Now that the Army has chosen its preferred Future Long Range Assault Aircraft in Bell’s V-280 advanced tiltrotor, the race is on to populate it with mission systems that will allow the machine to operate through adversaries’ sophisticated air defense systems.

The U.S. Army has long pursued a standardized infrastructure and architecture for ground-combat vehicle hardware and networking.

To lower the cost and help speed the pace of technology upgrades for C5ISR [command, control, computers, communications, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] systems on Army vehicles, the U.S. Army’s Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Ground Combat Systems (GCS) has issued an Interface Description Document (IDD).

Backed by broad support from government and industry, the release of SOSA Technical Standard 1.0 promises a new era of open standards-based system integration with flexibility and interoperability as its hallmarks.

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.

To exploit the potential benefits of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, video analysis, Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality and virtual reality, and other innovative technologies on mobile platforms at the tactical edge, Department of Defense (DoD) communications programs must effectively deploy advanced IT infrastructure, connectivity, and compute resources.

The wave of commercially developed communications and remote-sensing satellites seeks to balance costs, capability, size, weight, and power consumption in the latest new space designs.

Contested space, where nations compete for military dominance outside Earth’s atmosphere, is driving many military space platforms, but commercial space and small satellites continue to change the way the military suppliers of space electronics approach radiation-hardened component design from testing to deployment.