The Mil & Aero Blog

Posted by John Keller

I know that Military & Aerospace Electronics is read by influential figures in and out of the aerospace and defense industry, but I never realized that our magazine also is the journal of choice for at least one superhero.

It seems the Green Lantern, a test pilot who is granted a mystical green ring bestowing him with otherworldly powers, as well as membership in an intergalactic squadron tasked with keeping peace within the universe, also is among our subscribers.

Hey, don't look at me; I was as surprised as you. I'm pretty sure the Green Lantern's Mil & Aero subscription is in a different name -- otherwise our circulation department would have let me know a long time ago, right?

Here's the deal: a summer action movie blockbuster is scheduled for release in June 2011, tentatively entitled The Green Lantern, that will have a plot along the lines of other recent movie releases that are based on comic book characters from DC comics, Marvel, and others -- you know, Spider-Man, Superman, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk. This time, though Military & Aerospace Electronics just might have a bit part in the movie.

Production on the movie has begun, and set designers contacted me the other day asking for issues of the magazine. It's possible -- based on how the final movie is edited -- that issues of Military & Aerospace Electronics will be part of airport scenes in the Green Lantern movie.

We'll see how this develops.

Stay tuned.

Posted by John Keller

The Obama Administration's military budget proposals for next year are out, and I think we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The aerospace and defense industry has spent months fretting about President Obama's 2011 defense budget -- more out of uncertainty than fear. It is this proposed budget, far more than the one last year, that gives us our first clear indication of how the Obama Administration plans to treat defense spending, and the verdict is, better than we thought.

The Administration's 2010 DOD budget request for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) last year essentially was George W. Bush's last defense budget. It wasn't until the 2011 budget proposal was released earlier this month that we see clearly how Obama wants to proceed with defense spending. The numbers speak for themselves.

The overall DOD budget is $708 billion, which consists of $549 billion in the discretionary defense budget, and $159 billion to support continuing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The discretionary DOD budget of $549 billion -- which includes proposals for military personnel, military construction, and family housing, in addition to military procurement, research and development, and operations and maintenance -- is an increase of $18 billion over the $531 billion enacted for 2010. This is an increase of 3.4 percent, or 1.8 percent real growth after adjusting for inflation, DOD officials say.

Those top-line budget numbers, fail to convey the real story for the aerospace and defense electronics industry. To do this requires us to look closely at DOD budget for procurement, as well as the budget for research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E), because these budgets largely deal with current and future military technologies.

The 2011 DOD procurement budget asks Congress for $137.48 billion, which is up only slightly -- 1.05 percent -- from current-year procurement spending of $136.06 billion, yet the trend is clearly going in the right direction -- particularly in light of concerns that the Obama Administration was looking to cut defense spending.

RDT&E is another story. The proposed military research budget for next year is $76.77 billion, which is down 5.13 percent from current-year spending of $80.92 billion, but was not as drastic a cut as it could be.

Now take a look at the combined procurement and RDT&E budget lines for military communications, electronics, telecommunications, and intelligence (CET&I) technologies. Next year's CET&I proposed budget is for $17.45 billion, which is an increase of 3.2 percent from this year's CET&I congressionally enacted spending levels of $17.45 billion.

All this is good news for the military electronics and electro-optics industries. It means we can be on solid ground as we plan for the future. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I don't think we are going to see substantial defense spending cuts over at least the next several years; there is simply not the political will to do so.

President Obama's agenda seems to revolve around domestic programs; for defense spending it's steady as she goes -- at least for now. If the Administration were intent on cutting defense spending, this 2011 budget was the one where this was most likely to happen, especially with a Democrat-controlled Congress that had appeared compliant to the Administration's wishes.

Now we're into an election year, and no one in the Administration or on Capitol Hill wants to rock the boat on defense spending and preparedness as we move closer to the congressional mid-term elections next November.

Again, barring unforeseen circumstances, we are not likely to see substantial increases in defense spending over the next several years, yet we are not likely to see major cuts, either.

So for all of you out there who have been in mental, political, and financial holding patterns, it's time to break out and start moving forward. I don't see any end in sight in the global war on terror -- ooops, sorry ... the "overseas contingency operations" -- which means we'll see a continuing solid market for advanced sensors, battlefield networking, optics and fire control, and many other new technologies that will be involved in counter-terror and counter-insurgency operations.

Everyone involved in the military technology business can get to sleep tonight, resting assured, that the Department of Defense is still open for business.

Posted by John Keller

LAS VEGAS, 7 Jan. 2010. The military embedded computer industry is turning backflips today amidst the excitement surrounding this morning's introduction by microprocessor giant Intel Corp. of its Core i7, i5, and i3 processors at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Several of Intel's powerful new microprocessors are based on the company's 32-nanometer submicron processing technology, yet what has the military computer board industry excited is the floating point processing capability of the i7 device.

Intel and its customers are attracted to floating point capability for new generations of desktop computers that can handle video faster and more efficiently than ever before, but defense and aerospace systems designers and single-board computer makers see floating point and think digital signal processing.

While Intel sees the floating point capability of its Core i7 processor as the gateway to a new generation of complex graphics and fast streaming video, military systems designers see it as the latest and greatest way to implement signal processing for advanced radar, sonar, electronic warfare, and electro-optical applications with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) single-board computers.

Within hours of Intel's introduction today of the Core i7 processor and the other chips in the company's new Core family, embedded computing heavyweights Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing in Leesburg, Va., GE Intelligent Platforms in Charlottesville, Va., and Extreme Engineering Solutions Inc. of Middleton, Wis., had introduced embedded computers based on the Intel Core i7.

In the grand military embedded computing microprocessor wars that have been entertaining us now for nearly 30 years, it looks like there may be a tectonic shift happening that could swing preferences, which now revolve around the Freescale Semiconductor Power Architecture, back into Intel's camp.

During the past three decades since Intel virtually disappeared from the military embedded scene, the Freescale Power Architecture and its ancestors have dominated military embedded applications, dating from around the time when VME became the most popular databus for mil apps, progressing from the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, to the PowerPC, the PowerPC Altivec, and the Power Architecture.

Intel has not had a strong presence in military embedded systems since the 1980s, when the company abandoned its mil-spec semiconductor processing line in Chandler, Ariz., and concentrated almost exclusively on the desktop market. That's changing now, fast, and in a big way.

While Intel is out of the gate with big market momentum for its Core i7 devices, Freescale has a lot of catching up to do. The company disappointed many military systems integrators when it abandoned the Altivec floating point capability in its latest family of microprocessors in a bid to go after the handheld and cell phone market, rather than the desktop market, which Freescale had given up to Intel.

It remains to bee seen in the coming weeks just how big a deal this shift in the microprocessor industry will be. With the likes of Curtiss Wright, GE, and Extreme Engineering on board, it's bound to be significant for the military embedded industry.

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Posted by John McHale

At Military & Aerospace Electronics in 2009 we dived right into social networking or as we like to call it e-networking. We have a fan page on Facebook, a group on Linkedin called the PennWell Aerospace and Defense Media Group, and gather our news content on Twitter under #milaero and avionics content on #avintel.

It's been a fun and successful way to push out our online news stories to new readers and start discussions. We've found the most interactive outlet to be on Linkedin, which started out as a professional networking site whereas Facebook was focused on more social or personal networking.

Although, yesterday I read a story in the Wall Street Journal that basically stated Linkedin needs to get more creative to keep-up with Facebook. According to the piece Facebook kicks Linkedin's rear in total members. However some analysts in the story say that lopsided memebrship numbers are misleading as Linkedin is strictly a professional networking service whereas Facebook is geared more toward professional and social communication.

I have also found that many people I talk to in the defense and aerospace industry say that their employers do not let them use Facebook or Twitter, but are more flexible when it comes to Linkedin because of its professional nature.

Twitter is its own animal. I've done quite a bit of tweeting while at trade shows. It provides immediate coverage -- albeit in 140 characters or less. I typically will tweet as I'm leaving a booth or sitting in a press conference or luncheon. Twitter allows me to not only push links to articles on our websites but get out little tidbits of info that would not typically make it into the print magazine or on a web story.

Also, much like with our blogs, Twitter allows us to take a different, sometimes lighter spin on current events than traditional news coverage.

What really seems to impress our audience about Twitter is its instantaneous nature.

For example at the MILCOM show this fall in Boston, I attended the first live demonstration of an OpenVPX system run by engineers at Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing in Leesburg, Va., and Hybricon in Ayer, Mass. I tweeted about the demo on my Blackberry while watching it. They were excited because they were videotaping the moment and placing it on youtube -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2_4B9uPKLk -- but got quite a kick out of the fact that I was immediately online with their news.

One person in attendance commented that the age of instant reporting is here.

E-networking media has definitely changed the way we do things at Military & Aerospace Electronics. I remember when all we used to have was a magazine. Now we still have the magazine, two websites, four conferences, webcasts, three e-newsletters, dedicated pages on Linkedin, Twitter, and Facebook.

So be sure to check us out wherever you find yourself on the web in 2010.

Happy New Year!

Posted by John Keller

As Americans we confront vigorous debates on how to deal with unemployment, how to finance real estate in a down market, government's role in health care and private business, and whether "global warming" is a legitimate threat or an elaborate hoax. So what dominates the front pages?

Tiger Woods.

For those of you just back from extended vacations on Saturn, Tiger Woods plays golf, and gets a lot of money for doing so ... okay, so he doesn't just play golf; he's the best of his generation, and one of the all-time greats, and this gets Tiger Woods a LOT of attention.

He gets so much attention, in fact, that big companies that make Nike shoes and Gatorade beverages have Tiger Woods selling their products -- for which the golfer also gets a lot of money.

Lately it's become known that Tiger Woods cheated on his wife with a lot of different women. Mr. Woods and his cuckolded wife, by the way, have small children, which makes his extramarital affairs that much worse.

Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I don't play golf, have absolutely no skills in golf, don't watch golf on television, and consider golf to be irrelevant to my life. I know people who are enthusiastic golfers, like to talk golf, and get a lot of enjoyment and personal rewards from golf, and I think that's just great ...

... but do I have to wake up every morning to Tiger Woods, hear about Tiger Woods on TV and radio, see his face on countless Internet pages and newspapers?

I'm tired of Tiger Woods. Unless he has something to do with me and mine, I don't want to hear about him anymore. I don't want to see his face anymore, I don't want to know how many mistresses he's had (I've already run out of enough fingers and toes to count).

Here's the deal -- what Tiger Woods has done, is doing, or will do, is none of my business, and I'd be grateful to keep it that way ...

... so no more. Please.

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