Twenty-five years ago Military & Aerospace was much different from how it is today. Those were the days before the ubiquitous Internet, on-line publications, Google, social networking, and electronic newsletters. When we put volume 1, number 1 to bed in December 1989 we were a print magazine. Period.
Today we're a print magazine, and so much more. We have a vibrant Military & Aerospace Electronics Website (www.militaryaerospace.com), along with our sister Website Intelligent Aerospace (www.intelligent-aerospace.com), run by longtime Mil & Aero editor Courtney Howard.
In addition Military & Aerospace Electronics publishes 12 to 13 e-newsletters for subscribers each month, which include two entirely new e-newsletters appearing for the first time this month.
We publish e-newsletters on each Wednesday and Friday of the week, as well as our Defense Executive business e-newsletter on the first Tuesday of each month, the Embedded Computing e-newsletter on the second Monday of each month, and our Unmanned Vehicles e-newsletter on the third Tuesday of each month.
Now, beginning this month, you can look for a quarterly e-newsletter on electronic warfare publishing on 27 Jan., 28 April, 25 Aug., and 27 Oct. To go with that we will publish our first monthly Cyber Warfare e-newsletter on 29 Jan., and on each of the last Thursdays of the month thereafter.
Electronic warfare and cyber security -- components of a new discipline coming to be known as spectrum warfare -- are some of the most important and fastest growing technology areas related to national defense. It's part of a new battle of the airwaves and cyberspace that will call on the nation's best and brightest electronic and computer engineers to keep the U.S. and its allies on the leading edge.
When we published our first regular issue in January 1990 we were a tabloid magazine with news stories and analyses on the front cover. You might remember those days; I know I do. I was the magazine's managing editor there working with Chief Editor Tobias Naegele, who's now an editorial consultant at Wide River Media in the Washington, D.C., area and former vice president and general manager of Gannett Government Media in Springfield, Va.
That first issue, as I remember as 72 tabloid pages of news, long, features, profiles, and analyses, which included an excruciatingly long forecast of a wide range of aerospace and defense electronic technologies.
The big technologies then included VME embedded computing, sophisticated databuses in ring and linear topologies, gallium arsenide integrated circuits, supercomputers, and solid-state data storage.
Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) as a term hadn't even been invented in 1990. At that time there hadn't been in a prolonged shooting war since the end of Vietnam, and we had no way of knowing that just a year later the nation would go to war for the first time in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.
Since then we've seen additional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as military operations in Bosnia and other places around the world. It's been an eventful 25 years to say the least.
When I started at Military & Aerospace Electronics in September 1989 I was just 30 years old and eight years out of college. Now I'm 55 and a grandfather. During the 25 years of Military & Aerospace Electronics I missed only 11 issues during a brief stint at Jane's Information Group in 1991 and 1992. For the rest of the magazine's tenure, I've been here.
Thank you everyone I've been involved with over the years. The names include Tobias Naegele, the magazine's founder. Other names include Gene Pritchard, Lisa Burgess, Charlotte Adams, Bruce Rayner, Lisa Coleman, Kelly Sewell, Amy McAuliffe, John Miklosz, Ron Mastro, Phil Davis, Courtney Howard, John McHale, John Haystead, Ben Ames, Jay Mendelson, Christine Shaw, Ernesto Burden, Alan Bergstein, Bob Collopy, J.R. Wilson, and so many others to whom I apologize for not mentioning.
Here's to 25 years more.
