The C4ISR/Electronic Warfare Modular Open Suite of Standards (CMOSS) enables engineers and developers of systems used by the warfighter to move toward much faster technology insertions and refreshes, with a corresponding reduction in long-term life cycle costs.

Knowing your exact location, how you got there, and how to get back are luxuries that the military on the move doesn’t always have the option to exercise. The satellite-based Global Positioning System (GPS) – such a staple of modern navigation – is undeniably a technological feat but can become an exploitable weakness when manipulated by an adversary. Technologies designed to operate in GPS-denied environments are being engineered in response to the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) need to operate in areas where navigational infrastructures simply cannot exist.

Conducting reconnaissance in inhospitable environments is nothing new for the U.S. military. Yet as foreign threats on the ground become both more sophisticated and more remote, the challenge of gathering intelligence in dangerous, hard-to-reach locations requires an approach that maximizes critical data collection while minimizing risk to live personnel.

The modern battlespace has changed over the past decade, and the military use of GPS to deliver critical positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) information to warfighters faces challenges from adversaries’ threat systems. GPS continues to be relevant for the U.S. military and its allies, even when used in a GPS-denied environment. Existing and future military GPS solutions must especially consider those uses designed for handheld and ultrasmall applications where size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) are all key considerations.

Each issue, the editorial staff of Military Embedded Systems will highlight a different charitable organization that benefits the military, veterans, and their families. We are honored to cover the technology that protects those who protect us every day.

We’re on the eve of celebrating of OpenSystems Media’s 40th anniversary with the 40th birthday of our first publication, VMEbus Systems, which directly follows the 40th anniversary of the VMEbus standard this year. However, the celebrations are bittersweet as we also mourn the loss of one of our company’s founding partners and the father of our current President Pat Hopper: Mike Hopper. Mike passed away on October 24. He was 84.

Telemetry data from military flight tests often needs to be secured, not only when at rest, but also while in motion across a network or a telemetry link.