Pentagon’s Mad Scientists Want to Launch Killer Drones From Small Warships

From:  The New Yorker 

COMMENT -  Green Hills supplies tools used to produce products and also systems.  The ship should be flying the GHS flag.  

From the GHS website here are the contributions made to AeroSpace and 'Defense,' enacting corporate fascism around the world.  

"Green Hills Software products have become the leading choice for the avionics industry. They are being used in almost every current and next-generation aircraft. BAE Systems has selected Green Hills products for the JSF F-35 fighter, new Hawk trainer and the UH-60M Black Hawk aircraft.

The list of aircraft using Green Hills Software products for development also includes: the Airbus A380, Boeing 777, Boeing 787, Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, F/A-22, Eurofighter Typhoon, Lockheed Martin F-16, Airbus A400M military transport, T-6B trainer aircraft, Boeing C-17, Boeing B-1B, Boeing B-52, Boeing X-45C Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems and Sikorsky S-92 and H-92 helicopters, amongst others.
The list of avionics suppliers that have selected Green Hills Software solutions is the who’s who for this industry and includes: BAE Systems, Boeing, CMC Electronics, EADS, General Electric, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rockwell Collins, Smiths Aerospace, and others.
Absolute Reliability, Time and Memory Partitioned Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS)
Green Hills Software offers the INTEGRITY and INTEGRITY-178B ARINC-653-2 part 1 time and memory partitioned RTOSs. These provide absolute reliability for your embedded applications, allowing multiple applications to safely and securely operate on the same embedded computer. Memory partitioning prevents one application from accessing or corrupting another application's memory or data. Time partitioning prevents a low criticality application from stealing CPU time away from high criticality applications on the same computer. Applications can be deployed at multiple safety levels and new applications can be seamlessly added over time.
DO-178B Level A, The Highest Safety Critical Level Accepted by The FAA
INTEGRITY-178B has proven itself many times by being certified to this top safety critical level in multiple applications. It is now the leading RTOS choice for the avionics industry for current and next generation aircraft. Along with the INTEGRITY-178B operating system Green Hills Software also offers single application execution environments with its Ravenscar and SPARK compliant GSTART and GMART Ada kernels. These kernels have also been certified as a part of avionics applications multiple times to RTCA DO-178B / EUROCAE ED-12B.
The Expertise You Need to Complete Your Safety Critical Certification
Green Hills Software develops, maintains and certifies its products with our own in-house safety critical experts. These experts provide the expertise in both the RTOS and its certification. This provides our customers with a faster time to market and lower risk in obtaining their safety critical DO-178B certification.
High Productivity Multi-Language Development Environments
Green Hills Software offers the MULTI and AdaMULTI multi-language development environments to increase developer productivity. These environments support the C, C++ and Ada programming languages as well as the industry standard safety critical language subsets for MISRA C, Embedded C++ (EC++) and SPARC and Ravenscar Ada."

By David Axe
03.04.13

The Tern concept. Art: Darpa

The military’s next killer drone could be launched and landed aboard small surface warships, extending the reach of America’s robotic arsenal to more remote battlegrounds than ever before.

That is, if an ambitious new effort by Darpa, the Pentagon’s fringe-science wing, can overcome a technical challenge dating back to the 1980s. Namely: how to boost a drone to flight velocity without the benefit of a five-acre aircraft carrier deck, and without resorting to a speed- and range-limiting helicopter design.

The new Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node program, or Tern, “envisions using smaller ships as mobile launch and recovery sites for medium-altitude long-endurance fixed-wing unmanned aircraft,” Darpa announced on Friday. That’s for unarmed spy drones as well as those armed for “strike” missions. The blue-sky researchers want to launch a prototype within 40 months.

Tern complements one of the Navy’s main robotic development efforts. The Navy wants a drone, equipped with missiles and advanced spy gear, to take off and land from a full-sized aircraft carrier, one of the hardest maneuvers in aviation. It’s currently experimenting with a 62.1-foot span, batwing-shaped prototype, called the X-47B, which the Navy expects to launch the X-47B off a carrier deck at sea for the first time by May.

Except the jet-powered X-47B and the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System it will yield will be much farther out to sea than the Tern. “About 98 percent of the world’s land area lies within 900 nautical miles of ocean coastlines,” Darpa program manager Daniel Patt explained in the announcement. “Enabling small ships to launch and retrieve long-endurance UAVs on demand would greatly expand our situational awareness and our ability to quickly and flexibly engage in hotspots over land or water.”

Some of the specs Darpa wants: The as-yet-undesigned Tern drone must carry up to 600 pounds of sensors and weapons while flying out 600 to 900 miles from the launching ship. That places Tern in the same class as the Air Force’s iconic Predator and Reaper, both capable of flying 12 hours or longer while hauling cameras, missiles and satellite communications gear.

The launching ship could be as small as the USS Independence type of Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) , which sports a 7,300-square-foot flight deck. The science agency’s concept art, shown above, depicts a somewhat Predator-esque drone flying over a Burke-class destroyer, the Navy’s workhorse warship, which is three times heavier than an LCS but has a slightly smaller flight deck.

Tern would fill a big gap in the Navy’s drone arsenal. The sailing branch currently flies the 10-foot-span ScanEagle drone from destroyers and other vessels, and the Fire Scout robot helicopter from LCS. In addition to developing the X-47B prototype and its descendants for aircraft carriers, it’s also got a land-based, unarmed patrol ‘bot, the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance drone, based on the Air Force’s 737-size Global Hawk.

The latter have long range and high speed, but they’re tethered to the Navy’s 11 precious aircraft carriers and equally scarce land bases. The former can (in theory), take off from most of the Navy’s roughly 122 surface warships but lack range, speed and payload. What’s missing is a middleweight drone: a fast-flying, long-range, armed robot that takes up minimal deck space and is compatible with a wide range of surface ships.

One of Tern’s major technical obstacles is “devising a reliable launch and recovery technique,” according to Darpa. LCSs and destroyers don’t have the deck space for a long takeoff run — hence their reliance on the catapult-launched ScanEagle and vertical-liftoff robo-copters. In the 1980s and early ’90s, the Navy’s four World War II-vintage battleships carried the Pioneer drone, which was roughly twice the size of the ScanEagle and was boosted into the air with inelegant strap-on rockets.

The Pioneer landed aboard ship by awkwardly flying into a suspended net, whereas the ScanEagle catches a dangling wire and the Fire Scout, of course, lands vertically. A higher-performance, fixed-wing drone could require a smoother and more powerful takeoff boost than the older models and a less unwieldy means of returning to its launching vessel.

It’s worth noting that in the 1990s, U.S. helicopter-maker Bell designed a small tiltrotor drone call the Eagle Eye, which, like the company’s V-22 Osprey, took off and landed like a helicopter but cruised like an airplane thanks to its rotating engine nacelles. Eagle Eye never found a buyer and went defunct. The Tern initiative could very well lead to a revival.

If Tern succeeds, Darpa is poised to significantly expand the Navy’s flying robotic arsenal, potentially transforming almost every warship into a mobile drone base. All the agency has to do is solve a decades-old launch and landing problem.  MORE

Green Hills Software to Present and Exhibit at DESIGN West 2013 in San Jose, CA

From:  Market Wired 

COMMENT -Green Hills Software again offers some of their employees, Thomas Cantrell and Greg Davis, to provide you with exciting insights on how to use GHS technologies to optimize your ability to provide tools which can easily kill innocent civilians.  

How many of the drone contractors providing 'hardware' actually use GHS software?  Inquiring minds want to know, and will find out.   

Read Lt. General's unforgettable book, published before his untimely death in 1940, "War is a Racket." The first chapter of his book begins, "WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

Butler was the most decorated military figure in the first half of the 20th Century and his words would, decades later, be echoed by those of John Perkins, whistleblower, who wrote, "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." 

It took Perkins a generation to come clean, providing the insight to understand this portion of the Greedville Business Plan.

NEWS RELEASE 

• 

SANTA BARBARA, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 18, 2013) - Green Hills Software, the largest independent vendor of embedded software solutions, will deliver technology presentations at DESIGN West in San Jose, CA, during the week of April 22, 2013. In booth #1320, Green Hills Software will also demonstrate its latest embedded software solutions. For more information on Green Hills Software's presence at DESIGN West, visit http://www.ghs.com/events/ESCSV_2013.html.

Green Hills Software speaker presentations include:
Topic: Embedded IPv6 - What's the beef?When: Tuesday, April 23, 2013, 8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Where: McEnery Convention Center; Room: 212 AC
Who: Thomas Cantrell, Engineering Manager, Embedded Networking, Green Hills Software
Synopsis: Embedded systems, from mobile devices to low-powered sensor networks, are becoming new members of the "Internet of Things," adding features such as field upgrade, remote management, and application downloads. The growth of these new devices adds further pressure to the nearly exhausted IPv4 address space. This class starts by talking about the reasons for the growth in IPv6 interest and customer requirements over the last year. It talks about the technical details of IPv6 in relation to traditional IPv4 networking. It then explores how to add and support IPv6 at the system level and at the application level.
Topic: Designing Your System for High Reliability When: Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 9:15 AM - 10:15 AM
Where: McEnery Convention Center; Room: Salon 3
Who: Greg Davis, Director of Engineering, Green Hills Software
Synopsis: While 85% of embedded designs use C and C++, these languages are notorious for their inherent lack of safety. Many of the most common sources of errors are unlikely to show up during testing, and may manifest themselves later as costly product glitches and glaring security holes. This talk focuses on the tools and techniques that can be used to augment any software design paradigm. Techniques include coding conventions, automatic run-time error checking, manual compile-time and run-time assertions, static analysis, and the most common mistakes to avoid.
Topic: Tips and Tricks for Debugging When: Thursday, April 25, 2013, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Where: McEnery Convention Center; Room: Salon 1
Who: Greg Davis, Director of Engineering, Green Hills Software
Synopsis: There is no shortage of courses and books written on programming and software design. Yet despite the fact that developers spend 80% of their time debugging code, relatively little attention is paid to debugging. This talk goes over a number of top techniques in how to get to the bottom of problems using a modern debugger and readily available tools. Design techniques to make debugging easier are also discussed.
Topic: Separate and Not Equal: Safety and Security Design in Real-Time Operating SystemsWhen: Thursday, April 25, 2013, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Where: McEnery Convention Center; Room: 212 BD
Who: Thomas Cantrell, Engineering Manager, Embedded Networking, Green Hills Software
Synopsis: Real-time operating systems by definition offer predictable scheduling behavior, but for a safety/security-critical system more is required. One other core function of the operating system must be to separate various elements of the system securely from each other. This course starts by looking at examples of mixed-criticality embedded systems, explores the safety and security interactions of the components in these systems, and then examines the ways real-time operating systems can secure the interactions. In addition, the course will briefly talk about various safety and security certifications including IEC 61508 and ISO 26262.
In booth #1320, Green Hills Software will offer a wide range of interesting presentations and demonstrations, including:
Main Stage Demonstrations
Solving complex embedded problemsFor more than thirty years, Green Hills Software has solved the most challenging problems in embedded software. The presentation and live demonstration will show Green Hills Software's leadership in performance optimization, tools and techniques for maximizing developer productivity, and expertise in building safe, secure, and reliable embedded software.
Delivering product-differentiating security for Android devicesConnected mobile devices are commonplace in the enterprise. Nearly 70% of smartphones sold in 2012 run Android with a vast number of known and UNKNOWN vulnerabilities. This presentation will show how easy it is to exploit root vulnerabilities, remotely control devices and even extract critical data files. INTEGRITY Multivisor™, a separation kernel-based type-1 hypervisor, delivers the trusted mobile device architecture that secures Android devices for the enterprise.
Kiosk Demonstrations
Multimedia Rich SolutionsNext-generation devices need modern graphics capabilities. Green Hills Software will demonstrate OpenGL 3D capabilities for the INTEGRITY^® RTOS on a Freescale i.MX6 Quad-core CPU. The combination of a high performance OpenGL stack with the safe, secure and real-time INTEGRITY separation kernel is ideal for safety-critical automotive and Class II-III medical devices. Middleware components featured include Vivante OpenGL drivers and Real Time Logic's Barracuda Application Server supporting HTML 5.
Advanced DebuggingTo show how developers in the embedded Linux world can dramatically improve their debugging productivity, this demo will feature comprehensive, source-level debugging from boot loaders to applications. For developers of safety-critical systems, pre-qualified tools can save significant time throughout the development process. Green Hills Software will demonstrate the MULTI^® IEC 61508:2010 (SIL 4), EN 50128:2011 (SWSIL 4) and ISO 26262 (ASIL D) pre-qualified tool suite on a TI Hercules microcontroller. The demonstration will also include the powerful TimeMachine™ debugger that takes advantage of the live CPU on-chip generated trace data of Xilinx Zynq processors.
Embedded to Enterprise VirtualizationA securely virtualized Android Jelly Bean-based platform features the world's first ARM Virtualization Extension (VE) enabled hypervisor, INTEGRITY Multivisor, running on a TI OMAP™ 5 processor. Multivisor's unique architecture provides hard real-time capabilities with fast boot performance. For mobile devices, demonstration will include the INTEGRITY Secure Smartphone - Trusted Mobile Device (INTEGRITY TMD) supporting dual personas running on a Galaxy Nexus Trusted Handheld. Also featured is an INTEGRITY PC™ workstation, which provides enterprise-level protection from hackers and malware.
About Green Hills SoftwareFounded in 1982, Green Hills Software is the largest independent vendor of embedded development solutions. In 2008, the Green Hills INTEGRITY-178B RTOS was the first and only operating system to be certified by NIAP (National Information Assurance Partnership comprised of NSA & NIST) to EAL 6+, High Robustness, the highest level of security ever achieved for any software product. Our open architecture integrated development solutions address deeply embedded, absolute security and high-reliability applications for the military/avionics, medical, industrial, automotive, networking, consumer and other markets that demand industry-certified solutions. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Visit Green Hills Software at www.ghs.com.
Green Hills, the Green Hills logo, MULTI, INTEGRITY, Multivisor, INTEGRITY PC and TimeMachine are trademarks or registered trademarks of Green Hills Software in the U.S. and/or internationally. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact:

Green Hills Software
Barbel French
805-965-6044
bfrench@ghs.com

Green Hills Software and AT&T Present at Mobile Device Security for Defense and Government Symposium in Alexandria, VA

From:  Market Wired

NEWS RELEASE - This is five releases in one day for a company who made their billions from military and other government contracts.  Doesn't that make you feel warm and cozy, knowing these folks have a guaranteed and growing, exploding income, we are paying for with our rapidly disappearing mite of money, left to us by the folks who are paying them?  Check out their corporate headquarters, opposite the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara.  Take a look at the restaurants where they eat lunch.  Then, read up on Dan O'Dowd's business plan, shared by all the other highly disordered folks who inhabit Greedville.  

You're gonna love it. 



RELEASE BELOW:

SOURCE: Green Hills Software

April 16, 2013 08:00 ET

COLUMBIA, MD and SANTA BARBARA, CA--(Marketwired - Apr 16, 2013) - Green Hills Software, the leader in secure virtualization for mobility, and AT&T will deliver a joint presentation at the Mobile Device Security for Defense and Government Symposium in Alexandria, VA, April 23 - 24, 2013. The focus of the symposium will be on DoD's plan to maximize the potential uses of mobile devices.
The goal of the symposium is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Defense Information Systems & Business Enterprise Systems solutions. It will bring together leaders from across the Armed Services and Government Agencies, and the industry and academic leaders that can help them forge many of the solutions necessary to achieve their respective "next-steps."
AT&T and Green Hills Software will deliver a joint presentation at the Mary M. Gates Learning Center Alexandria, VA, on Wednesday, April 24, 2013, at 9:40 a.m. - 10:20 a.m. The presenters are:
Andy Smith, director, New Technology & Product Development, AT&T Government Solutions
David Kleidermacher, chief technology officer, Green Hills Software
The presentation topic is: BYoD for the DoD
Mobility in DoD is faced with a conundrum: lower budgets and higher security requirements. The cost answer is BYoD, and the security answer is the USMC Trusted Handheld (TH2) program. This session explains the TH2 security architecture, a virtualization layer that enables a single COTS mobile device to deploy multiple Android "personas" and delivered with AT&T Mobile Security. The AT&T Mobile Security service integrates device-level security features with network-based security controls and encrypted transport for a comprehensive, holistic approach to enterprise mobile security.
For more information about the conference, go to: http://mobiledevicesecurity.dsigroup.org/
About Green Hills Software
Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software is the largest independent vendor of embedded development solutions. In 2008, the Green Hills INTEGRITY^®-178B RTOS was the first and only operating system to be certified by NIAP (National Information Assurance Partnership comprised of NSA & NIST) to EAL 6+, High Robustness, the highest level of security ever achieved for any software product. Our open architecture integrated development solutions address deeply embedded, absolute security and high-reliability applications for the military/avionics, medical, industrial, automotive, networking, consumer and other markets that demand industry-certified solutions. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. Visit Green Hills Software at www.ghs.com.
Green Hills, the Green Hills logo and INTEGRITY are trademarks or registered trademarks of Green Hills Software in the U.S. and/or internationally. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact Information

Contact:Green Hills Software
Barbel French
805-965-6044
bfrench@ghs.com

Oh, the Irony - Esterline CMC Electronics selects Green Hills Software INTEGRITY-178B RTOS with FACE support for flight management system

From: Avionics Intelligence 

Another news release about Green Hills Software, Inc, and their INTEGRITY, see below comment for body of release.

COMMENT:  It is, perhaps, understandable that the legal ramifications of cooperating in a war which was started using manufactured information would not have sunk in with most of the military.  They are, after all, accustomed to taking orders without question, despite the example of how problematical this can be, with the precedent of Nuremberg before them.

But have the drone contractors considered their own potential for liability?  Perhaps they should.  Those found guilty at the Nuremberg Trails paid with far more than a fine.  It could happen again.  Contractors are also Americans who can be found guilty of treason against the people. 

 

April 2, 2013

By Courtney Howard
Executive Editor 

 

WRIGHT PATTERSON AFB, Ohio, 2 April 2013. Esterline CMC Electronics (CMC) has selected the INTEGRITY-178B single-core operating system from Green Hills Software, a provider of high-assurance operating systems, as the basis of its CMA-4000 Flight Management System (FMS).

CMC engineers will leverage the DO-178B Level A robust partitioning capabilities of the INTEGRITY-178B real-time operating system (RTOS) in support of delivering the Flight Management System for an avionics upgrade program. 

The INTEGRITY-178B RTOS functionality selected by CMC for DO-178B Level A certification can host applications that align with the Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) Technical Standard. This includes integration of existing Green Hills Software DO-178B Level A Partitioning-Journaling File System (PJFS-178B) and IPFLITE Ethernet stacks as part of the PowerPC-based CMA-4000 system.

The CMA-4000 will be capable of hosting FACE aligned applications developed using C, C++, and Ada95 programming languages. CMC will develop FMS applications that are FACE aligned. The FMS applications developed by CMC will interact with the INTEGRITY-178B RTOS via ARINC 653 API calls defined in the FACE Safety Operating System Profile. Adherence to an Operating System Profile defined in the FACE Technical Standard is a necessary part of satisfying requirements for an application to become FACE conformant.

The FACE Technical Standard is an open standard published by the FACE Consortium, an Open Group managed consortium.

"The reference architecture defined in the FACE Technical Standard is a complex system, complete with interface, data flow, and component definitions. The Operating System Segment provides the environment that all the other FACE segments operate within. With Green Hills Software providing the Operating System Segment, CMC can focus on its core strength, namely the development of portable flight management system applications and other FACE segments required by the architecture," says Don Paolucci, general manager, Navigation Systems, Esterline CMC Electronics.

"Green Hills Software has been a principal member of the FACE Consortium since 2010," explains Dan O'Dowd, founder and chief executive officer of Green Hills Software. "Green Hills Software continues our commitment to the FACE Consortium and its members through the integration of RTOS, middleware, language run-times, compilers, and debug tools into products aligned with the FACE Technical Standards that can be used with confidence by customers such as CMC."

The INTEGRITY-178B partitioning-enforcing operating system is compliant to both DO-178B Level A safety objectives and high-assurance security requirements (Common Criteria EAL 6+). INTEGRITY-178B can uniquely host, as a single product, FACE portable applications developed to the FACE Safety Operating System Profile and the FACE Security Operating System Profile. INTEGRITY-178B customers can obtain a single RTOS that can be used for installations with safety, security, or both safety and security assurance requirements.

ARINC 653 XML capabilities are the standard supported mechanism for configuring partition resources when INTEGRITY-178B is used as the basis for a FACE Operating System Segment and all systems utilizing the ARINC 653 services.