(This column originally ran in Military Embedded Systems’ associated publication, PC104 and Small Form Factors.)

By Dawn M.K. Zoldi (Colonel, USAF Ret.)

The Department of the Navy (DoN) plans to make some waves in the battle for limited resources. In over a thousand multiservice entries spanning all unmanned systems domains across the Department of Defense (DoD) in the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act, Congress primarily funded the air domain. The DoN response to the maritime hit: a rallying cry to roll the entire air, sea, ground, and manned/unmanned enterprise together to create an affordable, integrated, lethal, scalable, survivable and connected force. It’s called the Unmanned Campaign Framework. 

By Paul Meyer, Vice President, Raytheon Intelligence & Space

In a recent congressional testimony, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks stated that as the United States faces growing security challenges, acquisitions of new technology should “increase warfighting effectiveness, enhance resilience, leverage commercial technology and innovation, and rapidly respond to future threats. Hicks also called on the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to seek “interorganizational collaboration” to address such challenges, while expressing concern regarding the barriers to entry for technology companies that want to do business with DoD.

Each issue, the editorial staff of Military Embedded Systems will highlight a different charitable organization that benefits the military, veterans, and their families. We are honored to cover the technology that protects those who protect us every day. To back that up, our parent company – OpenSystems Media – will make a donation to every group we showcase on this page.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. During the night of 7 October 2001, [Central Intelligence Agency] CIA-controlled Predator drone 3034 was flying over a mud-walled compound in Afghanistan, the suspected hideout of Taliban leader Mullah Omar. The infrared (IR) sensors picked-up heat signatures from three vehicles and a motorcycle leaving and heading toward Kandahar. The drone pilot, and the weapons officer controlling the two on-board Hellfire missiles, were sitting in a trailer on the grounds of CIA-headquarters (HQ) in Langley, Virginia. The video images from the Predator were being streamed, via satellite links, to the big flat-screen TVs at Langley, to the offices of military brass at the Pentagon, General Franks' office at central command (CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida, to the offices of General Deptula in Qatar (who was controlling Air Force fighter planes and bombers over Afghanistan), and the office of General Jumper, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force. Ordinary soldiers call this video network "Kill TV," for reasons that will become obvious.

Shared perspectives from embedded COTS suppliers at the annual Embedded Tech Trends (ETT) conference and networking event typically flavor my January/February column each year. Back-to-back twenty-minute press briefings in three-hour periods not only provide column fodder but also help us plan editorial contributions for the coming year.  

Each issue, the editorial staff of Military Embedded Systems will highlight a different charitable organization that benefits the military, veterans, and their families. We are honored to cover the technology that protects those who protect us every day. To back that up, our parent company – OpenSystems Media – will make a donation to every group we showcase on this page.

By Dr. Jim Davis, uAvionix

The Fog of War: When opposing forces battle for domination, battlefield loss is always a concern. Sometimes it arises as intended from enemy action. Another kind of attrition, though, might be described as “collateral damage” or “fratricide,” when one side mistakenly kills or destroys one of its own. Fratricide arises from a variety of causes, among them loss of situational awareness, an unexpected encounter where rapid identification is not possible, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. Our most popular blogs on MilitaryEmbedded.com from 2020 covered topics by guest bloggers from VITA, Crystal Group, Winmate, Curtiss-Wright, and Advantech on subjects such as 6G -stealth fighter planes, hardware security trust, UFOs, rugged tablets, tensors, unmanned fighter jets, small form factors, the kill web and more. Check them out below.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. Back in 1991, U.S. and coalition forces decimated the Iraqi Army in 42 days during Operation Desert Storm. At the time, Iraq had the world’s fifth largest army. Can we do better than 42 days in the future? Yes, with the help of cloud computing and a supercomputer.

By Nathalie Bijnens, Intrinsic ID

Aerospace and government defense program users have unique needs when it comes to FPGA [field-programmable gate array] devices, both in terms of security and in terms of long-term deployments. Increasing use of unmanned systems and other autonomous assets has created new security challenges. Physical unclonable function (PUF)-based security technologies for FPGAs have been created with these unique needs in mind. These solutions are instantiated through the user configuration file, so they are easy to implement and can be applied to the entire range of Xilinx FPGAs – even those already in the field.

ETHERNET EVERYWHERE BLOG. At MilSource, our technical team often get questions on how to more easily manage the “networks” now living and communicating on every mobile military vehicle. Implementation teams and integrators are faced with the daunting task of managing hundreds of networks that are the same set of devices just repeated in every mobile vehicle.

By Will Keegan, Lynx Software Technologies

Flying cars are being demonstrated and are close to becoming a reality as the urban mobility segment experiences significant investment. We’ve also had discussions with an automotive manufacturer who is looking to build avionics platforms. So that got me thinking about the way in which the avionics and automotive industries will come together. It’s already happening.

ETHERNET EVERYWHERE BLOG. Because customers need to simplify and economize on space, many networking companies are being asked to move beyond traditional networks and look at ways to combine networking and power management. You’ve got devices that need to share data, but they also need to be powered.  If you are looking at a mobile military platform, Power over Ethernet (PoE) simplifies cabling and reduces the number of devices needed on a platform.

Each issue, the editorial staff of Military Embedded Systems will highlight a different charitable organization that benefits the military, veterans, and their families. We are honored to cover the technology that protects those who protect us every day. To back that up, our parent company – OpenSystems Media – will make a donation to every group we showcase on this page.