SPECIAL FEATURE
Artificial Intelligence Challenges the Industry By John Reardon, COTS Journal It is a truly exciting time to be a part of the defense technology business. As the consumer market drives the use of AI technologies for use in house hold products from vacuum cleaners to doorbells, the defense market is challenged by a global race to transfer these and others to the defense systems of tomorrow. For more than four decades, the defense market has drawn technology from the desktop market and the handheld market to be used in the most advanced systems possible. Using the economy of scale, we were able to draw from high volume processers and open architectures to create very advanced systems. Today although, we are still drawing from this consumer market, the concepts that are coming forth are no longer based on a single hardware structure tied to a uniquely independent software platform. Today the whole application is addressed in a way that ties application to composable system architecture. Today’s systems consist of a multi-dimension-
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COTS Journal | December 2019
al configuration from the Cloud to the Fog and then out to the Edge. The Cloud affords the benefit seen in the consumer market by enabling the compute requirements to scale dynamically. Today’s Cloud based systems can dynamically scale to the needs. This composable feature not only is a cost saving, but also extends the performance to extreme compute needs.
detect IEDs – General Microsystems. It is a RADAR array detecting an incoming threat – CEMTROL. As we move forward to the front line of defense, the need for truly real-time response increases exponentially.
Fog Computing resembles a cashe of compute ability between the Cloud and the Edge. This might be on a platform such as an aircraft circling high above an area of hostilities or it might be in a command center managing a drone. As the defense market relies on real-time response with the lowest latencies possible, this cashe of compute is perfect for command and control center near the front. The Edge is the pointy end of the sword. It is the sensor on the front of the troop transport to
Image 1 - This is an example of an array of servers and systems that GMS offers for harsh environments
