Size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) considerations are still driving military sensor payload designs for unmanned systems, but sensors are getting much “smarter” and processing tasks are now increasingly being performed right at the payload level.

Unmanned aerial system (UAS) platforms continue to reduce their size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP) and enhance their performance and functionality. These improvements are enabled by a new generation of sensing technology; one example is integration of high-performance infrared (IR) imaging systems onto reduced-scale aircraft.

As chip technology and compute capacity continue to advance – laid over the trajectory of Moore’s Law – digital interconnect speed and utility need to progress along with them. Continuing improvements in signals efficiency, bandwidth density, and integration are needed to accommodate future demands for connectivity.

Advances in electrical and electronic components and related interconnect technologies have helped launch a vast drone industry for both military and commercial use. Small drones – classified as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – are incredibly popular and useful.

ISO/IEC 13818 Part 1 (ITU-T Recommendation H.222.0) – released in 1995 – describes the synchronization of audio and video using a Transport Stream container structure (TS, MPEG2-TS, m2ts). The Transport Stream is unique in that it serves as a container for streaming video and as a container for static video files.

In the counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) arena, the threats they are designed to mitigate depend heavily on the market for which they are intended. A back-and-forth between UAS advancements and growth in the C-UAS industry dictate to manufacturers what these systems need and how much funding it will take to get them there. What is apparent, however, is autonomous aircraft are becoming more ubiquitous in both military and commercial markets, and along with that so are the systems required to counter them.

The SOSA (Sensor Open Systems Architecture) Consortium is developing common open standards for designing, building, and deploying hardware, software, and firmware components of new military electronic systems. Contributing members to SOSA include the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) – including the Army, Navy, and Air Force – along with key representatives from industry and universities.

The landscape for system integrators in the defense and aerospace industries has changed considerably over the last few years. Today, many in-house teams find themselves trying to deliver the same scope of work they did in the past but in less time and at a lower cost.

Increasingly businesses across multiple industries will embrace high performance edge computing to fulfill the demand for processing locally sourced digital data to drive precise real time decision making.

In the aerospace and defense industry, the terms “sustainment” and “obsolescence management” are common, and it’s easy to understand why. 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.