WASHINGTON, 7 April 2013. Airborne weapons experts at the Boeing Co. got the go-ahead last week to start building add-on kits for the U.S. Navy Mark 54 lightweight torpedo that will enable the Navy P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol jet to launch these weapons from altitudes as high as 30,000 feet and attack enemy submarines from long ranges.

FOUNTAIN HILLS, Ariz., 22 March 2013. The aerospace embedded computing industry is stuck temporarily in the economic doldrums because of massive uncertainty over the future U.S. defense budget, federal sequestration, and a 22 percent drop in defense spending during the fourth quarter of 2012, but bad times may not last for long, says report released this week.

As space-grade digital system designs increase in power consumption and complexity, while shifting to lower and tighter tolerance supply voltages, radiation-hardened (rad-hard) DC-to-DC converters such as Point-of-Load (POL) buck regulators, have become essential for maintaining highly-reliable and highly-efficient operation in these harsh environments. This article will discuss the design of power-management systems for space and defense applications requiring radiation tolerance, small size, high efficiency, and design versatility.

Some might find it hard to believe that high-school students could improve the wing design of a 737 aircraft, or design the wing and tail sections of a Cessna corporate jet, or design a light sport aircraft (LSA) given very aggressive specs for performance, environmental impact, and carrying capacity. Yet, students have been doing so for the past five years in the Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) competition in the United States.

MUNICH, 20 Feb. 2013. It’s a busy, but exciting time in aviation; we are on the cusp of considerable change. The months and years ahead will bring more and varied manned and unmanned aircraft sharing public airspace, modernized air traffic management, new aviation certifications and regulations, and myriad advances in avionics, from cockpit to cabin.

Software that is used in a commercial aircraft system must be certified against the avionics safety standard, DO-178. This standard is oriented around an interrelated set of software life cycle processes falling into three main categories: the software planning process, the software development processes (requirements, design, coding, integration) and the integral processes (verification, configuration management, quality assurance, and certification liaison).

U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials, as part of the organization’s ongoing investment in new technologies for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) in various locales, including Iraq and Afghanistan, are interested in adopting advanced processing and graphics technologies.

It was nearly a year ago that I predicted 10 hot trends in cloud data for 2012. While there’s a strong temptation to cast old predictions into ancient history and dive into 10 predictions for 2013, I felt it more appropriate to first glance back and reflect on how those past predictions fared.

Virtual reality, simulation, and training software and hardware ready aerospace and defense personnel for increasingly challenging missions.

Vacuum-deposited film has been used for decades to protect surfaces and components in aerospace electronics. The Parylene formulation is molecularly specific, whereas the Parylene dimer--the raw form of the coating--varies in purity and performance from one manufacturer to another. A deficient dimer formulation will degrade the ability of finished Parylene film to protect critical assemblies under harsh conditions.

The raw dimer form of Parylene is a granular, white powder described chemically as poly-para-xylylene. There are different variants of the material: the most popular being Parylenes N, C, and D, and the selection of the optimal dimer depends on the demands of each application.

Globalization is driving the need for significant change in business processes and models, as well as changing how and where data is stored, accessed, and secured. As workforces become increasingly mobile, users are demanding ever greater flexibility in accessing data.

Flight Display Systems engineers have been producing special mission aircraft components for five years, and are currently working on a new night-vision/sunlight-readable project for smaller cockpit liquid crystal displays (LCDs).

Embedded computing capability to process graphics quickly and efficiently is more important for aerospace and defense applications today than ever before.

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS, 22 Aug. 2012. Product lifecycle management software tools are evolving to meet rising volumes of software and requirements-based testing standards. The increased volume of software in aerospace and defense applications has created a demand for software that can trace software problems back to their source and make way for product lines based on similar hardware and different software.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as remotely piloted vehicles (RPAs), outfitted with advanced sensor payloads are actively gathering, and even processing, a wealth of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) data."

SPECIAL REPORT, 31 July 2012. Satellite communications (SATCOM) technology is forging ahead, thanks to evolving technology and a sudden increase in interest. Satellite communications are becoming higher-bandwidth, more secure and man-packable.

SPECIAL REPORT, 31 July 2012. Satellite communications (SATCOM) technology is forging ahead, thanks to evolving technology and a sudden increase in interest. Satellite communications are becoming higher-bandwidth, more secure and man-packable.

SPECIAL REPORT, 30 July 2012. Today's new breed of tiny computer boards range in size from a smartphone to a postage stamp, and are making today's small form factors like 3U VPX look like the large and heavy iron.