Technology focus -- Switch fabric high-speed serial networking for demanding embedded parallel processing architectures is benefitting from industry standards and the OpenVPX Multiplane Architecture to take its place in high-performance aerospace and defense applications like radar, signals intelligence, and electronic warfare.

Special report, 12 Aug. 2010 -- The combat vehicle electronics landscape in a post-Future Combat Systems world is encouraging industry leaders and military officials to forge ahead in the battle to install ever more innovative electronics in ground combat vehicles. Termination last year of the FCS manned ground vehicles program was met with tremendous concern, followed closely by considerable resolve. A determined industry partnered with the military to save money and deliver FCS-fostered vetronics innovations into the hands of eager warfighters.

Product intelligence -- Designers of rugged radios for the military are focusing their efforts on improving the network for the warfighter, while at the same time creating radio communications technologies that are more efficient in terms of size, weight, and power.

Product intelligence -- Not all waveform analyzers are the same, and so professionals should carefully consider the specifications and capabilities available and weigh them against the needs of their military and aerospace application. The most common method of analyzing modern waveforms is the use of vector signal analyzers, or fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based analysis techniques.

Technology focus -- Technologies for the warfighter must run a cruel gauntlet of size, weight, and power consumption, as well as enhanced capability and affordability, before they can take their places alongside the most promising network-centric systems on the digital battlefield. For the boots-on-the-ground combat soldier, size and weight is everything. Each combat soldier can carry only a finite amount of gear into battle -- loads that often approach 100 pounds per warfighter. This means he and his commanders need to strike the right balance of weapons, sensors, communications, food, water, and survival equipment to give him the best chance of achieving the mission and getting back alive.

Special report -- Eternal vigilance is the only way for aerospace and defense electronics suppliers to approach import/export compliance, since even one violation could result millions of dollars in fines or even criminal charges. Meanwhile the U.S. government is planning to streamline compliance regulation and enforcement under one department.

Product intelligence -- Electronics experts developing technology for aerospace and defense applications confront few issues as daunting as the heat generated from their designs. Engineers are under constant pressure to develop ever-smaller and more powerful electronics, yet the cost of doing so is creating ever-larger amounts of heat.

Special report -- Unmanned aircraft are a huge advantage for U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, providing surveillance, reconnaissance, and precision strike capability to U.S. forces. An ever present eye in the skies, UAV numbers are growing in the battlefield as well as domestically for use by law enforcement, weather monitoring, and by NASA for research. The aircraft themselves are sexy and exciting, but what many do not realize is that the amazing feats they perform are controlled and monitored from sophisticated ground control stations sometimes thousands of miles away from where the aircraft is flying.

Technology focus -- Bits and bytes of data and information are as important as bullets and bombs on today’s battlefield -- if not more so. Many defense organizations, in fact, understand well the competitive warfighting advantage gained through the efficient exchange of mission-critical data. To that end, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is pioneering network-centric operations (NCO) and network-centric warfare (NCW), intended to increase mission effectiveness through optimized information sharing and collaboration across a robust, distributed network.

 Special report -- Light sabers and blasters in Star Wars, phasers on Star Trek, the heat-ray in H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, and rayguns and death rays in myriad films from the 1960s and 1970s. The phrase "laser weapon" most often conjures images of these and other fictional, futuristic devices. In reality, laser weapons are currently undergoing testing and likely to be fielded in the very near future.

 Product intelligence -- Electronic connectors for power and data in aerospace and defense applications are shrinking in size and weight in response to demand for soldier-mounted electronics, unmanned vehicles, and other applications where small size and weight are solid requirements. The problem, however, involves longstanding military specifications -- particularly for the standard military circular connectors that link electronics boxes to other boxes or devices.

 Technology focus -- Despite the slow economy and proposed cancellation of NASA’s major human space flight program, the space electronics market is moving steadily along while exploring smaller and smaller form factors to increase performance. Meanwhile, the methods for radiation-hardening electronics remain the same.

 Product intelligence -- Designers of avionics displays are using new commercial technology, such as LED (light emitting diode) and active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED), for military aircraft cockpits, yet they experience challenges in manufacturing rugged displays for extreme environments.

 Special report -- Systems integrators are using a variety of anti-tamper technologies to ensure that the U.S. military's most closely guarded secrets stay out of the hands of potential adversaries as the Department of Defense and the defense industry continue to develop and refine anti-tamper technology. With this kind of technology in place, the most critical information remains secret.

 Guest viewpoint -- Military and aerospace developers continue to adopt COTS as they evolve to next-generation network infrastructures. While key requirements, including tolerance of shock, vibration, extreme temperatures, and environmental hazards will remain integral components to any military and aerospace request for proposal (RFP), another element that is becoming increasingly critical to network-centric operations is service availability.

FORT WORTH, Texas, 20 April 2010. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a fifth-generation jet fighter that has even more sensors than the F-22 Raptor. The program, led by Lockheed Martin, uses that state-of-the-art avionics with as much commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and software as possible, says Eric George, director of mission systems and software for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, in the interview below.

 Technology focus -- The industry imperative to do more with less in a challenging economy is forcing military embedded computing companies to provide greater functionality in a smaller, lighter, and less costly package. Many are meeting, and even exceeding, this goal with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies.

 Product intelligence -- It's been a long time in coming, but the market for VPX-based embedded computing is ready to take off, now that interoperability standards are settling down, the need for small, fast computer boards is higher than ever before, and powerful new multicore microprocessors like the Intel Core i7 are hitting the market.

Many professionals today need fast, reliable computers -- be they desktop, laptop, or handheld computers, servers, or similar devices -- yet a soldier's computer can mean the difference between mission success and failure, and even life and death.

 Special report -- Designers of avionics equipment for U.S. Navy aircraft see obsolete electronics as their biggest obstacle in meeting the steady demand for avionics upgrades and retrofits of existing aircraft. Their main weapon in this fight is to design each system with an open architecture.