Robots can help the military – on land, at sea, in the sky, and in space – and the U.S. Department of Defense is slowly establishing some guidelines for their ethical use.

The Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) is a standard currently in development by a government/industry consortium (https://www.opengroup.org/sosa) that has as its goal making high-performance sensor platforms easier to design, more interoperable, and upgradable at the modular level throughout a platform’s life.

This is my first job out of journalism school, sans a bar gig here and there. But as far as pantsuit-wearing, desk-sitting, degree-utilizing jobs go – Associate Editor for Military Embedded Systems is the first title I’ve ever held. That being said, working for Military Embedded Systems these past four, going on five, months has been a whirlwind of firsts. One of those firsts was attending the annual Association of the United States Army (AUSA) trade show in Washington D.C.

Military organizations around the world rely heavily on tactical data links (TDLs) to securely and reliably share mission-critical information among air, ground, and sea platforms. Because different devices use different TDL types for communications, a highly sophisticated TDL gateway is needed to translate information across the various link types. There’s a huge disconnect, however, between historical TDL gateway designs and modern military requirements.

The U.S. military faces increasing pressure to innovate faster to stay ahead of the evolving threat landscape – but not so quickly as to compromise the security of mission-critical IT systems.

The recent tri-service memorandum requiring modular open system approaches (MOSAs) to be deployed in all future defense systems is aimed at putting the best technology into the hands of the warfighters faster. Take a look at how designers are meeting tri-service requirements by moving past commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) to MOSA.

Defense designers face many different challenges in developing directed-energy weaponry, which can employ either laser, particle-beam, or high-power microwave (HPM)/radio frequency (RF) technologies. One feature that these three directed-energy weaponry technology categories have in common is the need for high electric power following implementation of high-voltage solutions. Directed-energy weapon designers benefit by understanding the different challenges that high voltages impose on electrical interconnects and how to solve them.

Space is back in style. Literally. From new space suits for the first space tourists, to limited-edition NASA bomber jackets, the space market is seeing a renaissance of interest. And with it comes a new infusion of start-ups revolutionizing space tech. John McHale, editorial director for Military Embedded Systems, and industry experts talk about all the different areas that are getting disrupted and what tomorrow’s space leaders should address in the latest episodes of The New Space Race, an original podcast series from Wind River.

Partial Reconfiguration (PR) allows FPGAs to dynamically change modules without disrupting other parts of the design. This is a feature that FPGA vendors are building into their newer generations of FPGAs, allowing for increased flexibility and functionality in digital systems. Users can partition the FPGA fabric into reconfigurable regions which are then reprogrammed using partial configuration files.

Unlike conventional consumer products such as cellular phones, which have a lifespan of only a few years, “products” in aerospace and defense are produced and supported for decades. For example, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress was first introduced in 1954, and is expected to remain in service until the 2040s after nearly a century on the market.

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) including fast-growing fleets of self-driving cars and trucks are poised to revolutionize transportation. The global automotive industry is on the cusp of significant change, enabled by innovative automated driving system (ADS) and autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies in a fast-growing market estimated to reach $7 trillion by 2050; yet, widespread deployment hinges almost entirely on safety.

Test systems built to manufacture and support aerospace and defense platforms generally need to remain in service for the lifetime of that platform, or at least long enough to perform planned sustainment over 20 or 30 years. Yet, most test systems are not built in a way that includes sustainment engineering as part of the initial design.

The predisposition that “bigger is better” pervades in many areas, but in computing greater size is almost always a liability. Large configurations demand power and create heat. They consume precious space and potentially crowd out other vital systems. Even in a 60-ton armored tank, size, weight, and power (SWaP) remain at a premium.

There is no question that touch screens are a useful asset for warfighters in the field enabling then to make selections, enter information, and interact with systems without the need for a space-consuming mouse or keyboard. However, finding touch screen technology that can handle the demands of harsh environmental conditions encountered in aerospace and defense applications is challenging.