The McHale Report Logo

January 2020

 
 
 
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The McHale Report, by mil-embedded.com Editorial Director John McHale, covers technology and procurement trends in the defense and aerospace electronics community.

View our archive of recent and past issues of the McHale Report e-mail newsletter.

 
 
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EDITOR'S PERSPECTIVE
 
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The process of speeding up acquisition and lowering costs through the adoption of open standards apparently takes a lot of time, as there are significant cultural roadblocks to such change not only within the Department of Defense (DoD), but also at the prime contractor level, where open architecture and commonality goes against long-standing business models.
 
 
MERGERS & AQUISITIONS
 
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BAE Systems, Inc. announced it has reached definitive agreements for the proposed acquisitions of Collins Aerospace’s military Global Positioning System (GPS) business and Raytheon’s Airborne Tactical Radios (ATR) business.
 
 
 
 
SPECIAL REPORT
 
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Ground-based radars are currently undergoing modernization, and a space-based layer of sensors is under development to help defend against ongoing threats posed by ballistic missiles and a newer one in the form of hypersonic weapons.
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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Raytheon has won a $403 million System Demonstration Test Articles contract with the U.S. Navy for Next Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB), which will be delivered to the fleet once developmental and operational testing is complete.
 
 
 
 
 
 
The Model 54141A is a dual channel A/D and D/A converter with sample rates up to 6.4 GHz. Programmable DDCs and DUCs support connections to IF or RF signals. The board also supports 3U VPX with PCIe Gen.3 x8, the emerging VITA 66.5 optical interconnect standard by providing four optical duplex lanes and RF I/O backplane options.
 
 
 
 
 
BLOG
 
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Looking back on our top 15 read stories since 2010, seeing what topics and authors have trended well through the past decade, was a fun little exercise. No surprise, our most-read guest blogger, Ray Alderman, Chairman of the Board at VITA, dominates the list with five entires of his Warfare Evolution Blog, while articles and news on FPGAs, GPS jamming, and EMP weapons flavored the top of the list. Another guest blogger, Ronen Isaac of Milsource, placed two entries in the top 15 with his Ethernet Everywhere Blog. Check them our below.
 
 
MERGERS & AQUISITIONS
 
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Wind River, company specializing in delivering software for the intelligent edge, announced its acquisition of Star Lab, a cybersecurity for embedded systems company. The acquisition will provide Wind River with a system protection and anti-tamper toolset for Linux, a secure open source–based hypervisor, and a secure boot solution. Star Lab is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Wind River. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
 
 
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) introduced its Wideband Adaptive RF Protection (WARP) program, which seeks to enhance protections for wideband receivers operating in congested and contested electromagnetic (EM) environments.
 
 
GUEST BLOG
 
As security threats continue to grow and undermine the trust in systems performing critical operations, the ability to detect and prevent changes to vital system components is necessary to maintain system integrity. In order to get ahead of these threats, organizations need to deploy hardware roots of trust to monitor and defend critical systems. Hardware roots of trust use encryption and digital-signature technology to ensure only legitimate changes are made to system components.
 
 
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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The top stories of 2019 featured on the Military Embedded Systems website covered contract winnings, intelligence gathering advancements, Boeing's 737 MAX suspension, cyber defense, and more. Check them out below:

 
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TOP STORY
 
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Lockheed Martin completed 2019 with $2.35 billion in five new contracts for the F-35 program. The award closely follows the company's announcement that it had delivered its 134th F-35 fighter plane, exceeding its goal of 131 for the year.
 
 
TOP STORY
 
The U.S. Air Force is planning to cancel its contract with Raytheon for next-generation, ground-based radar. The Three-Dimensional Expeditionary Long Range Radar (3DELRR) system was to be a gallium nitride-based radar that operated on the C-band. It was intended to replace the AN/TPS-75 ground-based radar used to track airborne targets.
 
 
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has signed a contract worth $13 million with Northrop Grumman Systems for the research, development, and demonstration of a technology critical for enabling an advanced interceptor capable of engaging maneuvering hypersonic threats in the upper atmosphere.
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) has announced the first wave of $5.2 million (GBP4 million). The funding aims to revolutionize the way warships make decisions and process thousands of strands of intelligence and data by using artificial intelligence (AI).
 
 
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently held a Proposers' Day for its newest idea regarding unmanned warships: the "NOMARS" [No Manning Required Ship] program.
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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Raytheon Company delivered its 10th AN/AQS-20C minehunting sonar system to the U.S. Navy. The sonar-towed body was officially transferred to the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Panama City Division. According to the company, the system is now fully qualified and moving toward initial operating capability.
 
 
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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BAE Systems has won a contract worth $8 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop the next generation of mixed-signal electronics that could enable new Department of Defense (DoD) applications and enable solutions that enhance situational awareness and survivability for the warfighter.
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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Leonardo has concluded a series of flights with its M-40 target unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as part of a trials campaign in Italy. This saw the drones simulating modern airborne threats, allowing for the realistic demonstration of MBDA’s latest surface-to-air Mistral missile.
 
 
 
 
TOP STORY
 
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Thales introduced Cybels Analytics, a cybersecurity platform relying on artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data analytics technologies. The platform is designed to detect cyber attacks in real time or in differed time (hunting). It operates as a single platform that allows individual users to adapt the AI algorithms to the specific operational context of each sector.

 
 
TOP STORY
 
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Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) discovered a new platform for quantum technologies by suspending 2-D crystals over pores in a slab of gold. Researchers claim this new approach may help develop new materials for secure communication and sensing technologies based on the atomic-level physics.

 
 
 
 
GUEST BLOG
 
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There are 14 countries working on 6th Generation (6G) fighter planes these days. Before we get into the details, we need to define what a 6G fighter jet is. The F-35 and F-22 are 5G fighter planes. There are six aircraft generation classification charts out there: Hallion, Aerospaceweb, Air Force Magazine, Winchester, Air Power Development Center, and China’s Air Force. All these templates have been overcome by advances in technology and evolving mission requirements. So, we’ll be breaking new ground in this essay, by adding to the common 6G characteristics from the old charts and building an updated definition. Then, we’ll integrate those new aircraft into the kill web.

 
 
MIL TECH FEATURE
 
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As the amount of signal-processing data used in defense applications continues to grow, the challenge for system architects becomes less about hardware design and more about what to do with all that data, and how. Because commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions can now be used to move the data, the system designer can better focus on what they are going to do with that data and concentrate on solving their higher-level problems.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Date: February 20, 11:00 a.m. ET
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