Sponsored By Oxley Developments
www.oxleygroup.com
————————————————————————
03 Mar 22. Teledyne e2v HiRel Unveils Two Space-Screened Versions of its Popular 650 V, 60 A GaN HEMTs. High voltage packaged GaN HEMTs for hi-rel applications now available off the shelf with NASA Level 1 Screening Flow. Teledyne e2v HiRel announces the addition of new space screened versions of its popular 650 V, 60 A high reliability gallium nitride high electron mobility transistors (GaN HEMTs). The new parts go through NASA Level 1 screening flow and can be brought up to full Level 1 conformance with extra qualification testing if desired. Typical applications include battery management, DC-DC converters, and space motor drives.
Two new parts are available, both space-grade, 650 V, enhancement mode, top-side cooled GaN-on-Silicon power transistors. The properties of GaN allow for high current, high voltage breakdown and high switching frequency, enabling high efficiency and high power density designs. The two models are:
- TDG650E601TSP Space GaN E-mode Transistor with 900 V transient drain-to-source maximum voltage
- TDG650E602TSP Space GaN E-mode Transistor with 750 V transient drain-to-source maximum voltage
Each is available with options for EAR99 or European sourcing.
Teledyne e2v HiRel’s GaN HEMTs feature single wafer lot traceability, extended temperature performance from -55 to +125 °C, and low inductance, low thermal resistance packaging.
“Our GaN HEMT product family has been very popular with customers, and we have had many requests for catalog versions with standard space screening,” said Mont Taylor, VP of Business Development for Teledyne e2v HiRel. “Our new 650 V, 60 A parts offer 100% screening off-the-shelf, and we can do full level 1 qualification with customer SCDs.”
Gallium nitride devices have revolutionized power conversion in other industries and are now available in radiation tolerant, plastic encapsulated packaging that has undergone stringent reliability and electrical testing to help ensure mission critical success. The release of these new GaN HEMTs delivers to customers the efficiency, size, and power-density benefits required in critical aerospace and defense power applications.
Both of these new devices are available for ordering and immediate purchase from Teledyne e2v HiRel or an authorized distributor.
ABOUT TELEDYNE e2v HIREL ELECTRONICS
Teledyne HiRel’s innovations lead developments in space, transportation, defense, and industrial markets. HiRel’s unique approach involves listening to the market and application challenges of customers and partnering with them to provide innovative standard, semi-custom or fully custom solutions, bringing increased value to their systems. For more information, visit http://www.tdehirel.com. (Source: BUSINESS WIRE)
03 Mar 22. App store for warships: Inside the Navy’s project to revamp how the fleet gets software. The Forge, a Navy software factory, has lofty goals and bureaucracy to beat, but plans to bring its work to an operational destroyer this year. Nestled inconspicuously in an office building suite near the University of Maryland’s campus, a group of Navy engineers is working to bring a concept mastered by industry to one of the fleet’s most important pieces of technology.
“We need to have the ability so that our ships can be receiving software. Whether or not you use it, just like on your phone, you get to decide [if you] take an update today or not,” said Steve Murphy, engineering manager at the facility the service has dubbed “the Forge.”
Think of it as an app store equivalent for a warship’s combat technology suite, consistently and quickly being updated with the latest versions of software.
Murphy was among several Navy officials who spoke to Breaking Defense last week as part of an exclusive, in-depth look at the Forge, a software factory established by the Program Executive Office for Integrated Warfare Systems and focused on surface combat systems, such as Aegis, the centralized command and control technology at the heart of much of the Navy’s surface fleet.
There are more than two dozen other software factories throughout the Pentagon, but the Forge’s focus on surface combat systems is unique. Over the course of a two hour briefing, a group of Navy officials — both uniformed and civilian — went deep on the project using the military’s two favorite tools: analogies and PowerPoint slides.
The Forge’s end goal is to establish the infrastructure necessary to bring software updates to the fleet’s combat systems as fast as a single day. After several years working on proofs of concept, Capt. Andrew Biehn, a uniformed officer leading the Forge, says the team’s methods have been proven viable.
Now, they are preparing to demonstrate the Forge’s capabilities during fleet exercises scheduled for this summer, an important step to convince Navy brass to keep funding them.
The Forge’s work represents the foundational first steps toward what the Navy has coined the “Integrated Combat System,” a lofty goal to create uniform fighting environments aboard every ship in the surface fleet such that a sailor could step off a cruiser and onto a destroyer with no additional training.
It’s an ambitious task. But the basic technical feasibility has already been proven by Silicon Valley tech giants, the auto industry, airline companies and other private industries. A prominent question for the Navy, is whether it can avoid tripping over its own bureaucracy along the way.
Diving Into A ‘Data Lake’ To Beat Bureaucracy
In the quest for same-day updates, the Forge team is up against an infamously slow-moving creature: military bureaucracy.
But in this case the half dozen briefers who spoke to Breaking Defense, including the one-star admiral charged with leading PEO IWS, said the core problem of the bureaucracy is not a desire to bog down progress, but a lack of real-time data available to those who need it to give the green light.
Hud Lemons, an expert from Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren, pointed to the Forge’s work on the cruiser Monterey (CG-61), a veritable “microcosm of what we’re trying to do here.”
Biehn’s team installed new computing infrastructure on that ship in 2018, including two large touch screen monitors outfitted with mapping capabilities, deployed a virtual Aegis weapon system and a suite of software to improve the ship’s operational awareness.
When the ship returned to Norfolk for maintenance, the commodore explained some changes he wanted to see made to the touch screen map. Under traditional circumstances, even a simple update to a digital map could have taken years. Four weeks later, to the captain’s surprise, Lemons and team had updated the map’s software.
It may not be Silicon Valley’s speed, but it proved a crucial point that’s central to the Forge’s strategy: If everyone involved has the tools and information necessary to check your work while you do it, things go much faster when you start asking for permission to move forward.
“We were able to provide all of the [objective quality evidence] needed to get this authorized to be delivered to the ship,” Lemons said. “Because the people that were in line in that process to say, ‘Yes, you can deliver this,’ could see all the data underneath and knew exactly what we were doing.” And therein lies the secret to how the Forge believes it can overcome bureaucratic slow down.
Dave Smith, the Forge’s quality assurance director, called the idea a “data lake.” By and large, the various officials — from cybersecurity, safety, test and evaluation — who need to sign off on updates all need to look at the same data. If that data is stored and updated in real time in an environment where everyone can see it, then it drastically reduces the odds a major issue will pop up at the end.
The experiment on Monterey became known as the “Virtual Pilot Ship Increment I,” and was a crucial test case for the Forge for two reasons. The first is it proved the team’s theory about how to speed up the process through the “data lake” Smith described.
The second is that it was a chance to employ hardware and software capable of being used across a variety of ship classes. The software in use across the fleet today heavily relies on being able to connect to specific hardware processors. That makes updating it incredibly painful because Navy engineers are trying to solve future problems while limited to very specific and often outdated processing power.
The Forge aims to overcome that limitation by disconnecting a software’s requirements from any one piece of hardware.
If all this sounds very technical, here’s a shot of reality: Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and other tech giants figured this out a long time ago and the public enjoys better, easier-to-use technology today because they can receive virtually identical updates on any device. But warships have a lot more riding on them — literally and figuratively — than an iPhone or a personal computer.
The disconnect between hardware and software is a fundamental principle for building the Integrated Combat System.
So where does the Aegis Weapon System come into play? A virtual twin takes the source code that makes Aegis work and runs it on smaller, sleeker hardware than what was installed onboard Monterey decades ago. In other words, the ship maintains the capabilities of Aegis while also getting set up with infrastructure capable of receiving updates.
Biehn’s team had planned for “Virtual Pilot Ship Increment II,” but it fell through due to a lack of funding. Now, the captain argues the Forge has “outpaced the need” for it anyway. Since Monterey, the software factory has been able to use these virtual systems on Army programs as well as Navy unmanned surface vessels.
“Instead of a virtual pilot ship, we’re just doing the first virtualized Aegis weapon system on a destroyer by the end of this calendar year,” he said. “So, we kind of moved past that milestone and are on to actually delivering it to the fleet.”
The VPS is only one experiment, though. During the briefing last week, Navy officials explained that the heart of the software factory is not just about pushing updates out, but also utilizing the data the fleet takes in.
In that vein, the Forge has been developing an “event reconstruction tool,” an asset the team will evaluate during the fleet exercises this year. While narrowly scoped in its specific use case, the event reconstruction application is one type of software that Navy engineers ashore would be able to deliver to the fleet rapidly through the infrastructure the Forge aims to deliver.
Biehn referenced his time as a senior officer on the destroyer Truxtun (DDG-103) while transiting the Black Sea to explain its purpose.
During one deployment, a Russian jet was persistently harassing Biehn’s ship. Normally, sailors must record a play-by-play of the events to provide to higher echelon commands moving forward. The process is as tedious and time-consuming as it sounds.
The Forge’s tool would pull data from the ship’s systems to create these records in real-time. In the short term, the tool spares sailors the trouble of doing it by hand. But more importantly, said Biehn, that data can be immediately accessed and used for a range of purposes unrelated to software development, such as operational decisions and training.
“You’re starting to see the Forge push out capability, I think at a pace that we’re comfortable with,” said Rear Adm. Seiko Okano, PEO IWS chief. “So, we’re gaining knowledge of … you did event reconstruction, what’s next?”
The end state goals of the Forge are aspirational. There is still much work to do before the surface fleet can boast the flexibility of Apple’s app store. Due to the Navy’s size, the expensive nature of any warship modernization and the safety concerns associated with changing a system as important as Aegis, the transformation the Forge seeks will take time.
But when Biehn’s team equips an operational destroyer with a virtual Aegis Weapon System later this year, he said, “That’s not all the way to the [Integrated Combat System]. It’s not even halfway to the ICS. But it’s an important foundational step for us.” (Source: Breaking Defense.com)
03 Mar 22. Teledyne e2v HiRel Announces New 100 V High-Speed 20 MHz FET and GaN Transistor Driver Flip Chip Die. Radiation Tolerant Driver is Ideal for Space, Defense and Avionic Markets Where Size, Weight and Power are Critical.
Teledyne e2v HiRel announces the new TD99102 UltraCMOS® High-speed FET and GaN transistor driver offering very high switching speed of 20 MHz. The new flip-chip part is ideal for driving Teledyne HiRel’s 100 V high reliability GaN HEMT devices in DC-DC, AC-DC converters, orbital Point-of-Load (POL) modules and space motor drives.
The TD99102 is an integrated high-speed driver designed to control the gates of external power devices such as enhancement mode gallium nitride (GaN) High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) and power MOSFETs. The outputs of the TD99102 are capable of providing switching transition speeds in the sub-nanosecond range for switching applications up to 20 MHz. The TD99102 is optimized for matched dead time and offers best-in-class propagation delay to improve system bandwidth. High switching speeds result in smaller peripheral components and enable innovative designs for high reliability orbital motor driver and POL applications. The TD99102 is available as a bumped, flip chip die to enable minimum design footprint required for high-speed switching power applications.
The TD99102 is manufactured on Peregrine’s UltraCMOS® process, a patented advanced form of silicon-on- insulator (SOI) technology, offering the performance of GaAs with the economy and integration of conventional CMOS. It features 100 krad(Si) Total Ionizing Dose (TID), Single Event Latch-up (SEL) immunity and dead-time control, the new product offers 2A peak source and 4A peak sink current.
“We’ve been asked for drivers that get the most out of our 100 V GaN HEMT transistors,” said Mont Taylor, VP of Business Development for Teledyne e2v HiRel. “The TD99102’s fast edge speeds and radiation tolerance make them ideal for the latest LEO and MEO constellations where efficiency is key.”
The TD99102 is available for ordering and immediate purchase from Teledyne e2v HiRel or an authorized distributor. (Source: BUSINESS WIRE)
03 Mar 22. DARPA announces programme to develop cognitive science tool. The new tool will leverage preconscious brain signals to identify people at risk of committing suicide. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), in the US, has announced the Neural Evidence Aggregation Tool (NEAT) programme, in a bid to develop a new cognitive science tool focusing on mental health. The move seeks to more accurately identify active-duty soldiers, and veterans, who are at risk of committing suicide. Current methodologies, which include self-reporting and screening questionnaires, cannot predict suicidality. The new tool will leverage preconscious brain signals to identify people at risk of suicide. DARPA Defence Sciences Office programme manager, and former Army surgeon, Greg Witkop said: “NEAT is a proof-of-concept effort attempting to develop a new tool for mental and behavioural health screening that moves us beyond historical and current methods of questions and consciously filtered responses.
“Using the preconscious will hopefully enable us to detect signs of depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation earlier, and more reliably, than ever before.
“If successful, NEAT will not only significantly augment behavioural health screening, but it could also serve as a new way to assess ultimate treatment efficacy, since patients will often tell their clinicians what they think the clinician wants to hear, rather than how they are truly feeling.”
The NEAT programme will include two technical areas.
In the first area, the programme will focus on research and development, and will involve teams from cognitive science, bioengineering, and machine learning to address key technical challenges in developing NEAT processes. The other area will involve independent validation and verification. The 3.5-year programme carries a 24-month proof of concept phase, and a subsequent 18-month operational setting phase. Earlier this year, DARPA selected teams for the ENVision programme. (Source: army-technology.com)
01 Mar 22. Prestigious Welding Institute Embraces the Future of Manufacturing. SPEE3D metal 3D printers chosen as one of the first Advanced Manufacturing technologies to be installed at EWI’s new Cold Spray Center of Excellence opening in 2022. EWI has announced which additive manufacturing technologies will be added to their new Cold Spray Research Center opening in 2022, and Australian company, SPEE3D, has made the list. The company’s WarpSPEE3D printer will be installed at EWI’s Buffalo Manufacturing Works facility in New York, where it will be used to support EWI’s cold spray initiative to advance knowledge and capability within the field to facilitate and accelerate the successful application of cold spray technology across various manufacturing industries. Since 1984, EWI has provided comprehensive engineering services to help companies identify, develop, and implement the best technologies for their specific applications. At the new facility, EWI’s world class researchers will use the WarpSPEE3D to explore and validate how cold spray can provide new manufacturing solutions for cost-effective replacement parts that can be deployed outside of research.
“EWI looks forward to using the WarpSPEE3D technology to identify and accelerate the successful application of cold spray solutions across various manufacturing industries.” states Howie Marotto, EWI AM Business Director.
The technology was chosen due to its proven ability to manufacture parts quickly and affordably. The WarpSPEE3D is a prime example of how cold spray can be used in the real world, as demonstrated by the Australian Army who have been using the technology since 2020. In the Australian Army’s latest trial, the WarpSPEE3D was transported 600km out bush to produce parts during Exercise Koolendong. Over three weeks, the printer was successfully used to 3D print, validate, and certify over a dozen armoured vehicle parts in the field for the Australian Army’s M113 Armored Personnel Carrier vehicle.
“We look forward to seeing how EWI uses our technology to overcome various industry challenges at their new research centre,“ says Steven Camilleri, CTO of SPEE3D.
WarpSPEE3D is the world’s first large-format metal 3D printer to use patented SPEE3D cold spray technology. The printer is capable of printing low-cost, large metal parts up to 40kg in weight at a record-breaking speed of 100grams per minute. At EWI, the WarpSPEE3D will support EWI to unlock the potential of cold spray and mature it into a more reliable, repeatable, and reasonable capability from a cost perspective.
More information on SPEE3D’s technology, including videos and case studies are available at: https://spee3d.com/
28 Feb 22. L3Harris recently achieved the “power-on” milestone for the first of three prototype aircraft under the U.S. Air Force Avionics Modernization Program Increment 2 (AMP INC 2). Additionally, the AMP INC 2 team completed the Systems Integration Lab (SIL), allowing flight software testing to begin. SIL testing is the first step in validating the customer’s mission system requirements before transitioning into ground and flight testing within the next six months. Modification and testing are occurring in parallel at L3Harris’ Waco, Texas aircraft modification facility, the company’s C-130 Center of Excellence. Once local testing is complete, the aircraft will transition into joint developmental testing at Eglin AFB, with delivery of the three aircraft to follow for operational testing later this year. Low-Rate Initial Production is slated to begin in August 2022 with Full Rate Production beginning in 2023. (Source: News Now/L3Harris)
25 Feb 22. UK research agency launches working group to help shape the future of UK airspace. The UK’s future flight innovation challenge, co-funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has announced a cross-sector working group to help inform policy for future airspace integration of innovative new aviation technology.
The future flight challenge new industry working group is focusing on the emerging generation of vehicle types and the challenges of integrating these vehicles into UK airspace. The Future Aviation Industry Working Group on Airspace Integration (FAIWG:AI) was constructed by UKRI working alongside:
- Department for Transport (DftT)
- Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)
- Connected Places Catapult (CPC).
It brings together stakeholders from industry to help provide input and insight to government strategy and regulatory policy for integrating these new vehicle types in UK airspace. The emerging vehicle types represented by FAIWG:AI will be:
- uncrewed aircraft systems and drones
- advanced air mobility (AAM) such as electric vertical take-off and landings
- hybrid and electrical regional aircraft.
The FAIWG:AI aims to be the prime voice for airspace integration requirements across the future flight sector, and play a role in the future development of solutions and standards to assist airspace integration. It will:
- foster collaboration within the sector as the airspace strategy continues to develop.
- inform and respond to government and regulatory strategies, including the UK airspace modernisation strategy
- collaborate with these policy makers on solutions, standards and specifications to support this integration across the sector
- provide a clear, consensus-based plan to government by the end of 2022 for the safe integration of these new vehicle types into UK airspace.
This will allow commercial services to begin no later than 2025, with a clearly defined path to sustainable growth to 2030 and beyond. Commercial services mean that the benefits of these new vehicles can start to be realised in practice for everyone in the UK.
Working group members
An expression of interest process was run by the founding entities to establish broad representation across industry associations, technology companies and a range of other relevant areas.
These include: academia; software and systems; trade bodies; operators; communication; technology companies; and end users.
Following a decision-making process, the appointments include Co-chairs: Vicki Murdie, UKRI Future Flight Challenge, and Andrew Macmillan, Vertical Aerospace; Secretariat: David Pounder, Connected Places Catapult; in addition to over 20 industry representatives.
The members will draw on their own organisations and networks to bring input from others and best represent this sector. Where appropriate the group will also reach out to other airspace user communities. UKRI adds that collaboration is a vital element of the working group to create stronger relationships between industry, academia, technology and authorities.
Outputs of the working group
FAIWG:AI will create outputs such as plans, roadmaps, value propositions and recommendations for common standards to inform development and scaling. The group will also develop tactical and commercialisation opportunities for the sector linked to a more integrated airspace strategy.
Vicki Murdie, Innovation Lead for UKRI’s Future Flight challenge and Co-Chair of the FAIWG:AI, said: “The emerging technologies for new forms of aircraft offer exciting developments for the future of travel and logistics, providing an opportunity to address essential needs. Successfully integrating an innovative and fully functioning system of remotely piloted aircraft, advanced air mobility and hybrid regional vehicles into UK airspace has huge potential benefits. This new eco-system can solve some of the most challenging issues for remote communities, emergency services, transport and travel.
“Working together with the DfT, CAA and CPC on the launch of the FAIWG:AI represents a landmark moment for enabling the future flight strategy in the UK. It is a vital collaboration between leading industry voices from diverse backgrounds across this sector. It will help develop the collaborative thinking required to set new airspace integration plans on the right footing. I’m looking forward to tackling the key objectives we’ve set, as well as understanding the ideas and opportunities from across the new FAIWG:AI members.” For more information visit: www.ukri.org (Source: www.unmannedairspace.info)
25 Feb 22. DoD Seeking Information for Public-Private Microelectronic Commons. The Department of Defense issued a federal register notice requesting information from academia, startups, small businesses, government labs, and domestic semiconductor manufacturers in pursuit of a public-private partnership that will create regional hubs of microelectronics innovation.
This Microelectronics Commons idea, envisioned by an Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering-led cross functional team, aims to:
- Create “Lab-to-Fab” testing/prototyping hubs to build a network focused on maturing microelectronics technologies
- Provide broad access to these prototyping hubs, potentially through augmented academic facilities (i.e. a local semiconductor company or a Federally Funded Research and Development Center)
- Facilitate microelectronics education and training of students at local colleges and universities, and provide a potential pipeline for an engineering workforce to bolster the local semiconductor economy
“Microelectronics are vital to every aspect of our lives from delivering power to our homes to securing our nation’s infrastructure,” said Under Secretary (R&E) Heidi Shyu. “They also support nearly all DoD activities, enabling capabilities such as GPS, radar, and command, control, and communication systems.”
To supplement substantial U.S. investments in disruptive research and development, DoD must establish and facilitate a national network of academic and small business research entities by reducing barriers and enhance existing infrastructure. Many restrictions exist for introducing new materials and processes into tightly controlled high-volume fabrication processes that rely on maintaining high yield to accommodate large facility operation costs.
New models, science, and technology must be leveraged to create a different manufacturing paradigm based on proven process tools in agile fabrication facilities. These enhanced manufacturing capabilities could allow cost-effective ways to capture and incentivize domestic research and development and provide a low-volume production environment for a high mix of technologies as they are incubated and nurtured for DoD and commercial market applications.
To learn more about how to submit ideas, read the full request for information at www.cto.mil.
About USD(R&E)
The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD(R&E) is the Chief Technology Officer of the Department of Defense. The USD(R&E) champions research, science, technology, engineering, and innovation to maintain the United States military’s technological advantage. Learn more at www.cto.mil, follow us on Twitter @DoDCTO, or visit us on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/company/ousdre. (Source: US DoD)
————————————————————————-
Oxley Group Ltd
Oxley offer a range of Military Marine NVG friendly LED lighting that includes navigation lights and controls, flight deck landing lights and interior compartment lighting. Our lighting products are used by Navies around the world including our own Royal Navy on UK Aircraft Carriers, Canadian Frigates, Swedish Submarines, Australian Surface vessels and Submarines, on board French Naval Carriers and in Naval Gun Turrets.
https://oxleydevelopments.cmail20.com/t/t-l-cdhkulk-yujhutkljd-r/
The technology is extremely energy efficient and built robustly, with proven long life. The lighting is NVG friendly, dimmable and programmable to allow for operations with aircraft pilots using military night vision goggles. They offer superior design giving high reliability for the most demanding environments with high sealing and the ability to meet the most stringent EMC standards.
https://oxleydevelopments.cmail20.com/t/t-l-cdhkulk-yujhutkljd-y/
Oxley are proud to say that we are working in partnership with SeaKing to enable a control panel to be offered with our LED Navigation Lighting. All of Oxley navigation lights have been specifically developed for vessels over 50 metres.
Contact Marcus Goad on 07850 917 263 for more information or to arrange samples.
Oxley specialises in the design and manufacture of advanced electronic and electro-optic components and systems for air, land and sea applications within the military sector. Established in 1942, Oxley has manufacturing facilities in the UK and USA and enjoys representation worldwide. The company’s products include night vision and LED lighting, data capture systems and electronic components. Oxley has pioneered the development of night vision compatible lighting. It offers a total package incorporating optical filters, equipment modification, cockpit and external lighting along with fleet wide upgrade services including engineering, installation, support, maintenance and training. The company’s long experience of manufacturing night vision lighting and LED indicators, coupled with advances in LED technology, has enabled it to develop LED solutions to replace incandescent and fluorescent lighting in existing applications as well as becoming the lighting option of choice in new applications such as portable military hospitals, UAV control stations and communication shelters.
———————————————————————-