CODE QUALITY BLOG: As cyberwarfare becomes increasingly part of the norm, many, if not most, military embedded systems are safety- and/or security-critical in nature. To combat this increasing risk, it only makes sense that military systems should be constructed following some of the industry?s most rigorous software development standards to ensure their safe, secure, and functionally accurate operation. Following these standards offers a double benefit. Not only does it reduce safety and security risk, but it also reduces cost. Software development standards improve maintainability, upgradability, reusability, and testability, delivering long-term benefits especially given the typical life span of these systems.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: In our last episode, I promised that my next article would be on the ?find and fix? phases of the kill chain. The recent news coming out of North Korea compels me to interrupt that plan. However, these new developments seem to fit the proposed topic well, especially at the tactical level. So, let?s throw-in a quick update on Kim Jung Un?s (KJU) latest malfeasance and how our intelligence systems and people are involved.

Time travel has often been the theme of science fiction stories. Even if you are not a fan of films such as "Back to the Future" and "Doctor Who," it is interesting to spare a moment to consider how much of yesterday's sci-fi is now reality in the form of today's communications, transportation, and defense systems. Much of it enabled by embedded computing technology such as VME and VPX.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: When I first started researching this topic, I thought writing this article would be straight-forward and easy. As with many other subjects in this series, that was not the case. Targeting models are integrated into kill chains, or vice-versa, and that creates some confusion. The available stream of information about this subject is both narrow and shallow. However, we are seeing a sequence of evolving kill chain models, at the strategic and tactical levels.

ETHERNET EVERYWHERE BLOG: We?re often approached by companies who have designed a prototype system composed of networks sensors, cameras, GPS systems, and other elements with compute platforms over Ethernet. These prototypes often use commercial-grade Ethernet switches. Sometimes they use the enclosure, sometimes they pull the components out of the enclosure and try to jerry-rig the switch components in some sort of fashion. What they soon find out, however, is that these commercial-grade switches (and other commercial-grade componentry) do not stand up the rigorous environmental factors that mobile military and aerospace applications almost always run in to.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: Submarines were harder to count than aircraft carriers in my previous blog. According to scattered web information, there are about 533 submarines in the oceans today, operated by 40 countries. But that number moves around, mostly because (1) there are a number of new submarines coming into service and (2) it?s hard to say how many antiquated Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and North Korean submarines are still operational.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ? ?who will guard the guardians?? ? is a question as old as the Roman Empire. This question, with its underlying bearing on trust in general, is still relevant today. And it is directly applicable to computer systems.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: During World War II in the Pacific, aircraft carriers were primarily used to defeat enemy carriers and battleships at sea. The whole point of island-hopping was to gain airstrips on land, to launch bomber attacks on the enemy troops on other islands. That was the plan until the Doolittle Raid in 1942, where the USS Hornet launched sixteen long range B-25 bombers to hit Tokyo.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: The primary measure of stealth, or low observability (LO), is the radar cross section (RCS) of the target, whether it?s aircraft, missiles, or ships. The radar pulse goes out from the transmitter, hits the target, and bounces back. The radar receiver measures the energy in the return signal in decibel (db) units, but that?s a hard way for normal people to visualize the size of a target. So, we must convert db to square meters (m²) to get the picture.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: When some writer talks about 4th, 5th, or 6th generation fighter aircraft, what do they mean? Like the previous articles in this series on the generations of warfare, there are multiple definitions by multiple authors. For fighter aircraft generations, there?s Hallion (1990), Aerospaceweb (2004), Air Force Magazine (2009), Jim Winchester (2011), and Air Power Development Center (Royal Australian Air Force, 2012).

The Embedded Tech Trends (ETT) conference, organized by the VITA standards organization and held last month in New Orleans ? a city which folklore says has the reputation for dark powers, Voodoo rituals, and magic. It was also a filming location for the James Bond movie ?Live and Let Die? and one of the fun parts of these Bond movies is the new gadgets given to Bond to help his fight against evil. So, New Orleans seemed an appropriate location for the some of the world?s leading providers to the embedded markets to mingle and promote their latest magical innovative technologies for tomorrow?s applications.

A-PNT, or assured position, navigation, and timing, is a relatively new buzz phrase in military navigation systems. It enhances existing selective availability anti-spoofing module (SAASM) GPS navigational technologies (which are already immune to spoofing) with other PNT methods that are not susceptible to signal loss, jamming or satellite destruction. A-PNT?s lofty goal is to give soldiers the ability to identify and communicate accurate location, course, and time without countermeasure interference.

The switch to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products can be beneficial for the consumer and manufacturer with new military environmental testing methods.