Sponsored By Oxley Developments
www.oxleygroup.com
——————————————————————————————————————
18 Sep 24. Thales and Underwood Innovation Labs, the inaugural Australian government-backed innovation lab, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish an Advanced Air Mobility Centre of Excellence (AAM COE).
- Located in Queensland, Australia, the AAM COE will facilitate the growth of a scalable and collaborative UAV ecosystem in Advanced Air Mobility, create high-skilled jobs, and provide access to indoor, virtual and physical airspace for the safe design and testing of Remote Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS).
- The establishment of the AAM COE aligns with the Australian Government’s priorities identified in the Aviation White Paper regarding the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) sector.
Thales and Underwood Innovation Labs signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish an AAM Centre of Excellence. The AAM COE, supported by the Mayor of Logan City, Hon Jon Raven, will operate as a membership-based, open-ecosystem, enabling organisations to utilize and access state-of-the-art innovation, technology and resources.
The location of the AAM COE, in South East Queensland, is one of Australia’s fastest growing regions, with population numbers expected to reach 5.4m by 2041. As a key economic hub, the establishment of a centre of excellence will cultivate advanced technology and develop skills for Queensland’s future workforce.
The AAM COE is modelled after a successful initiative in Paris, France, known as Centre d’Excellence Drones Ile De France (CEDIF). CEDIF operates with an approved 40km Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) airspace corridor extending from Saint-Quentin en Yvelines to Bretigny sur Orge. Supported by Thales, Eurocontrol, and Systematic, CEDIF aims to provide a comprehensive platform for incubating, validating, and industrializing all aspects of drone activities, both direct and indirect.
“Thales is thrilled to be the initial founding partner in establishing the forthcoming innovation ecosystem centred on a Centre of Excellence for AAM in Queensland, alongside Underwood Innovation Lab and the City of Logan. Our shared commitment to trust, innovation, and results will unite innovators in addressing everyday challenges, integrating drones and other advanced air mobility systems safely into our daily routines, and contributing to the decarbonization of the future aviation industry.” – Bobby Pavlickovski, Head of Uncrewed Services, Thales Australia,.
“Underwood Innovation Lab is delighted to be partnering with Thales Australia to establish and deliver this catalytic project for Queensland which will propel the Advanced Air Mobility sector in the State and ultimately Nationally. As a first in kind, local government backed innovation Lab this project aligns well with the UiLab mission to positively impact the Australian innovation ecosystem through strategic global partnerships and transformative projects such as this that will create high-value jobs, attract further investment, and ultimately improve National productivity.” – Dr Paul Mathiesen (UiLab Chief Innovation Officer).
16 Sept 24. Smarter Technologies IoT solutions support UK Defence estates to better manage on-base water hygiene.
Smarter Technologies, the leading British provider of Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions, has completed stage one of a rolling programme to support health and safety compliance at His Majesty’s Naval Base (HMNB) Portsmouth. Working closely with the base infrastructure team, the new legionella risk management capability is one of several innovative digital solutions implemented by Smarter Technologies at the dockyard, aimed at improving operational outcomes for the Royal Navy, effectively and efficiently. Across a range of functions, the combination of IoT data capture and cloud computing has made transformative empirical evidence available to Portsmouth’s operational and strategic decision-makers. The team will be at DVD (18/19 September) to discuss this and their other IoT solutions.
The latest capability has revolutionised the management of water hygiene, which is a key factor for health and safety at any organisational premises. Responsibility is governed by statutory legislation and strictly enforced, and it includes the control of water-borne bacteria, such as legionella, which can cause Legionnaires’ disease. Careful and persistent management is required to ensure that water systems function compliantly, and that legionella is controlled. It is particularly important, and made more difficult, in mixed estates with aging infrastructure and spaces that are used irregularly, which are common features of many Defence facilities.
Targeting the historic Wardroom at HMNB Portsmouth as a potential at risk accommodation block, Smarter Technologies has positioned IoT sensors strategically around the building’s water system, to monitor the temperature at which it is stored and distributed, in real-time, and enable HSE-recommended temperatures to be pro-actively maintained. They have also installed automated flushing units at key outlets. These ensure periodic and programmable water flows, to contain the risk of stagnation and the growth of legionella. Data captured by these edge devices is passed to Smarter Technologies’ secure cloud platform via “Orion”, a proprietary LPWAN (low powered wide area communications network), which is optimised for large and complex estates by its combination of range, structural penetration and bandwidth. The captured data is presented back to the user in “SmarterView”, an intuitive, secure, web-based user interface where programmable alerts and notifications can be created, trends can be viewed and reports compiled.
With Smarter Technologies’ IoT solution installed in this potential risk space, HMNB Portsmouth has been able to assure water hygiene much more effectively and far more efficiently. Legionella is consistently suppressed at safe levels, emerging risks are identified and addressed immediately to avoid actionable events, time spent on manual temperature checks and flushes has been slashed, and the automated system provides an auditable record of due diligence.
Fubara Pepple, Head of Strategic Asset Management at Portsmouth, said, “We have worked closely with Smarter Technologies to ensure any potential risk to water supplies is identified at an early stage therefore making it much easier to keep our people safe.”
Mark Read, Chief Executive of Smarter Technologies Group said, “We’ve been delighted to work so closely with the HMNB Portsmouth team. They understand the value that our Orion systems can bring and have embraced the use of targeted technology innovation.”
17 Sept 24. LDRA Joins The Open Group SOSA Consortium. LDRA today announced it has joined The Open Group Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA™) Consortium, a vendor- and platform-agnostic forum for industry and government to collaboratively develop open standards and best practices. As a leading provider of automated software verification, source code analysis and test tools, LDRA will leverage decades of experience working on standards committees such as The Open Group Future Airborne Capability Environment® (FACE®) Consortium, MISRA, DO-178 and ISO-26262 to help formalize an official SOSA conformance process and encourage innovation in the aerospace and defense industry.
The SOSA Consortium, which includes organizations such as the Air Combat Command (USAF), NAVAIR, U.S. Army CCDC C5ISR, Joint Tactical Networking Center, Collins Aerospace and Lockheed Martin, launched in 2017 to develop the non-propriety SOSA Technical Standard for sensor systems. Aligning with the U.S. Department of Defense’s 2019 modular open systems approach (MOSA) directive, the standard provides reconfigurable, evolvable and affordable capabilities for Command, Control, Communications, Intelligencer, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems. For specification of the SOSA runtime environment, the SOSA Technical Standard relies on the FACE Technical Standard, another established MOSA-aligned standard that LDRA has supported since 2012 as a member of the FACE Consortium and an approved FACE Verification Authority (VA) since 2020.
“Given our extensive, hands-on experience with the FACE Technical Standard and other industry standards for the aerospace and defense industry, LDRA is uniquely positioned to help the SOSA Consortium accelerate SOSA adoption by creating a formal conformance program,” said Ian Hennell, Operations Director, LDRA. “Much like with the FACE Technical Standard, as military embedded designers conform with the SOSA standard, they can create new C4ISR systems and upgrade existing systems with innovative capabilities much more efficiently than proprietary technologies would allow. Having a formal conformance program in place facilitates the entire process, enabling organizations to deliver new applications to market faster and more cost effectively.”
The SOSA Approach incorporates specifications for software components and hardware elements, as well as electrical and mechanical interfaces composing the SOSA sensor element. SOSA-aligned services and products specifically address the needs of the aerospace and defense sectors, both of which are working on programs that must follow the DoD’s MOSA directive. Such programs include:
- Joint Tactical Terminal – Transceiver (JTT-X) (U.S. Navy)
- Ephemeral Paragon (E-Gon) (U.S. Air Force)
- Project Foxbox Blanket Purchase Agreement (U.S. Air Force)
The SOSA Consortium is developing and maturing its conformance program, improving upon the current self-certification that products are SOSA aligned, and providing further opportunities for assurance of compliance with the SOSA technical standard. Once the conformance program is formalized, LDRA expects to expand upon its FACE VA services to provide support for SOSA conformance of sensor software.
16 Sept 24. Mercury Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRCY, www.mrcy.com), a technology company that delivers mission-critical processing power to the edge, today announced the expansion of its portfolio of Direct RF digital signal processing products that use Altera™ Agilex FPGAs to detect and process emissions from a wide portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Direct RF components and modules directly digitize radio frequency signals at the antenna signal frequency, eliminating the analog signal down conversion stages required by legacy hardware. This approach requires extremely fast converters, high-bandwidth digital data links, and powerful real-time digital signal processing. The results are reductions in size, weight, power, cost, and latency that can benefit a variety of radar, communications, electronic warfare, SIGINT, and industrial applications.
In January, Mercury introduced the DRF2580, a playing card-size system-on-module (SOM) based on the Intel Agilex 9 SoC FPGA AGRW014 that converts between analog and digital signals at 64 Gigasamples per second. The company now offers the DRF4580L, a small-form-factor module that incorporates the DRF2580 SOM within a ruggedized, conduction-cooled enclosure that is ready for defense applications. The product comes with Mercury’s Navigator® Board Support Package and FPGA Design Kit that allow customers to develop custom IP for the module that can be installed within hours. Mercury delivered the first DRF4580L unit to a customer in August.
“We continue to innovate to enhance the Mercury Processing Platform and make the latest commercial technologies available to the defense industrial base,” said Ken Hermanny, Mercury’s Vice President of Signal Technologies. “With a growing portfolio of products that make Direct RF spectrum digitization possible, our customers now have more options to deploy this technology to capture, process, and exploit signals at the edge.”
“Altera Agilex 9 SoC FPGAs deliver high-performance RF digitization capabilities in SWAP constrained environments that can now be placed closer to the sensor,” said John Sotir, Senior Director, Military Aerospace and Government Business and State-of-the-Art Heterogeneous Integration Packaging (SHIP) at Altera, an Intel Company. “By collaborating with Mercury, a trusted partner in transforming commercial technology for aerospace and defense applications, we are able to deliver this latest technology to our customers developing future radar, electronic warfare, and mission-critical applications.”
The DRF4580L features:
- 6.4″ x 6.4″ x 1.7″ form factor
- Four 64 GSPS A/D and D/A converters
- Altera Agilex 9 SoC FPGA AGRW014
- 16 GB DDR4 SDRAM
- Four 100 GigE optical interfaces
- Ruggedized and conduction-cooled options
- Optional fan kit for table-top development
- FPGA design kit for custom IP development
- Board Support Package (BSP) for software development
Mercury will be showcasing the DRF4580L at booth 1642 at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md., September 16-18.
13 Sept 24. Momentus Joins DARPA Consortium for Classified Defense Innovation. Momentus Inc. (NASDAQ: MNTS) (“Momentus” or the “Company”), a U.S. commercial space company that offers satellite buses, transportation, and other in-space infrastructure services, has been selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Strategic Technology Office to become a member of the Bringing Classified Innovation to Defense and Government Systems (BRIDGES) consortium. As part of the consortium, Momentus will be sponsored for a facility clearance, enabling the company to engage directly with Department of Defense (DoD) customers at classified levels. Momentus’ selection is based on their innovative technologies and capabilities that support the DoD’s Space Superiority mission.
“Our technology portfolio is well-suited to this mission area, including our Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle due to its in-space proven maneuverability, flexible heavy/large payload capacity, top-end bus power, retractable solar array, and other attributes.”
Post this
Entry to this consortium is a key enabler for the Company to access and grow in the large U.S. Government classified market for the Department of Defense, military services like the U.S. Space Force, and intelligence agencies.
Once the facility clearance and appropriate personnel clearances are obtained, Momentus will be able to conduct work ranging from Secret up to the Top Secret (TS/SCI/SAP) level. As part of the BRIDGES consortium, the primary focus will be on innovation at the classified level. BRIDGES aims to serve as an incubator for companies with the potential to contribute value to classified DoD efforts.
Consortium members, including Momentus, will have regular one-on-one meetings with Defense Department officials to align their expertise with DoD’s efforts, share progress, and receive guidance and mentorship. Additionally, Momentus will have access to Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities (SCIFs) managed by the MITRE Corporation, enabling Momentus to conduct classified work.
“We’re honored by the opportunity to collaborate with DARPA to work at the classified level to increase our nation’s space superiority capabilities. We have the ability to significantly contribute to our nation’s defense and look forward to doing so,” said Momentus Chief Executive Officer John Rood. “Our technology portfolio is well-suited to this mission area, including our Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle due to its in-space proven maneuverability, flexible heavy/large payload capacity, top-end bus power, retractable solar array, and other attributes.” (Source: BUSINESS WIRE)
————————————————————————————————————————
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.
————————————————————————————————————————-