RTCA

How the publications map to ponens policies

DO-178C assures airborne software by objectives, organised in Annex A tables A-1 to A-10 and scaled by Design Assurance Level (A–E). Its defining requirement is bidirectional traceability — system requirements → high-level requirements → low-level requirements → source code → tests — and ponens expresses that directly with its P_chain lineage operator over the software life-cycle record treated as a trace. Each traceability objective becomes a policy such as G(SourceCode → P_chain(LLR)), while process-ordering objectives (plans before development, PSAC agreed before development, reviews and structural coverage achieved) become temporal policies over the same trace.

Design Assurance Level maps to a policy's tier (A–D) and the 'with independence' objectives map to Amber escalations, so the pack scales the way DO-178C does. Running it with ponens trace check aggregates the per-objective verdicts to a Green / Amber / Red picture: a missing traceability link, an unverified requirement, an unbaselined configuration item, or an absent Accomplishment Summary is a Red certification gap; softer items such as problem-report closure or independence are Amber. The process-organisation objectives that are not evidenced per artifact (e.g. tool qualification under DO-330) sit outside this pack.