AOC Augurs Well For 2011

Although United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has promised to make cuts in the 2011 defense budget, it is unlikely that these cuts will in any way retard the development of work in progress and programs set in motion by DARPA and the Department of Defense (DoD). Such was the general consensus of attendees and exhibitors at the 47th Annual International Association of Old Crows (AOC) Symposium & Exhibition held earlier this month at the Atlanta Hilton (Atlanta, GA). A recent e-mail from the AOC's Tracy Cooper reports that over 1500 individuals attended the workshops, sessions, and exhibition hall at AOC, all reporting of various design and manufacturing projects lined up for the coming year.

Business in the RF and microwave industry is nothing if not cyclical. For every company that rode the "wireless wave" of the 1990s, as cellular towers were being erected and technologies were leapfrogging from the analog first generation to later digital cellular generations, there is now a company tackling some RF or microwave-related problem faced by a larger systems integrator, such as Boeing, Northrop Grumman, ITT, and Raytheon, all who were also present at AOC to relay their needs in high-frequency electronics. Look for added coverage of military electronics from Microwaves & RF during 2011, with four issues of the Defense Electronics supplement scheduled along with a special 50th Anniversary issue in November 2011, to commemorate this magazine's five decades of service to this industry.