The role of Unmanned Aerial Systems in military operations continues to expand. Lessons learned from Kosovo and the first Persian Gulf War in 1991 where Iraqi soldiers surrendered to Pioneer Unmanned Aerial System in order to avoid much more serious confrontation resulted in the enlargement and wider acceptance of Unmanned Aerial Systems in the current Persian Gulf War where a Predator Unmanned Aerial System armed with Hellfire missiles successfully accomplished a combat mission. Thus Unmanned Aerial Systems have proven their worth and are assigned C4ISR and combat missions taking the human out of the risk and the expensive aircraft away from enemy’s fire.

Our panel of experts includes warfighters, developers and industry technologists selected to present current topics including SAR/GMTI payload success in OIF, Battlelab 101 and the USAF Center of Excellence and the Army’s UAV program update. Additional presentations by industry representatives will cover work on the development of the Fire Scout Vertical Takeoff and Landing Unmanned Aerial System, the Global Hawk Integrator Sensors Suite in support of Maritime surveillance and the progress on the development of the Joint Unmanned Combat Aerial System J-UCAS (X-47).

In this panel, a group of distinguished experts from the Government, industry and academics forecast the trends in several technology areas that could have a profound impact in the future direction of military communications. These technology areas include software and programmable radios, ultra wideband, optical communications and networking in space.

Self-Defense must be a basic requirement for any security software that runs on a Microsoft OS platform. Today’s “Zero Day” trojans, worms and blended threats have been designed to eliminate security software defenses that are commonly used in today’s desktop and laptop machines. Unfortunately, most major vendors of host-based security software are not rated on their ability to defend themselves from process suspension and termination. In other words, if the security software has been stopped and/or unloaded from memory then it is safe to assume that the machine is unprotected.

This panel will discuss the Self-Defending security software problem in light of platform requirements, optimum security “hardening” configurations, useful attack detection methods and recommendations for preventing the compromise of PC platforms by current termination methods. In addition, the panel will recommend the adoption of test techniques to better simulate termination methods used by malware to verify the integrity of host-based security software. This will include a review of promising integration test frameworks and prevalent malware injection and “blocking” methods.

In June 2003 The DoD mandated "IPv6-Capable" status from Oct. 2003 for all products and services tying into the Global Information Grid. In 2005 the DoD has delivered its IPv6 Transition Plan to Congress and gave testimony at the first Congressional Hearings on IPv6 that contributed to a planned move by the rest of the US Federal Government, as well as a growing number of IPv6 mandates in and between America's approximately 50 Coalition Partner countries and transnational alliances including NATO and the European Defense Forces.

This panel is led by the chairman of the Coalition Summit for IPv6, a group that attracted delegates from over 30 nations and 30 federal agencies. It also includes Dr. Lynch, the technical director of DoD-wide IPv6 efforts as well as leaders within each of the services. Attendees will receive an up-to-date situation report on the possibilities, challenges, and policies that will impact not only all military communications providers, but everyone who does business with the US Government and its allies.

In this panel, a group of senior Government and industry R&D managers discuss the current challenges in funding and executing military communications research, and outline some of the possible directions that they could take to address such challenges.

The Department of Defense is faced with numerous technical challenges as it endeavors to transform US military operations to an information based network-centric architecture assuring information superiority for the warfighter. This transformation has resulted in considerable technological development that is significantly more dependent on access to spectrum resources. Similarly, new commercial technologies entering the marketplace have further increased the pressure for access to Government spectrum resources. These internal and external pressures combined with the increasing need for on-demand access to spectrum resources, creates new challenges which require the DoD to utilize spectrum resources more effectively. Meeting these challenges entails a transformation in DoD spectrum management policies, techniques and tools in order to enable a more agile and responsive spectrum community.

To increase awareness within the military communications community and stimulate discussion on current and future spectrum management challenges the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration (ASD-NII) sponsors a panel on transforming spectrum operations at MILCOM 2005. The panel comprises two sub-panels. The first will be an operations panel with selected briefing on operational lessons learned, spectrum supportability and requirement for new supporting technology. The second will be a policy panel in which senior community leaders will address the following topics:

• Presidential Spectrum Initiative
• Future concepts for spectrum management systems
• Emerging concepts for evaluating spectrum dependent devices
• Challenges and opportunities for sharing spectrum with commercial users
• Future spectrum regulatory frameworks

The Joint Spectrum Center and the Defense Spectrum Office support ASD-NII in preparing these panels.