2014: The Key Technology Trends Coming Your Way in A&D

With the arrival of the new year, Brendan Viggers, Head of Product Management for IFS Defence comments on the top three technology trends he sees making a big difference in A&D for 2014.

Predictive Analysis

“For me, this is one of the main trends that we will see come to attention, in part due to the upcoming withdrawal from Afghanistan late next year. There has been talk of big data as a trend for a couple of years now, but there has been little in the way of answers for its uses, or more importantly, the means of identifying which data is useful, and which is not.”

“In Defence this will be particularly useful as it will provide the data for analysis by logisticians, which will help inform and improve future designs. Analysing this data will allow defense organisations to understand why certain parts run down faster than others, and even deeper than that, whether the reason behind it is due to factors such as terrain, or the way the asset has been operated.”

“Health Usage Monitoring Systems used alongside Performance Based Logistics solutions, are a good example of this, the operational feedback can deliver greater efficiency in the supply chain, or even make design improvements to the asset/product to lower the total lifecycle cost.”

Internet of Things/Machine-to-Machine (M2M) systems

“We have been hearing about the Internet of Things and how our machines will interact with each other independently for some time now, but slowly, this is becoming a reality. Potential technologies that we could start to see being deployed by defense organisations include connected, smart soldier systems. Such systems would allow central control to understand the condition of soldiers in real-time, allowing for evaluation of health, fitness, blood sugar levels as well as physical location.”

“This also provides opportunities in terms of storing the assets brought back from Afghanistan, these information systems can provide data which shows us how long we can store perishable materials in warehouses and their availability and stock levels, or even whether it's worth bringing them back at all.”

3-D Printing

“3-D printing is another topic that is securing plenty of column space at the moment, with recent claims that a near fully functioning gun could be printed out by just about anybody. Manchester police recently uncovered homemade gun parts which had been produced on 3D printers. But just as car manufacturers have been making parts for cars this way for a while, this new development into other industries such as A&D provides an opportunity to make parts more efficiently. Rolls-Royce and General Electric announced that they plan to produce parts for aviation engines that are lighter and faster to produce, by 3D printing.”

“The potential for 3D printing in A&D is enormous, we have seen stories of people trying to make weapons from 3D printing, and although entire weapons have not been 'printed' out yet, there has been success in making a car! In the next year, we could be making almost anything using 3D printers.”