Over a three-week period this summer, FlightWave Aerospace participated in the “Exploring Fronts with Multiple Robotics expedition,” as part of a high-tech research mission in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 1,000 miles west of Southern California in an area called the Subtropical Front.

The U.S. Navy sees vast potential for unmanned systems and the capabilities they will bring, according to the service’s Strategic Roadmap for Unmanned Systems. Use of unmanned and autonomous systems will create nothing less than "fundamental shifts" in the way the Navy operates, says an unclassified summary of the roadmap released in May. Their integration, it says, will allow reductions in manpower and risk to personnel, lower operating costs, increased persistence, faster and more accurate data processing, and a faster decision cycle.

Persistent Systems’ Embedded Module, which is a low-size, -weight and -power mobile ad hoc networking (MANET) unit for sensors and unmanned vehicles, has received a Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 140-2 Level 2 security validation from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Persistent says that the achievement confirms that all of its main products have achieved this level of validation, which in turn increases usability for users with nonnegotiable requirements for FIPS 140-2 Level 2. With this new FIPS 140-2 Level 2 validation, the Embedded Module meets its Level 1 cryptographic data security requirement. It also has in place physical security mechanisms—such as tamper-evidence—that allow it to handle sensitive data transmission.

Altiscope, which is the Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) group from A³ by Airbus, has released “Blueprint for the Sky: The Roadmap for the Safe Integration of Autonomous Aircraft.” The Blueprint represents months of careful analysis by Airbus of the future needs for the airspace, the widespread impact of the upcoming changes to the airspace, and the development of the required tools for its enablement.