Hoffer Flow Controls
Elizabeth City, NC
252-331-1997
www.hofferflow.com

Hoffer Flow Controls, Inc. recently received a new contract to supply 575 fuel flow meters as a part of the U.S. Navy’s H-53 heavy lift helicopter fleet upgrade. The most powerful helicopter in the U.S. Military, H-53 helicopters perform many tasks within the U.S. Military including heavy lifting, transport of supplies, combat search, rescue missions and mine sweeping to clear vital shipping lanes. The current H-53 helicopter fleet is slated to remain in service until mid-to-late 2020’s.

In today’s interconnected world, the information that we generate, store, transmit, and receive has become a valuable commodity. We have increasingly turned to cryptography as a tool to protect the confidentiality and integrity of this information, but we read almost daily about those protections being defeated. Skilled practitioners can often successfully mount attacks using only very modest resources to break unprotected devices. Attacks on FPGA bitstream encryption, as often reported in the open literature, represent significant examples of the DPA (Differential Power Analysis) threat for the aerospace and defense community.

From laptops and mobile devices to cars and airplanes, we are seeing near-daily threats to the systems and devices we use. Systems being used and deployed in the aerospace and defense industry are facing the same problem. As their complexity has increased, so has their attack surface, making them increasingly vulnerable to security threats. There has also been substantial growth in malicious, state-sponsored organizations targeting defense systems that are adept at discovering vulnerabilities, and using them to compromise the integrity of systems and exfiltrate sensitive information.

As defense systems continue to shrink, corresponding thermal management concerns expand exponentially. Designers have learned that overheating can be the downfall of even the most well-designed systems. Suppliers of today’s box-level systems continue to make strides in reducing the size, weight and power (SWaP) of these systems to meet mil-aero deployment demands. However, smaller systems may be more difficult to cool, adding an additional design mandate to keep the system within specified heat parameters, making thermal management that much more important in meeting environmental deployment specifications. Therefore, optimized cooling techniques need to be employed to meet SWaP-C (Size, Weight, Power and Cooling) needs that are now a vital part of the development process.

Visits to the Seville headquarters of Airbus Defence & Space (Airbus DS) have often reflected stormy prospects for the company’s large-capacity A400M Atlas transport, which has suffered cost increases, delivery delays, technical issues, and order losses.

Consumer expectations for information and entertainment are creating big challenges for airlines that need to provide Internet access while providing inflight services that mirror what’s available in the home and office.

It’s a familiar image: a soldier crouching with a radio next to a spidery antenna pointing skyward to reach a distant satellite. But that view of military communications is on the verge of change, being replaced by troops rapidly exchanging data while moving seamlessly around the battle space.