New and efficient approaches to cabinet and console design, fabrication, integration, and qualification are enabling prime defense contractors to quickly equip the U.S. Navy with better electronics technology and enclosures while increasing return on investment.

New technologies such as virtualisation, sensor improvements and data fusion are enhancing the effect of CMS on modern fleets, allowing greater range and faster transfer of critical information.

Industry standards and guidelines such as MOSA, SOSA, CMOSS, SAVE, and FACE are driving the latest developments in enclosures, chassis, and backplane databuses, as small for factors are ready to take center stage.

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.

Jerry Gipper of VITA Technologies looks at the newly launched Modular Open Radio Frequency Architecture (MORA).

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.