Published in Military & Aerospace Electronics
Written by Jamie Whitney
How do you make things smarter? That’s the question industry experts expect to answer as they develop small rugged mobile computers and network equipment for military vehicles and command posts.
Precision-guided munitions — or smart bombs — deployed during Operation Desert Storm 30 years ago made headlines, so-called intelligent munitions have roots even farther back, during the Vietnam War in 1967.
Today the U.S. armed forces only have increased the use of smart devices. The proliferation of connected systems has been enabled by the U.S. military embrace of the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) revolution.
By using consumer-grade hardware in hardened enclosures, warfighters can repair, upgrade, and replace components at forward operating bases instead of relying on experts with a deep understanding of proprietary and secret technologies.
In addition to COTS, the embedded computing industry has used technology to pump even more power into systems by focusing on the size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements of the components used. Now, warfighters have more power at their fingertips than ever before, and that trend is continuing.
That power is enabled by using the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI).