The Obama administration this week teamed with Cisco, Microsoft, HP and others to roll out what it called an "IT Training and Certification Partnership" designed to get thousands of service members into the information technology world.
It's not every day a customer wants a computer that can do everything from direct a landing on the surface of Mars, to control descent onto a speeding asteroid or coordinate a flight of satellites - but NASA and the Air Force's space group aren't everyday customers.
A software upgrade called Net-T effectively turns U.S. military aircraft into giant airborne wireless routers, allowing ground forces to share information with each other and with their allies overhead.
The Royal New Zealand Air Force has signed a five-year software engineering contract with Beca Applied Technology.
The RNZAF says the contract will provide the it with a range of software engineering services as part of the P-3K2 Orion surveillance aircraft upgrade project. Beca will maintain and develop the software on the six upgraded P-3K2 Orion aircraft.
“This is an important contract for the RNZAF. The upgraded P-3K2 Orions will be a highly capable asset employing a variety of high technology sensor systems to undertake its mission as surveillance aircraft," the chief of the Air Force, Air Vice-Marshal Graham Lintott, says.
The Data Management System will control the aircrafts’ mission systems; from sensor control through to the way personnel can use and display information.
“The DMS and associated software will see the Orions using technology that is cutting edge and that will be more adaptable to the ongoing needs of the Air Force and Government,” says Lintott.
“The work that will be conducted by Beca will be very complex and opens significant opportunities for New Zealand in the domain of information systems and data management systems associated with military platforms,” he says.
The US government has denied an appeal filed by SAP that protested about an US$88.5 million (NZ$132 million) million contract awarded to rival Oracle.