1. A method for reducing the equipment payload for signal intelligence equipment in a signal intelligence bay comprising the step of: providing a signal intelligence system as the signal intelligence equipment payload in a signal intelligence bay, the signal intelligence system using a runtime reconfigurable software receiver including multiple software components which, when programmed, function as a signal intelligence system having a receiver interface, a signal energy detection system, a system for signal recognition, a direction finding system or a countermeasure system such that the reconfigurable software receiver is capable of providing a predetermined signal intelligence function, each software component run on a multi-distributed processor system having a number of distributed interconnected processors each connected to a processor manager that displays and controls components, maintains status and interacts with a framework manger, the framework manager controlling the interconnected processors to effectuate the predetermined signal intelligence function, each software component with the associated processor executing the software of the component as instantiated by the processor manager, the software components inheriting characteristics from component base classes to ensure interface compatibility, the framework manager having an installed a plan corresponding to the predetermined signal intelligence function and operating on an intercepted signal, the framework manager instructing each processor manager to access from a list of software components the software components necessary to carry out the plan and to initialize the system at runtime based on the properties of the accessed software components such that the software receiver is configurable at runtime in accordance with the predetermined signal intelligence system function, whereby the signal intelligence system plan is implemented to configure the signal intelligence system at runtime to carry out the signal intelligence function defined by the plan, such that multiple signal intelligence functions can be provided by a software-reconfigurable receiver without having to provide separate signal intelligence modules, one for each signal intelligence function.