Military Embedded Systems
Op-Eds
Unmanned
Shrinking the kill chain - Blog
June 28, 2017
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.
Radar/EW
Commercial vs ruggedized Ethernet switches and routers. What's the difference? - Blog
June 28, 2017
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.
Radar/EW
And then there's submarines - Blog
May 30, 2017
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.
Radar/EW
Cyber
Using a hardware root of trust to decode software security - Blog
May 25, 2017
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.
Cyber
Avionics
Aircraft carriers are just big fat targets - Blog
April 28, 2017
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.
Radar/EW
Radar cross section: The measure of stealth - Blog
March 31, 2017
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.
Avionics
Generations of fighter aircraft and the F-35 vs F/A-18 arguments - Blog
February 28, 2017
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).
Radar/EW
VME Live or Let Die - Blog
February 28, 2017
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.
Comms
The key to preparing vehicles for A-PNT - Blog
February 27, 2017
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.
Radar/EW
COTS technologies: major benefits for the consumer, new challenges for the manufacturer - Blog
February 27, 2017
The switch to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products can be beneficial for the consumer and manufacturer with new military environmental testing methods.
Unmanned
Can you trust that drone? - Blog
January 31, 2017
The recent activities in the South China Sea of the seizure and subsequent return by China of a U.S. unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) ? also known as an ?ocean glider drone? - has once again brought drone security into the spotlight. Securing data collected as part of Internet of Things (IoT) environments is top of mind, and never more so than in military applications.
Comms
Domains of warfare and strategic offsets - Blog
January 31, 2017
WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG:It?s 2017, and I?m back. After enduring uncomfortably-deep probing and evaluation of my literary skills and technical analysis capabilities, along with a comprehensive DNA test, my masters here at OpenSystems Media have decided to keep me on as a writer, to ply you with another year of fascinating and intriguing next-generation warfare articles. For 2017 I will write with an emphasis on present capabilities of the U.S. and our enemies, as well as new platforms and strategies under development.
Comms
War in space - Blog
December 20, 2016
WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: Speculating a war in space is a perplexing subject, so let?s wade into it with a heathy level of trepidation, looking at treaties, space courts, and potential battle scenarios.
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Shipbuilding, uncrewed maritime systems to be highlighted at Sea-Air-Space 2026 by HII
April 16, 2026
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Maritime missile, autonomous underwater systems to be highlighted at Sea-Air-Space 2026 by Kongsberg
April 16, 2026
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Cargo uncrewed aerial system tested for shipboard resupply by U.S. Marine Corps
April 15, 2026
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Event-based infrared camera demonstrated for high-speed target tracking by Raytheon
April 14, 2026
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PRODUCT OF THE WEEK: Annapolis Micro Systems WILDSTAR 3AE1 3U OpenVPX Direct RF
April 15, 2026
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Fleet, infrastructure support for Royal Navy ships extended by Babcock
April 14, 2026
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Electroacoustic, ultrasonic technologies to be highlighted at Sea-Air-Space 2026 by Massa
April 14, 2026
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Maritime engagement in Pacific conducted by Ecuador and U.S. navies
April 10, 2026
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Agentic AI capabilities to be integrated into defense platforms by BAE Systems, Scale AI
March 27, 2026
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Artificial intelligence tools to be explored for GlobalEye aircraft by Saab and Cohere
March 24, 2026
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Electronic warfare autonomy software demonstrated by L3Harris, Shield AI
March 12, 2026
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GUEST BLOG: Modernizing mission compute -- Enabling AI through modular GPU expansion
March 10, 2026
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Booz Allen invests in orbital maneuvering technology from spacecraft developer
April 10, 2026
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Ground system for missile warning satellites to be supplied to U.S. Space Force by Kratos
April 09, 2026
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Advanced reconnaissance vehicles from General Dynamics to enter next phase for U.S. Marine Corps
April 08, 2026
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Space surveillance ground systems to be modernized for U.S. Space Force by L3Harris
April 08, 2026