The McHale Report Roundtable - Border Security, COTS tech and VPX systems

Each month the McHale Report hosts an online roundtable featuring experts from the defense electronics industry.

This month the report discusses the Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) event and the European defense electronics market with exhibitors from the show.

Taking part this month are:
Joe Held - Director of International Sales, Omnetics Corp.
Nigel Norman - CEO - Sarsen Technology Ltd, and
Nigel Forrester - Technical Marketing Manager - Concurrent Technologies.


MCHALE REPORT: The Defense and Security Equipment International (DSEI) show was held this month in London. What trends regarding military designs and applications did you see emerging at the event?

HELD: We saw a continued movement towards threat detection (i.e. – advanced radar) and soldier worn electronics (communication, vision systems).

NORMAN: The biggest trend we are seeing this quarter is engineers at leading military and aerospace OEMs looking to make use of large FPGA devices in their new designs. The downside is that there is a shortage of competent VHDL & Verilog designers at many of these OEMs. This is an opportunity for specialist FPGA consulting design houses and for the implementation of initiatives such as OpenCL development for FPGA. The other continuing trend is the re-engineering of legacy CompactPC and VME systems to VPX and custom COM Express-based designs.

FORRESTER: DSEI is a wide-ranging show with military products from thermal underwear to complete battleships, but we didn’t pick up on a specific trend this time. There did appear to be more unmanned devices on display confirming a continued focus in this area. As an exhibitor we perhaps saw what we were looking for, the improved acceptance of COTS-based electronics products many of which used Intel processor technology.


See what the panelists think about the following questions by reading the full article on mil-embedded.com

McHALE REPORT: What are the hot application areas in the European military market such as unmanned systems, radar, avionics, etc.?
McHALE REPORT: How would you describe the defense electronics market in Europe -- growing, declining, or just flat? Why?
McHALE REPORT: How would you describe the demand for commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products in Europe? What standards or products are hot?