacks and data breaches or to operate in air-gapped networks, Qt supports offline installation and other options for customizable installations that can adapt to specific requirements while maintaining robust security.
Additionally, Qt Group's portfolio includes a suite of testing and quality assurance tools that can help in meeting safety and regulation requirements and will be the topic of a dedicated blog.
The Added Valued of Qt CommercialWith some of the world's most advanced and costly technologies, strict safety and quality requirements, and systems that must be supported in the field for decades, the Aerospace and Defense sector demands the highest investment's protection. Qt Group is well equipped to support such needs given its long experience in working in highly regulated industries. Over the years, a series of measures has been implemented to comply with stringent regulatory standards, that are particularly impactful for the A&D sector.
Qt Commercial Licenses let you lock down hardware and protect proprietary software and designs. They also come with additional libraries and capabilities like Qt for MCUs and improved QML tooling, among others things.
Long-Term Support gives access to updates and security patches ensuring your market presence over time.
Extended and Premium Security Maintenance deliver security patches and updates for devices created with Qt versions that need to be maintained beyond the LTS lifetime.
A detailed Software Bill of Materials ensures transparency and compliance with regulations.
Consistent APIs with backward compatibility ensure easy porting to newer versions without costly rewrites.
With Qt Commercial, you can lock down hardware, protect proprietary software, access long-term support and other measures for additional safety and regulatory compliance.
Qt Group is investing substantially in the quality of its software and the software built with Qt. Our focus in this blog has been on Qt Framework and developer tooling, but Qt Group is much more than that. A follow up blog will be dedicated entirely to Qt Group's Software Quality Solutions and how they help the Aerospace and Defense sector meet relevant certifications, comply with coding guidelines, and create reliable code that is easier to certify and maintain.
Learn more about Qt in Aerospace and Defense.RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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