The new VITA 100 suite of standards is shaping up to be an interesting display of computing system standards development. Built from years of experience, stemming from VME and OpenVPX, VITA 100 is drawing on the best of these earlier standards to craft a new standard that will enable suppliers and integrators to hit the ground running as soon as the documents are released.

Processing demands in space environments continue to increase exponentially, with more in-orbit applications requiring that image and signal processing as well as networked communications functions be performed at the edge. This reality increases the importance of onboard data analysis, prioritization, and sharing in reliable space-rated systems.

This year, 2025, marks the 30th anniversary of the U.S. military’s announcement that the Global Positioning System (GPS) met all requirements for full operational capacity, a milestone that was formally announced by the U.S. Air Force Space Command on July 17, 1995. Three decades later, despite U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) challenges in modernizing the technology, GPS remains the principal source of position, navigation and timing (PNT) data for the U.S. military and its partners, continuously generating integral information for command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, and reconnaissance (C4ISR); targeting; and weapons delivery. Importantly, GPS is also continually relied upon in the commercial sector, especially in the public safety and security industry. Home-security companies routinely use GPS to route employees for service appointments, direct technicians and first responders to incidents, and provide mobile safety services to ride-sharing companies and their passengers. Maintaining these security and life-safety services is a critical aspect of U.S. national security.

We’ve listened to many customers describe the type of detect-and-avoid (DAA) needs they have for their concept of operations (ConOps), usually pausing to ask about their existing knowledge of DAA and generally hearing responses that are informed by “industry knowledge.” While most of the community working in the uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) industry is well-informed, there are recurring themes that would benefit from the subtle distinction about what is – and importantly – what is not, DAA.

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

Today’s defense and intelligence missions face a persistent challenge in that high-fidelity optics and sensor systems are expensive and slow to produce. The sector remains stuck in the size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) dilemma, where engineering tradeoffs restrict performance, delay innovation, and increase costs. However, artificial intelligence (AI) can now be harnessed to model millions of design iterations in seconds, allowing for advances in materials such as metasurfaces and metalenses to be incorporated into exquisite optic and system systems helping to overcome traditional SWaP-C limitations.

The rapid expansion of 5G is transforming the Internet of Things (IoT), enabling greater integration of devices at the edge of the network. This advancement is particularly impactful for government applications, where 5G enhances national-security operations, improves military surveillance capabilities with drones, and enables faster and more secure data transmission for emergency response.

The aim of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) is clear: to enable the military to make faster and better-informed decisions to achieve decision advantage over its adversaries. But the path to that goal is anything but straightforward.

Modern military platforms demand increasingly sophisticated radio-frequency (RF) interconnect solutions that can perform reliably in the most challenging environments while meeting strict size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements. Decades of development across the RF industry have led to considerable innovation in supporting these mission-critical applications.

At 4% of the Earth’s surface, the Arctic is both the latest and least-explored global frontier. The region will define U.S. and European defense strategies for a generation, and scaling polar preparedness is now recognized as an imperative across all military domains.

Over about 20 years of working in U.S. Navy systems technology development – including must-have upgrades in radar, electronic warfare (EW), laser weapons, and more – I’ve witnessed firsthand how technology transforms naval warfare: The changes aren’t rapid! Delivering new transformative capabilities can take decades, from requirements development to securing funding to system development, integration, and testing.

WARFARE EVOLUTION BLOG: The time has arrived for us to pull together the previous eight articles about the worldwide military platform markets, and organize that data in a clear and informative manner. We could spreadsheet all these numbers and produce some scatter plots or bubble charts. But, they seem so cold and dull. So, let’s take a more aesthetic and artistic approach, the "feng shei statistical analysis method” using balance and harmony. That requires a modified tree diagram. Everybody loves a good tree diagram.

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

The U.S. Army’s recent mandate for software bills of materials (SBOMs) marks a significant step forward in bolstering software supply-chain security. This proactive measure, driven by President Biden’s 2021 executive order on cybersecurity, aims to improve the visibility and security of software components. As the federal government and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) prioritize supply-chain security, we can expect SBOM requirements to become a standard across all military branches.

When designing components for aerospace and defense systems, engineers must design not only for performance but also for reliability as many military applications fall under extreme environmental conditions. These conditions challenge the reliability, durability, and operational efficiency of equipment, necessitating innovative engineering approaches – especially with fiber-optic interconnect solutions that must withstand high demands in the field.