Military Embedded Systems

Op-Eds

Radar/EW

Top military embedded blogs of 2015 - Blog

December 22, 2015
The most popular blogs on Mil-Embedded.com in 2015 covered topics including the sale of GE Embedded to Veritas Capital, legal snags for long-range radar, cyber attacks, manipulating space and time, the Internet of Things, and more. Check out the top ten below.
Radar/EW

Curing the longevity of supply blues - Blog

December 21, 2015
POWER ARCHITECTURE TODAY Blog: Longevity of supply is a concern that can keep embedded military program managers up at night for a long, long time. That’s because the time scale for deployed military systems is impressively lengthy. It’s not unusual for RFPs received today to require single board computers (SBC) that need to be supplied in production volumes into 2025-2030. That support period actually starts at the back-end of production, after an SBC has already been designed in and deployed. The time that it takes to get a selected SBC designed, and the software application written, for a new program can be as long as three to four years.
From The Editor

USS Zumwalt begins its sea trails and sets out to prove its worth - Blog

December 08, 2015
Three years ago this month I said that the next ship I would step on would be a cruise ship, as I would sail onboard luxury doing absolutely nothing except relax and enjoy the view. But today, I would go back just to check out the USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000). The ship started its sea trials yesterday and I remember talking about this ship before it had a name, when we were getting ready to go underway for some set of trials of our own. Someone said a new ship was coming, one that would replace the Arleigh Burke-class, one that faster and better.
Comms

Static routing vs dynamic routing on Ethernet networks - Blog

November 25, 2015
ETHERNET EVERYWHERE BLOG: “Routing” on a network is a common term that I think almost everybody knows and understands today. Just to clarify, routing is the act of finding a path for a data packet to travel from one network to another. However did you know that there are three key elements needed to make this routing happen:
Cyber

IoT: Embedded and Secure - Blog

November 23, 2015
OPEN SOURCE WAY BLOG: Last time I wrote about how the Internet of Things (IoT) is impacting the design of military embedded systems; this month, I'd like to address IoT and security. Specifically, I want to address the security processes involved in managing IoT gateways, which are vital to the successful operation of critical applications.
From The Editor

Astronauts wanted: NASA looks for more space explorers - Blog

November 23, 2015
Do you like to travel? Enjoy a spectacular view? Enjoy traveling at high speeds? Moving in zero gravity? Word is NASA hiring astronauts so you may want to ditch the cube walls and get ready for a career in orbit.
Radar/EW

AltiVec is back - Blog

November 23, 2015
POWER ARCHITECTURE TODAY Blog: Freescale’s new T-series processor has brought back the AltiVec floating point SIMD instruction set, the heart of many defense and aerospace digital signal processing (DSP) applications for the last two decades. AltiVec, a mainstay of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) DSP boards for years, went missing in action for one series of previous devices. A disappearing act that led embedded system users to look for an alternative solution.
Radar/EW

GE embedded will be called Abaco Systems - Blog

November 18, 2015
As many of you know GE announced it was selling its embedded business to Veritas capital, a venture capital firm in New York City earlier this fall and the organization of about 700 employees would form a new company in January, 2016. Company officials say the deal is expected to close soon, but in the meantime they have announced their new name.... Abaco Systems.
From The Editor

Big thank you to our military veterans - Blog

November 11, 2015
Getting to know personally the men and women of the U.S. military has been the true highlight of my two decades in this industry. It’s been a privilege to cover and learn about the technology that helps keep them safe and helps them protect us and our nation.
From The Editor

Veteran's Day and the Flower of Remembrance - Blog

November 11, 2015
Thank you to those that serve, past and present. The flower of remembrance – a red poppy – has become a symbol to remember veterans.
Cyber

Cyberattack concerns prompts Navy to go back to its roots - Blog

November 02, 2015
There are three questions that I seem to get asked most often after people find out I served in the Navy. The first: what my job was? The second: the ratio between men and women onboard a ship? And the third: can I navigate using only the stars?
From The Editor

Potential full-year CR could impact 400 Army programs, say Army officials - Blog

October 23, 2015
WASHINGTON. A potential year-long Continuing Resolution (CR) caused by Congress being unable to pass a 2016 budget by December could result and would affect about 400 Army programs totaling about $6 billion, said Heidi Shyu, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics, and Technology during a press conference at the AUSA Annual Meeting last week in Washington.
Unmanned

Airborne and satellite sensor systems - Blog

October 22, 2015
EVOLUTION OF WARFARE Blog: Those nations that are best prepared often succeed the most at winning conflicts or avoiding them in the first place. This thought is expressed even better in Latin: "Si vis pacem, para bellum." Translated as "you want peace, prepare for war," and originally stated by Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus in De Re Militari around the 4th or 5th century BC.
From The Editor

Veteran sailor/journalist meets Army tech at AUSA - Blog

October 22, 2015
My editor assigned me to an Army trade show this month – my first military trade show as a journalist. Walking the aisles of the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) show in Washington last week touched me with a bit of nostalgia, it was the first time in three years I’ve been in a room full of uniformed military personnel. Last time it was with more sailors than soldiers as it followed my time in the U.S. Navy. Still, it was fun seeing what new toys the Army folks might get to play with in the field – an experience I never had those years at sea.
Comms

Fighting stray frequencies in PCBs - Blog

October 07, 2015
To meet the constant consumer demand for higher bandwidth in their wireless devices, companies have developed ultra-wideband communications equipment and advanced wireless techniques, such as frequency-hopping spread spectrum transmission, in which radio signals are rapidly switched between frequencies. The same technique can also guard against eavesdropping. With those advances, however, comes a growing challenge for manufacturers of the high-performance printed circuit boards aimed at the wireless communications market. That challenge lies in controlling a phenomenon known as Passive Intermodulation.