There have been several news headlines lately about offenders pointing commercial lasers at helicopters or police personnel, temporarily blinding and distracting them. An increasing number of “laser assault” incidents have led to tougher penalties with fines and jail time in various countries. The lasers typically used in these attacks operate in the visible light spectrum; therefore, these lasers can be blocked by special absorbing optical dyes contained in special laser defense eyewear.

Satellites launched with the purpose of relaying communications have been enabling around-the-globe transmissions of information for half a century. And in this current era of hybrid warfare, that means this decades-old hardware needs to be able to manage the command and control of unmanned aircraft.

More and more aerospace applications are incorporating fiber optics technology into their designs due to its many advantages over copper. The thinner fiber solutions provide higher speed over a longer distance, are more reliable, offer higher noise immunity and, in many cases, lower the cost of ownership. Additionally, for the same diameter, fiber can pack more data than copper. Fiber is faster than the category 5 and 6 copper cables, approaching the speed of light (31% lower). For copper, pushing the speed beyond 1G is a challenge, but for fiber 10G is quite common. Copper is limited by distance. Usually, signal degradation with copper will occur after about 90 meters (2.7 km maximum for custom systems), while fiber can achieve more than 1.5 km without a problem and can deliver over 80 km depending on transmission signal quality.

The development of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) will require technological advancements in many areas, including lethality, protection, autonomy, human–agent teaming, and electromagnetic capabilities. What ties all of these future capabilities together is the need for vast computational resources to support the artificial intelligence (AI) implicit in bringing these advancements to the battlefield. The operating environment of the NGCV will be such that communications will be severely limited, if available at all; systems will be under constant cyber-attack; and adversarial AI may be actively attempting to deceive all sensors — all occurring under severe size, weight, power, and time-available constraints. These factors, and more, are the motivation for developing a strategy of mobile High-Performance Computing (HPC) for the NGCV.

By integrating the design of antennas and electronics, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology have boosted the energy and spectrum efficiency for a new class of millimeter-wave transmitters, allowing improved modulation and reduced generation of waste heat.

The venerable MIL-STD-1553B bus has survived remarkably well even as other more advanced solutions gained wide acceptance in the last few years. However, the fact remains that its maximum data rate of 1 Mb/s is orders of magnitude too slow for today’s data-intensive systems, so logic dictates that it will soon fade away. That may be a logical assumption, but it’s likely to prove wrong, for several reasons.

General Robotics
Beit Nehemia, Israel
+972 (0) 77 512 1020
www.glrobotics.com

General Robotics, a company that specializes in developing, manufacturing and marketing advanced robotic systems for defense and Homeland Security, manufactures an ultralight remote weapon station with anti-drone capabilities called the Pitbull. The Pitbull provides a solution for detecting and tracking all types of drones during flight, enabling their neutralization and downing.