Military-display designers continue to face stringent size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) constraints while integrating commercial innovations like HD – and soon 4K – into systems that must work with legacy sensors and interfaces while also complying with a variety of open architectures and standards.

Today’s modern warfighters have grown up with smartphones and tablets with intuitive, multitouch projected capacitive (PCAP) touch screens. They rely heavily on these devices in their personal lives and they expect to have access to the same capabilities and conveniences in the field.

In order to keep up with the continued acceleration of new technology and to be able to protect the warfighter from the latest threats, it is essential that we can turn our deployed platforms into adaptable entities that can evolve over time and are not static. The SOSA [Sensor Open Systems Architecture] Technical Standard is the next major step in realizing this goal.

Tammy Carter and David Jedynak discuss how huge data demands are pushing radar and electronic warfare (EW) developers to seek new ways to deliver multifunction systems that also meet strict size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements.

J.R. Wilson with Military & Aerospace Electronics considers how Passive sensor systems may be ready to come into their own, as high-performance embedded computing technology becomes powerful enough to handle massive computing loads.

Kevin Rooney discusses common issues such as waterproofing, operating in extended temperature ranges, readability challenges, and glare with rugged LCD mission displaying.