EMMA HELFRICH, TECHNOLOGY EDITOR

The advent of unmanned systems reflects a huge aspect of warfare – that of protecting the warfighter – through the development of platforms that can be operated by humans from a distance, keeping them out of harm’s way. Some of these platforms are actually on the way to becoming fully autonomous. Hurdles in the way of both manufacturers and end users include interoperability and cost-efficiency. Although these hurdles are challenging, organizations including The Open Group have made noticeable strides to standardize in an effort to universalize otherwise complex unmanned systems.

JOHN MCHALE, GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Mercury Systems, Inc., continuing its run of acquisitions, purchased Pentek Technologies, LLC and Pentek Systems, Inc. (collectively, “Pentek”) in Upper Saddle River, N.J., for an all-cash purchase price of $65 million. Pentek, a competitor to Mercury's embedded signal-processing business, designs software-defined radio (SDR) solutions, FPGA single-board computers, data-acqusition boards, recording systems, and other products for radar, signals intelligence (SIGINT), electronic warfare (EW), and other high-performance defense applications.

JASON DECHIARO, CURTISS-WRIGHT

From a design and engineering perspective, there are many moving parts to consider and combine in order to arrive at a position, navigation, and timing (PNT) truth. In addition, solutions must be easy to integrate into the available space on existing platforms, whether they are unmanned aerial systems (UASs) or other aircraft, ground-based operations, or systems at sea. They must provide reliable positioning information in GPS-degraded environments, where tall buildings, heavy foliage, and underground positions can affect signal quality, as well as in GPS-denied environments where adversaries have intervened to jam or compromise GPS signals.

MILITARY EMBEDDED SYSTEMS STAFF

The Open Group Sensor Open Systems Architecture™ (SOSA) Special Edition, bought to you by Military Embedded Systems, features advertisements and full and half-page product profiles on your products aligned to SOSA as well as Executive Speakouts and SOSA Survey. Opportunities are for SOSA members only.

DAWN M.K. ZOLDI (COLONEL, USAF RET.)

The Department of the Navy (DoN) plans to make some waves in the battle for limited resources. In over a thousand multiservice entries spanning all unmanned systems domains across the Department of Defense (DoD) in the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act, Congress primarily funded the air domain. The DoN response to the maritime hit: a rallying cry to roll the entire air, sea, ground, and manned/unmanned enterprise together to create an affordable, integrated, lethal, scalable, survivable and connected force. It’s called the Unmanned Campaign Framework.

JOHN MCHALE, GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

The ARINC 818 digital video interface and protocol standard is used throughout commercial and military cockpits for avionics display applications. As military video systems continue to increase in complexity in and out of the cockpit, for example in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensor systems, the demand for ARINC 818 solutions is growing. In this podcast, Tim Keller, Chief Operations Officer at Great River Technology discusses defines what ARINC 818 is, discusses common misconceptions about the standard, its growing use in sensor applications, new ARINC 818 training for engineers, and explores how the standard could potentially work within the Sensor Open Systems Architecture Technical Standard.

JOHN MCHALE, GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

Annapolis Micro Systems released a 100Gb Ethernet RFSoC board that is alignd to the Sensor Open Systems Architecture Technical Standard. It combines analog and digital capability in a single 3U OpenVPX slot, operations that previously needed two or more boards for the same functions.

PENTEK, ELMA ELECTRONIC, INTERFACE CONCEPT, CONCURRENT TECHNOLOGIES, CROSSFIELD TECHNOLOGY

Video participants are Pentek, Elma Electronic (for backplane and system management components), Interface Concept (for backplane switch modules), Concurrent Technologies (for single-board computer modules), and Crossfield Technology for IPMI and chassis management support, all specifically designed to be in alignment with the SOSA Technical Standard.

CURTISS-WRIGHT

In this white paper, we examine the supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods and the hybrid approach of semi-supervised machine learning. This paper also covers machine learning frameworks that simplify neural network creation, training and validation.

ABACO SYSTEMS

How a major technology company turned to Abaco to help develop its planned unmanned aircraft systems UAS platforms with sophisticated sensor subsystems – and the alternatives to its solutions that are enabled by new technologies.