Military Embedded Systems

WASHINGTON. During a briefing at the AUSA 2023 Annual Meeting, officials from the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium gave an update on the SOSA Technical Standard conformance process and announced greater participation from military program managers within the standardization process.

WASHINGTON. Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions announced a collaborative development agreement with networking and IT company Cisco to bring secure enterprise-class network switching solutions to rugged, deployed aerospace and defense OpenVPX systems environments for the first time, at this week's Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition 2023, being held October 9-11 in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON, D.C. A number of industry partners showcased new hardware and software at this week's Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual conference, technology that uses a modular open standards approach (MOSA) to simplify mission systems used by soldiers in the field.

ASHBURN, Va. Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions Division introduced the VPX3-1262 single board computer (SBC), a new addition to its Fabric100 family of high-performance SOSA aligned processing engines; and the the VPX3-6826, a SOSA aligned 100G data plane and control plane Ethernet switch for next-generation rugged processing systems. 

WASHINGTON. Eizo Rugged Solutions reports that it will showcase its latest high-performance open architecture embedded video graphics and GPGPU solutions in live demonstrations at the upcoming Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition 2023, set to be held October 9-11 in Washington, D.C.

This week’s product, the Annapolis Micro Systems WILDSTAR SAF1 Direct RF Small Form Factor Module with the Intel Agilex Direct RF Series FPGA, may be deployed as a single standalone unit for edge applications close to the sensor and in other tight envelope man-packable environments, or dual-mounted on a 3U OpenVPX baseboard for processing-intensive applications such as electronic warfare (EW) and signals intelligence (SIGINT).

LONDON. Many questions on open architecture initiatives and the Department of Defense (DoD) modular open systems approach (MOSA) mandate were being floated to U.S. embedded hardware and software suppliers at DSEI in London this week. So, over dinner last night, I asked Chip Downing, Outreach Committee Co-chair of the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Consortium and Senior Market Development Director for Aerospace and Defense at RTI, what type of open architecture strategies are being pursued by European defense departments and if the U.S initiatives like FACE influenced those efforts.

LONDON. Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium members exhibiting at DSEI 2023 tell me there is considerable interest in the SOSA Technical Standard and in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) modular open systems approach (MOSA) even if there is not an official MOSA mandate like the one from the DoD.

I spent my first day touring the USA pavilion at DSEI 2023 in London. It’s my first time back to this massive show in four years; I saw many familiar faces and technologies from U.S. defense electronic suppliers, from connectors and signal-processing solutions to avionics boxes and rugged servers. Many companies are also showcasing and demonstrating their open-architecture designs.

So much of our contributed content – and even our staff-written features – over the past few years have been focused on open architecture initiatives and modular open systems approach (MOSA) initiatives like the Sensor Open Sensor Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard. We even produce an annual full-sized magazine on SOSA, as well as an issue covering the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE). But for the last decade our coverage has often been dominated by the twin topics of obsolescence and supply chain, both of which we cover in this issue.