Military Embedded Systems

SOF Week 2023 - Tampa, Fla. The final panel for People Day at SOF Week, Tuesday May 9, will be moderated by USSOCOM’s Preservation of the Force and Family Director,Colonel Michael Stone, Director, Preservation of the Force and Family - U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and explore emerging and cutting-edge approaches to refine the understanding of total human performance. Special Operations Forces (SOF) operators and enablers must continuously work to maintain their elite performance physically, mentally, and emotionally.

SOF Week 2023 – TAMPA, Fla. Silicon and software provider Octasic reports the formation of a Special Advisory Committee -- made up of esteemed experts with decades-long experience in defense and intelligence -- that will advise and guide Octasic in its engagements with the U.S. federal and Department of Defense (DoD) markets.

SOF WEEK 2023 - TAMPA, Fla. The kickoff panel for SOF Week 2023's People Day” on Tuesday, May 9 will center on the challenge of finding the right talent for unique requirements. 

SOF Week 2023 – TAMPA, Fla. L3Harris Technologies is showing its VAMPIRE [Vehicle-Agnostic Modular Palletized ISR Rocket Equipment] display and the WESCAM MX-8 EO/IR system integrated on Vanilla Unmanned’s uncrewed aerial system (UAS) platform, as a way to highlight the multisensor operator experience, at this week's SOF Week 2023 show.

SOF Week 2023 – Tampa, Fla. Ahead of Special Operations Foundation Week (SOF Week) SIG SAUER announced the first-ever public offering of a pair of M17 and M18 military surplus handguns with matching serial numbers through an online auction to benefit Sterling Promise Foundation.  All proceeds from this online auction, hosted by Guns America, will go to support the mission of Sterling’s Promise Foundation to provide financial support for early cancer detection and to cover the financial gaps that occur between treatment needed and benefits provided of special operations veterans.

SOF WEEK 2023 -- TAMPA, Fla. Participating in SOF Week 2023 is the (SOWF), a non-profit organization with an enduring promise to the children of fallen Special Operations (SOF) Personnel and the children of all service members awarded the Medal of Honor to fund education for children of fallen Special Operations Warriors.

SOF WEEK 2023 – TAMPA, Fla. Engineers at Somewear Labs in San Francisco, California, this week launched a multi-network device called Node, enhances the ability for mission teams to communicate and coordinate during dynamic operations, providing increased reliability, security, and situational awareness.

Rebranded after being bought by Veritas Capital from CAES, Frontgrade Technologies is now a stand-alone company focused on the space market - military and commercial. In this podcast, Frontgrade President and Chief Executive Officer Mike Elias discusses how the acquisition and rebranding impacts the company and its clientele.

ARLINGTON, Virginia. Officials at CAES announced that Herley -previously under Ultra - has joined CAES to grow the company’s footprint in the RF market. The combination enables CAES to add capabilities in missile flight instrumentation, customized RF solutions for microwave assemblies, and tactical radio frequency.

While most leaders in the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) understand the basic value of open architectures, they need to see metrics on already-realized cost and scheduled savings, said David Tremper, Director, Acquisition Integration and Interoperability, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense in his keynote address at the MOSA [Modular Open Systems Approach] Virtual Summit held February 22 and hosted by myself and Military Embedded Systems.

We have big news: Military Embedded Systems, in partnership with Shephard Media in the United Kingdom, have been named the official Media and Show Daily Partners for SOF Week 2023. The event – scheduled to be held in Tampa, Florida, the week of May 8, 2023 -- is managed by the Global SOF Foundation and Clarion Events on behalf of the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

SCOTTSDALE, AZ. David Tremper – Director, Acquisition Integration and Interoperability, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (OUSD) for Acquisition and Sustainment (A&S), will keynote the MOSA Virtual Summit, being held Feb 22 at 11 am Est. Other sessions include MOSA for Crewed and Uncrewed Aviation Platforms, Bringing MOSA to C5ISR and Electronic Warfare Applications, and Applying a MOSA Strategy Across Multiple Domains.

Do you miss the U.S. defense budgets of yore, where costs for programs skyrocketed into the billions and overall defense spending reached into the trillions? Where cost was not a concern, only a capability? If you’re pining for those days, then you probably don’t want to read our Nov/Dec issue. 

NEW YORK & COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado. CAES Space Systems, a supplier of high-reliability electronic solutions is now rebranded as Frontgrade Technologies. Officials at Veritas Capital, a technology and government investment firm that has Frontgrade Technologies in its portfolio, announced the change.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California. The RQ-4 RangeHawk from Northrop Grumman provided support for the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket during the recent Artemis 1 mission. RangeHawk is part of SkyRange, the Department of Defense (DoD) Test Resource Management Center’s uncrewed high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE), responsive mobile flight test initiative.

Experts from the Navy Air Combat Electronics program office (PMA-209) recently participated in the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortia exposition in Dayton, Ohio. At the event the Avionics Architecture Team (AAT) for PMA-209 demonstrated several of its open architecture (OA) projects that are reducing software integration time and maintenance costs for the U.S. Navy. 

Power is a key consideration for modern open architecture initiatives such as the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard, says John Sturm, Vice President of Business Development for the Aerospace & Defense business unit of Vicor, when I interviewed him just before Thanksgiving. We also discussed where custom power supplies fit into the defense world and talked about how commercial AI and big data applications are driving innovation and cost reductions in defense power component manufacturing, recruiting engineering talent into the defense market, and what will be a disruptor in military power supplies in the future. Edited excerpts follow.

BARCELONA, Spain. Danlaw Inc., a leading global automotive and aerospace electronics solutions provider, acquired Maspatechnologies SL, a spin-off of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS). Maspatechnologies will join the Danlaw-owned Rapita Systems group and now operate as Rapita Systems SL from offices in Barcelona.

WASHINGTON. Those developing the process for conforming to the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard want a process that is easy to understand, is affordable, and that keeps vendors honest. SOSA representatives C. Patrick Collier, Mark Littlefield, and Ilya Lipkin outlined the status of the conformance process at a SOSA briefing held at the AOC Annual Symposium in Washington this week.

“Is it difficult covering standards, is it getting slow?” my dinner companion asked on the eve of the AUSA 2022 Annual Meeting in Washington. He noted how technical standards bodies can be plodding, taking months to deliberate on a specific point without creating much news.