Until recently, AESA radar was utilized almost exclusively by prime aerospace contractors within their own proprietary systems. These customized solutions were relatively costly and time-consuming to manufacture, and not reconfigurable to alternative uses.

Unlike primary radars, Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) calculates the range and azimuth of a target, such as an aircraft, using a bidirectional communication link to gather information. Engineers use SSR in both military and civil aviation, with the former incorporating an identifying friend-or-foe system.

IBC Advanced Alloys Corp.
Wilmington, MA
855-237-2522
www.ibcadvancedalloys.com

IBC Advanced Alloys Corp. will continue production of components for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS).

MASA Group
Paris, France
+33 1 55 43 13 20
www.masagroup.net

Military training tools must work effectively with reduced staff numbers and simulate a large variety of situations. Following 12 years of collaboration, the French Armed Forces have expanded their use of SWORD, a constructive simulation software package developed by MASA Group.

Verotec
Manchester, NH
603-821-9921
www.verotec.us

Using a hit-to-kill approach, a US Army anti-ballistic missile system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) is designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. The interceptor missile, developed by Lockheed Martin, carries no warhead, but relies on the kinetic energy of the direct impact to destroy the incoming threat.

Unmanned vehicles are at the forefront of an evolution, especially with the proliferation of the Internet of Things. After decades of serving mission-critical applications in government and defense, the command and control (C2) capabilities of advanced wireless data communications have begun to migrate into the public safety, research, and commercial markets. The robust and secure infrastructure necessary for the eventual proliferation of unmanned vehicles is slowly being realized. Today, however, industries such as public safety, agriculture and oil and gas are being eyed as key markets that can benefit from the use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA). For several applications, such as wildfire monitoring and border protection, RPAs can even be used to protect people and save lives.

The Navy is developing a vehicle mounted directed energy (DE) weapon system in their Ground Based Air Defense (GBAD) Directed Energy On-The-Move (OTM) program. As part of this initiative, Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) has been awarded a $1.2M, three year contract to develop an efficient, lightweight, compact thermal storage and management subsystem. The cooling system will remove waste heat from the laser commensurate with available power and other engineering constraints. The technology being developed will be used to suppress unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s).