In Maryland to meet the Army

6 May 2019
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Last week saw us at the Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) in Maryland. It’s the U.S. Army's oldest active proving ground, established on October 20, 1917, six months after the U.S. entered World War I. Its location allowed design and testing of ordnance materiel to take place near contemporary industrial and shipping centers. The proving ground was created as a successor to the Sandy Hook Proving Ground, which was too small for some of the larger weapons being tested.

If a soldier uses a piece of technology for protection, intelligence, to shoot, to move or to communicate - chances are, it was developed, tested and fielded by an APG organization.

Why were we there? We were attending the 2019 APBI Spring Technology Expo during APG Discovery Week Advanced Planning Briefing to Industry (APBI).  It provided us with the opportunity to interact with a wide variety of senior government leaders and  key government technology decision makers and to demonstrate our capabilities to the APG and C4ISR  community. The event is in support of the desire of the APG Command leadership to find new and more effective ways to facilitate collaborative engagements with industry partners. 

Priorities, imperatives

The event kicked off with a keynote address by MG Randy Taylor, who focused on the Army’s priorities and modernization efforts. Individual briefings were provided by PEO C3T, Army Futures Command, PEO IEWS, ATEC, ACC and CECOM. Each brief included the unique strategic imperatives of each organization and then continued to actual 2019, 2020 and 2021 opportunities.

On our table at the Vendor Expo, we showcased a functional demonstration of our VP430 RFSoC Board, operating in our VPX370 Development System. We also demonstrated  our CMOSS (the Army’s C4ISR/EW Modular Open Suite of Standards) compliant offerings, including a static display of our rugged 3U VPX SBC329 single board computer and the latest addition to our rugged 3U VPX family, the SBC3511.

Visitors to our booth included several key industry partners and primes and US Army representatives from CECOM, AMC, PEO C3T, PEO IEWS PM DCGS-Army and PdM EWI. An experimentation concept with Abaco SBC/mission computing hosting an Army EW application was discussed, and we’ll be following up on that.

Overall, it was a successful show for Abaco, allowing us to engage with industry and key technical points of contact in the Army.

 

Noel Goldstein

Noel Goldstein joined Abaco in October 2018 as Director Of Business Development. His previous assignment was as Senior Business Development Executive/Sales Director at CACI International. Noel’s career history includes spells at Leidos and Lockheed Martin. He has an MSc in Engineering Management from Drexel University, having earlier gained a BME in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delaware.