Northrop Grumman wins Navy emergency-response systems contract
Northrop Grumman Corp. in McLean, Va., won a U.S. Navy contract for an emergency-response management system that will automate dispatch operations and improve incident response times. The system will support Navy police, firefighters, and emergency medical services at Navy shore locations in the continental U.S. The two-year $25.6 million contract calls for the Northrop Grumman Information Technology (IT) sector to provide the material to develop, deploy and maintain the Navy Emergency Response Management Systems. Northrop Grumman’s CommandPoint public safety application suite will be the foundation of the system. CommandPoint applications will include the computer-aided dispatch, a mobile application for interface between the command center and field units, a mapping application for real-time command-and-control situations, and a law-enforcement records system for efficient data entry and retrieval. The Navy’s existing land-mobile radio and alarm monitoring systems also will be integrated. Northrop Grumman’s teammates on the contract include GE Security and GETAC of Lake Forest, Calif.; Native Hawaiian Veterans in Honolulu; Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, Calif.; Environmental Systems Research in Redlands, Calif.; Security Information Systems in Orlando, Fla.; and G/I/S Inc. in Birmingham, Ala.
Kozio to support Freescale’s communications-processor family
Kozio Inc. in Longmont, Colo., which provides advanced embedded test and diagnostics, announced support for the Freescale Semiconductor PowerQUICC II Pro family of communications processors based on PowerPC cores. Kozio, a member of the Freescale Tools Alliance Program, provides advanced test capabilities for custom board designs based on the PowerQUICC II Pro processor. Kozio’s latest release includes support for the MPC8343E, MPC8347E, MPC8349E, MPC8358E, and MPC8360E processors. Functional tests, diagnostics, and programming capabilities are provided for the CPU, Flash memory, DDR SDRAM, NVRAM, PCI, I2C, GPIO, Ethernet Controllers, USB, local bus, UART, DMA Controllers, SPI and Interrupt Controller. Kozio software allows faults to be isolated down to the component level. Each Kozio product delivery is custom tailored to each customer’s board design. For more information contact Kozio online at www.kozio.com.
FAA, Lockheed Martin complete rollout of radar data-communications gateway
The national rollout of the En Route Communications Gateway from Lockheed Martin Corp. was completed on schedule when the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) declared operational use of the system at its Air Route Traffic Control Center in Miami. The communications system now has been deployed and accepted at all 20 centers in the United States, Lockheed Martin officials say. The En Route Communications Gateway (ECG) provides mission-critical radar communications data for the Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs), which manage all high-altitude air traffic and serve as the hubs of the National Airspace System. ECG transmits surveillance data from legacy sources, such as existing radars, to air traffic control facilities. Lockheed Martin built the ECG system to replace the end-of-service Peripheral Adapter Module Replacement Item hardware and software, and to provide support for new surveillance and data formats. The ECG will enable future systems to receive radar and communication data over an Internet provider (IP) interface by attaching directly to the ECG primary and backup local area networks. It is modular in design and is scaled to accommodate a 2012 workload. Lockheed Martin and major subcontractor Sunhillo Corp. in Berlin, N.J., provided the systems, installation, integration, and test for the ECG program.
Wayne County improves homeland security with Codespear software
Codespear LLC in Detroit announced that Wayne County, Mich., has selected its Codespear’s software platform to establish direct emergency communications to the county’s residents, businesses, and public-safety agencies. The software, currently being used to establish complete interoperable communications and public safety alert notifications, will enhance the traditional methods of television and radio for public-alert notifications. Wayne County has deployed Codespear’s software to provide interoperable communications to the county’s homeland security, emergency management, and public safety departments. The technology works by augmenting incident response, emergency preparedness, continuity of operations and major operational events. Codespear enables integrated two-way communications (voice and data) among several agencies, communities, and first responders regardless of communication device, network, or frequency. “Before choosing Codespear, 43 separate transactions were required to get a single message out to agencies in each of our communities. Now it’s one click of the mouse. While you can’t put a dollar amount on saving lives, the Codespear system is the most comprehensive and cost-effective we’ve seen,” says Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano. For more information visit www.codespear.com.
Design collaboration emerges as trend in military and aerospace industry
Military and aerospace electronics manufacturers are increasing their reliance on joint design manufacturing, according to experts at Sypris Electronics LLC a Tampa, Fla.-based supplier of integrated electronics manufacturing services. Sypris is releasing its latest research paper focusing on the continued exploration of Joint Design Manufacturing (JDM) in the Aerospace and Defense markets, Design Collaboration Leads to Emergence of Aerospace and Defense Joint Design Manufacturing. Sypris released the paper at the recent Surface Mount Technology Association’s International Conference. The author is Charles White, business development manager for Sypris Electronics. “Design collaboration has been widely practiced in the commercial sector; however, this trend will become the breakthrough competitive discriminator in the aerospace and defense market,” White says. The paper will be published in the Surface Mount Technology Association’s conference publication and made available on the Sypris Electronics Web site. For more information contact Sypris online at www.sypriselectronics.com.
Northrop Grumman’s X-47B J-UCAS team simulates control of four unmanned surveillance attack aircraft
Officials of Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems in San Diego simulated the simultaneous control of four carrier-based X-47B unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) during an exercise Sept. 28 at the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division at China Lake Naval Air Station, Calif. The simulation was part of Northrop Grumman’s work on the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) concepts demonstration program. Using a surrogate aircraft, which represented one X-47B, technicians controlled three additional simulated X-47B aircraft during several flights using advanced mission-management software and Navy carrier-based air-traffic-control procedures. The demonstration illustrated the controller’s ability to guide all four aircraft through the approach, wave-off, and traffic-pattern procedures for carrier operations, while accomplishing proper aircraft spacing. The X-47B is Northrop Grumman’s initial air-vehicle configuration for the modular X-47 system, which can support a broad range of advanced unmanned air-vehicle configurations and military operational performance requirements.
Spectrum Signal Processing’s SDR-3000 Solutions selected for military communications
A U.S. defense contractor selected the flexComm SDR-3000 product family from Spectrum Signal Processing Inc. in Burnaby, British Columbia, for two different military communications programs. Spectrum declined to name the contractor. In the first program, Spectrum’s flexComm PRO-3500 baseband processing engine will help develop a Software Communications Architecture (SCA)-compliant waveform for a next-generation military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) system, which will provide simultaneous voice, data, and video communications for U.S. and allied forces anywhere in the world. This SCA-compliant waveform will operate on the Joint Tactical Radio System. Under the second program, Spectrum has delivered its flexComm SDR-3000 SMRDP, an integrated “RF to Ethernet” subsystem as part of a broader communications system under a classified program. Spectrum’s flexComm PRO-3500 is a CompactPCI-based Freescale G4 PowerPC processing engine designed to work as the base-band processing engine in the company’s SDR-3000 series of software-defined radio platforms. For more information visit www.spectrumsignal.com.
