Technical glossary

Usually measured in terms of inaccuracy, means the maximum deviation, positive or negative, of an indicated value from an accepted standard or true value.

Systems that function to prevent undesirable aircraft and missile motions or structural loads by autonomously processing outputs from multiple sensors and then providing necessary preventive commands to effect automatic control.

A minimum (single) element of the solid-state array which has a photoelectric transfer function when exposed to light (electromagnetic) radiation.

An adjusted peak rate at which digital computers perform 64-bit or larger floating point additions and multiplications, expressed in Weighted TeraFLOPS (WT), in units of 10^12 adjusted floating point operations per second.

A cryptographic algorithm using different, mathematically-related keys for encryption and decryption. A common use of asymmetric algorithms is key management.

Verifying the identity of a user, process or device, often as a prerequisite to allowing access to resources in an information system. This includes verifying the origin or content of a message or other information, and all aspects of access control where there is no encryption of files or text except as directly related to the protection of passwords, PINs or similar data.

Any technique that specifically activates or enables cryptographic capability of an item, by means of a mechanism implemented by the manufacturer of the item, where this mechanism is uniquely bound to: 1. A single instance of the item; or 2. One customer, for multiple instances.

The discipline which embodies principles, means and methods for the transformation of data in order to hide its information content, prevent its undetected modification or prevent its unauthorised use. Cryptography is limited to the transformation of information using one or more secret parameters (e.g., crypto variables) or associated key management. Note 1: Cryptography does not include fixed data compression or coding techniques. Note 2: Cryptography includes decryption.

A laser that produces a nominally constant output energy for greater than 0,25 seconds.

Circular Error Probable - In a circular normal distribution, the radius of the circle containing 50% of the individual measurements being made, or the radius of the circle within which there is a 50% probability of being located.

A matrix and an additional phase or additional phases consisting of particles, whiskers, fibres or any combination thereof, present for a specific purpose or purposes.

Two or more numerically controlled motions operating in accordance with instructions that specify the next required position and the required feed rates to that position.

The temperature at which a specific superconductive material loses all resistance to the flow of direct electrical current.

Uranium depleted in the isotope 235 below that occurring in nature.

All stages prior to serial production, such as: design, design research, design analyses, design concepts, assembly and testing of prototypes, pilot production schemes, design data, process of transforming design data into a product, configuration design, integration design, layouts.

Equipment which can, in the form of one or more discrete variables, perform all of the following: a. Accept data; b. Store data or instructions in fixed or alterable (writable) storage devices; c. Process data by means of a stored sequence of instructions which is modifiable; and d. Provide output of data.

A linear or two-dimensional planar layer, or combination of planar layers, of individual detector elements, with or without readout electronics, which work in the focal plane.

Gate-All-Around Field-Effect Transistor - a device having a single or multiple semiconductor conduction channel element(s) with a common gate structure that surrounds and controls current in all of the semiconductor conduction channel elements. Includes nanosheet or nanowire field-effect and surrounding gate transistors and other GAAFET structures.

Systems that integrate the process of measuring and computing a vehicles position and velocity with that of computing and sending commands to the vehicles flight control systems to correct the trajectory.

All the means and functions ensuring the accessibility, confidentiality or integrity of information or communications, excluding the means and functions intended to safeguard against malfunctions. This includes cryptography, cryptographic activation, cryptanalysis, protection against compromising emanations and computer security.

Software specially designed or modified to avoid detection by monitoring tools, or to defeat protective countermeasures, of a computer or network-capable device, and performing: a. The extraction of data or information; or b. The modification of the standard execution path of a program or process to allow the execution of externally provided instructions. Note: Intrusion software does not include: hypervisors, debuggers, SRE tools, DRM software, or asset tracking/recovery software.

An item that produces spatially and temporally coherent light through amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

Complete rocket systems and unmanned aerial vehicle systems, capable of delivering at least 500 kg payload to a range of at least 300 km.

A complete reactor capable of operation so as to maintain a controlled self-sustaining fission chain reaction. Includes all items within or attached directly to the reactor vessel, equipment which controls the level of power in the core, and components which normally contain, come into direct contact with or control the primary coolant of the reactor core.

All production phases, such as: construction, production engineering, manufacture, integration, assembly (mounting), inspection, testing, quality assurance.

A family of techniques for the establishment of shared key for cryptography by measuring the quantum-mechanical properties of a physical system (including those physical properties explicitly governed by quantum optics, quantum field theory or quantum electrodynamics).

The closeness of agreement among repeated measurements of the same variable under the same operating conditions when changes in conditions or non-operating periods occur between measurements. (Reference: IEEE 528-2001, one sigma standard deviation)

Refers to only that portion of technology which is peculiarly responsible for achieving or extending the controlled performance levels, characteristics or functions. Such required technology may be shared by different goods.

Means technology or software which has been made available without restrictions upon its further dissemination (copyright restrictions do not remove technology or software from being in the public domain).

TPP is 2 x MacTOPS x bit length of the operation, aggregated over all processing units on the integrated circuit. MacTOPS is the theoretical peak number of Tera (10^12) operations per second for multiply-accumulate computation (D=AxB+C). The TPP threshold of 6000 can be met with 750 tera integer operations at 8 bits or 300 tera FLOPS at 16 bits.