Military Embedded Systems

Rebranded after being bought by Veritas Capital from CAES, Frontgrade Technologies is now a stand-alone company focused on the space market - military and commercial. In this podcast, Frontgrade President and Chief Executive Officer Mike Elias discusses how the acquisition and rebranding impacts the company and its clientele.

ARLINGTON, Virginia. Officials at CAES announced that Herley -previously under Ultra - has joined CAES to grow the company’s footprint in the RF market. The combination enables CAES to add capabilities in missile flight instrumentation, customized RF solutions for microwave assemblies, and tactical radio frequency.

While most leaders in the U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) understand the basic value of open architectures, they need to see metrics on already-realized cost and scheduled savings, said David Tremper, Director, Acquisition Integration and Interoperability, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense in his keynote address at the MOSA [Modular Open Systems Approach] Virtual Summit held February 22 and hosted by myself and Military Embedded Systems.

We have big news: Military Embedded Systems, in partnership with Shephard Media in the United Kingdom, have been named the official Media and Show Daily Partners for SOF Week 2023. The event – scheduled to be held in Tampa, Florida, the week of May 8, 2023 -- is managed by the Global SOF Foundation and Clarion Events on behalf of the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

SCOTTSDALE, AZ. David Tremper – Director, Acquisition Integration and Interoperability, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (OUSD) for Acquisition and Sustainment (A&S), will keynote the MOSA Virtual Summit, being held Feb 22 at 11 am Est. Other sessions include MOSA for Crewed and Uncrewed Aviation Platforms, Bringing MOSA to C5ISR and Electronic Warfare Applications, and Applying a MOSA Strategy Across Multiple Domains.

Do you miss the U.S. defense budgets of yore, where costs for programs skyrocketed into the billions and overall defense spending reached into the trillions? Where cost was not a concern, only a capability? If you’re pining for those days, then you probably don’t want to read our Nov/Dec issue. 

NEW YORK & COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado. CAES Space Systems, a supplier of high-reliability electronic solutions is now rebranded as Frontgrade Technologies. Officials at Veritas Capital, a technology and government investment firm that has Frontgrade Technologies in its portfolio, announced the change.

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California. The RQ-4 RangeHawk from Northrop Grumman provided support for the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket during the recent Artemis 1 mission. RangeHawk is part of SkyRange, the Department of Defense (DoD) Test Resource Management Center’s uncrewed high-altitude, long-endurance (HALE), responsive mobile flight test initiative.

Experts from the Navy Air Combat Electronics program office (PMA-209) recently participated in the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortia exposition in Dayton, Ohio. At the event the Avionics Architecture Team (AAT) for PMA-209 demonstrated several of its open architecture (OA) projects that are reducing software integration time and maintenance costs for the U.S. Navy. 

Power is a key consideration for modern open architecture initiatives such as the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard, says John Sturm, Vice President of Business Development for the Aerospace & Defense business unit of Vicor, when I interviewed him just before Thanksgiving. We also discussed where custom power supplies fit into the defense world and talked about how commercial AI and big data applications are driving innovation and cost reductions in defense power component manufacturing, recruiting engineering talent into the defense market, and what will be a disruptor in military power supplies in the future. Edited excerpts follow.

BARCELONA, Spain. Danlaw Inc., a leading global automotive and aerospace electronics solutions provider, acquired Maspatechnologies SL, a spin-off of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS). Maspatechnologies will join the Danlaw-owned Rapita Systems group and now operate as Rapita Systems SL from offices in Barcelona.

WASHINGTON. Those developing the process for conforming to the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Technical Standard want a process that is easy to understand, is affordable, and that keeps vendors honest. SOSA representatives C. Patrick Collier, Mark Littlefield, and Ilya Lipkin outlined the status of the conformance process at a SOSA briefing held at the AOC Annual Symposium in Washington this week.

“Is it difficult covering standards, is it getting slow?” my dinner companion asked on the eve of the AUSA 2022 Annual Meeting in Washington. He noted how technical standards bodies can be plodding, taking months to deliberate on a specific point without creating much news.

RF and microwave solutions are a critical ingredient in the U.S. military’s plans to adapt fifth-generation wireless technology, or 5G, as the technology will be essential to create more tools for the joint forces.

Vetronics systems today are increasingly focused on C4ISR [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], interoperability with other battlefield elements, and the capability to be optionally unmanned if necessary. They are also more likely to be built on open architectures as the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) continues the push toward a modular open systems approach (MOSA) in upgrades and new designs.

Welcome to our 2022 September Resource Guide, which for the tenth year in a row is 100 pages or more. This feat follows on the heels of our July/August MES issue of 48 pages plus the 76-page SOSA Special Edition. We also added a new print brand this year, mailing with our April/May issue – the FACE Special Edition. Thanks as always to our loyal readers and advertisers for their support. And a special thanks to our editorial staff and contributing authors for providing content that keeps people turning our pages.

Welcome to the 2022 SOSA Special Edition, our second of what is an annual issue, highlighting editorial content on SOSA from the pages and website of Military Embedded Systems Magazine, as well as the products aligned and conformant to the technical standard – all put together exclusively by our staff. Learn about it all in the 2022 SOSA Special Edition!

The procurement challenges facing defense technology companies range from a slow U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition process to supply chain headaches to when and where to leverage commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology and open architectures.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado. Leveraging commercial technology and managing risk in military unmanned systems is the subject of a live Q&A with David Michleson, Program Manager, Defense Innovation Unit (DIU); James Poss (Maj. Gen USAF Ret.); and Dawn Zoldi, (Col., U.S. Air Force, Ret.), Founder & CEO of P3 Tech Consulting LLC, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, during Law-Tech Connect Workshop (LTCW) Online virtual event.

Following what has been a busy springtime returning to in-person military conferences and trade shows like the Sea-Air-Space Expo and SOFIC, launching our own virtual events, and keeping up with all the latest defense electronics news and trends like the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) modular open systems approach (MOSA) strategies, the summer slowdown has been sweet.