Op-Eds

Avionics

Aircraft carriers are just big fat targets - Blog

April 28, 2017

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: During World War II in the Pacific, aircraft carriers were primarily used to defeat enemy carriers and battleships at sea. The whole point of island-hopping was to gain airstrips on land, to launch bomber attacks on the enemy troops on other islands. That was the plan until the Doolittle Raid in 1942, where the USS Hornet launched sixteen long range B-25 bombers to hit Tokyo.

Radar/EW

Radar cross section: The measure of stealth - Blog

March 31, 2017

Ray Alderman

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: The primary measure of stealth, or low observability (LO), is the radar cross section (RCS) of the target, whether it?s aircraft, missiles, or ships. The radar pulse goes out from the transmitter, hits the target, and bounces back. The radar receiver measures the energy in the return signal in decibel (db) units, but that?s a hard way for normal people to visualize the size of a target. So, we must convert db to square meters (m²) to get the picture.

Avionics

Generations of fighter aircraft and the F-35 vs F/A-18 arguments - Blog

February 28, 2017

Ray Alderman

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: When some writer talks about 4th, 5th, or 6th generation fighter aircraft, what do they mean? Like the previous articles in this series on the generations of warfare, there are multiple definitions by multiple authors. For fighter aircraft generations, there?s Hallion (1990), Aerospaceweb (2004), Air Force Magazine (2009), Jim Winchester (2011), and Air Power Development Center (Royal Australian Air Force, 2012).

Radar/EW

VME Live or Let Die - Blog

February 28, 2017

Jane Annear Concurrent Technologies

The Embedded Tech Trends (ETT) conference, organized by the VITA standards organization and held last month in New Orleans ? a city which folklore says has the reputation for dark powers, Voodoo rituals, and magic. It was also a filming location for the James Bond movie ?Live and Let Die? and one of the fun parts of these Bond movies is the new gadgets given to Bond to help his fight against evil. So, New Orleans seemed an appropriate location for the some of the world?s leading providers to the embedded markets to mingle and promote their latest magical innovative technologies for tomorrow?s applications.

Comms

The key to preparing vehicles for A-PNT - Blog

February 27, 2017

Alan Simmonds Themis Computer

A-PNT, or assured position, navigation, and timing, is a relatively new buzz phrase in military navigation systems. It enhances existing selective availability anti-spoofing module (SAASM) GPS navigational technologies (which are already immune to spoofing) with other PNT methods that are not susceptible to signal loss, jamming or satellite destruction. A-PNT?s lofty goal is to give soldiers the ability to identify and communicate accurate location, course, and time without countermeasure interference.

Radar/EW

COTS technologies: major benefits for the consumer, new challenges for the manufacturer - Blog

February 27, 2017

Ross Hudman Digital Systems Engineering (DSE)

The switch to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products can be beneficial for the consumer and manufacturer with new military environmental testing methods.

Unmanned

Can you trust that drone? - Blog

January 31, 2017

Russell Doty

The recent activities in the South China Sea of the seizure and subsequent return by China of a U.S. unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) ? also known as an ?ocean glider drone? - has once again brought drone security into the spotlight. Securing data collected as part of Internet of Things (IoT) environments is top of mind, and never more so than in military applications.

Comms

Domains of warfare and strategic offsets - Blog

January 31, 2017

Ray Alderman

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG:It?s 2017, and I?m back. After enduring uncomfortably-deep probing and evaluation of my literary skills and technical analysis capabilities, along with a comprehensive DNA test, my masters here at OpenSystems Media have decided to keep me on as a writer, to ply you with another year of fascinating and intriguing next-generation warfare articles. For 2017 I will write with an emphasis on present capabilities of the U.S. and our enemies, as well as new platforms and strategies under development.

Comms

War in space - Blog

December 20, 2016

Ray Alderman

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: Speculating a war in space is a perplexing subject, so let?s wade into it with a heathy level of trepidation, looking at treaties, space courts, and potential battle scenarios.

Cyber

How much and what kind of coverage analysis is enough? - Blog

November 21, 2016

Jay Thomas

CODE QUALITY BLOG: The discussion of coverage analysis can bring up a number of different assumptions that do not always agree. Does it mean checking that all the code has been executed? Does it mean that all requirements have been exercised and tested? Does it bring up some number other than 100 percent that can be relied upon for functioning code? What we want to do is to assure ourselves that a program has been thoroughly tested to the point it can be relied upon, even in life-threatening situations. How do we achieve this and what aspect of ?coverage? will allow us to rest easy?

A.I.

Facilitating deep learning techniques with HPEC - Blog

October 31, 2016

Dr. Mohamed Bergach Kontron

The long-sought era of machine learning in finally at hand. The potential benefit to the warfighter of deep learning techniques both enormous and profound. With defense systems trending towards greater application autonomy, deep learning techniques too complex to implement with more traditional processing technologies can now help to significantly drive advancements in on-platform processing of streaming signal or image data. These techniques are proving useful for pattern recognition tasks such as natural language processing and image feature detection, producing highly reliable autonomous decisions based on huge data sets.

Cyber

In a cyberwar - Blog

October 30, 2016

Ray Alderman

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: This is another broad, sticky, and complex topic, much like the previous article on cryptology. So, let?s get started by offering some definitions.

Cyber

Nail down software security with dynamic analysis - Blog

October 30, 2016

Jay Thomas

CODE QUALITY BLOG: You?ve secured your Internet of Things (IoT)-connected system with components for authentication such as password, retina scan, physical key, plus encryption/decryption and more. But building these things in is not enough. You?ve got to be certain that they all work together properly and that the code doesn?t contain any flaws that could grant access to hackers. Security needs to be built in at the very start of the project by using secure protocols and continuing on up to functional elements in the application. One powerful tool for gaining this assurance is dynamic analysis.

Comms

Next generation wireless R&D: the rise of the multi-functional engineer - Blog

September 29, 2016

Ken Karnofsky MathWorks

The next generation of wireless communications systems is driving a new level of technology integration. Higher data rates, massive connectivity for systems like the Internet of Things (IoT), lower power consumption, and other ambitious goals can only be achieved by combining advanced digital, RF, and antenna technologies. Traditionally, each of these components has been designed separately, only to be integrated, tested, and debugged after the first hardware prototype is built. The days of this approach, with domain experts working separately, using separate tools, are numbered.

Comms

Overcoming four key IoT secure messaging challenges - Blog

September 29, 2016

David Ingham

THE OPEN SOURCE WAY BLOG. Secure, real-time communication technology is an essential requirement for military Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. There are numerous protocols for communication between IoT devices, and between the devices and back-end systems. Messaging solutions should be able to to support these various protocols across heterogeneous, physically distributed systems while enabling the security and integrity of information flows. They should also be highly scalable, able to accommodate potentially hundreds of millions of devices. And since delay or loss of data is not an option, they should feature strict availability and reliability requirements.