Military Embedded Systems - Fall 2005 - Volume 1 Number 2

sored by The Open Systems Joint Task Force within the US
Department of Defense continue to set higher expectations.
Openness in new acquisitions is being demanded as seen in
these comments from Lieutenant General Ronald E. Keys
in February 2005: “We’ve got to get to this thing called the
‘compatible open architecture.’ I’ve got to be able to truly
plug-and-play, and it’s got to plug-and-play better than Microsoft.
It’s actually got to plug, boot up, recognize, and work … So don’t
bring me stuff that’s not compatible because I’m not going to
be happy.”
Large combat systems already architecting around plug-andfight
concepts include the Medium Extended Air Defense System
(MEADS), Future Combat Systems (FCS), and the Littoral
Combat Ship (LCS).
MEADS is the US Army’s next-generation replacement for
Nike Hercules, Hawk, and Patriot air-defense missile systems,
designed from the ground up to move with ground forces and
interoperate with other allied forces. It relies heavily on networking
and distributed intelligence to achieve its mission.
A MEADS system has the capability to command a fleet of
distributed missile launchers while simultaneously detecting
and tracking hostile forces and targets. There is a key tactical
advantage to this distributed design: The missile launchers
can be located well away from the ground radar and the
battle management units, reducing the risk of detection of the
launchers. This tactical advantage also opens the possibility to
transfer command and control of the launchers and missiles to
a neighboring battle management unit, while some management
systems are offline for whatever reason.
Industry Analysis
Researchers at the University of Essex are working on a concept
called the gridswarm, where small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAVs) capable of speeds up to 120 mph fly in formations similar
to the flocking behavior of small birds. In the prototype, these aircraft
are connected by a Bluetooth mesh driven by Linux compute
modules from Gumstix. These tiny modules run Linux 2.6 on 400
MHz Intel Xscale processors with 64 MB DRAM and 4 MB Flash,
along with USB, serial, and optional Bluetooth interfaces. It’s a
great example of small systems fitting into larger systems fitting
into still larger systems with aggregated intelligence.
Rapid developments in wireless networking, reconfigurable
computing, and network-centric weapons systems are going to
spawn new innovations quickly. The results should also reduce
the long-term costs of weapons procurement, enabling easier
upgrades and reducing the impact of obsolescence by allowing
subsystem level replacements.
I’ll be sure to tell my friend the next time I see him that
when he hears a whole bunch of beeps in rapid succession
on his Bluetooth headset, he should duck. It could
be a UAV gridswarm reconfiguring just overhead, and hopefully
they are unarmed and peace loving.
If you happen to see a gridswarm, or other interesting developments
that beep and configure, drop me a line.
For more information, contact Don at ddingee@opensystemspublishing.com.
FCS isn’t a single system but rather a blended system-of-systems
intended to transform the US Army’s fighting capability.
Underlying FCS is a software architecture called Fire Control
– Node Engagement Technology (FC-NET). FC-NET provides
an adaptable, flexible architecture that modularizes the interaction
between the technical weapon system (the intelligence that
controls and guides the weapon) and the tactical information systems.
This enables weapon systems to readily join the command
fabric to get the information they require.
Another plug-and-fight system is LCS. It’s being designed to
work in three primary mission areas for the US Navy, including
mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, and
anti-surface warfare, presumably with anti-air, self-defense
capability in each role. This is being accomplished through
the design of mission packages that fit into the sea frame
and adapt the capability to the desired mission area. Opensystems
architecture and modular, networked subsystems
are again the key to success, and the notion of being able to
reconfigure the system for the role at hand is prominent in the
architecture.
Open doesn’t mean big
Creating new systems-of-systems isn’t necessarily about
using big computers. From the looks of things, it could be just
the opposite, using networks of relatively small processors tied
together wirelessly with very intelligent software and combining
these systems into larger systems.
RSC# 11 @www.mil-embedded.com/rsc
Military EMBEDDED SYSTEMS October 2005 / 11