Each issue, the editorial staff of Military Embedded Systems highlights 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. 

At 40 years old this fall, the VMEbus standard’s longevity can be traced to its inventors, VME product designers, VITA Standards Organization members, military systems users, and also to the creativity and marketing acumen of a rock and roll aficionado named Marty Simon. Marty – founder of The Simon Group, member of the VITA Hall of Fame, early proponent of VME, my friend, and the most positive person I’ve ever come across – passed away in September at the age of 77 from complications from ALS.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG. On 25 June 2021, the Director of National Intelligence (DDNI) released the much-anticipated UFO report. It’s only NINE pages long, and includes the status of 144 UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, the new and improved name for UFOs) collected by the AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) from 2004 through the first half of 2021. One of those UAPs was identified as a deflating weather balloon, and the remainder were designated as unknown. There is also a classified version of this report (17 pages long) submitted to congressional Intelligence and Armed Services Committees. I suspect those additional eight pages just contain secret sources and collection methods rather than additional facts. You can read the unclassified report on the web.

By Mike Epley, Red Hat

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) was already headed toward a completely perimeter-less security environment before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Now, the agency has gone full-fledged into a virtually wide-open landscape where physical constraints that used to exist have been largely eradicated, and new types of threats against its workforce, tools, supply chains, and operations abound.

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.

By Braden Cooper, One Stop Systems

Artificial intelligence (AI) in the military electronics industry is growing at a surreal rate. Recent innovations in various fields have coincided to bring the most powerful advancements in computing, sensor technology, and software to mission-critical scenarios. Just as GPUs continue to outpace Moore’s law in terms of raw compute power, new sensor and networking interfaces bring larger and larger data sets in need of computing. These new technologies provide a key opportunity to bring the power of commercial and scientific AI advancements to military-transportable installations. The primary distinctions (and obstacles) between civilian data center-type AI applications and military-transportable deployments are the environmental, power, and security requirements of the missions.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: There’s been a number of advancements in technology going into the Kill Web lately but none of them, individually, would warrant a focused article unless I overhyped their potential, wildly speculated about their capabilities, or just made-up some stuff. That approach could seriously jeopardize my standing as an amateur blogger and irritate my publisher. So, let’s avoid that possibility and briefly cover a few of the developments here.

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. In my previous articles, I may have left the impression that with the technology we have today, hooking all ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) and weapons systems together into a seamless, multi-service, multi-domain battle network should be straightforward. Technologically, it is achievable. But operationally, there are serious complex trade-offs that make the decisions difficult. Let’s look at a few of them here, so you have a better idea why building the Kill Web will take some time, lots of testing, and continuous updates to make it function properly.

(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.