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The U.S. Air Force carries a large inventory of transports, tankers, and support aircraft that were never built with today's networked, sensor-fused Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) architecture in mind. The conventional fix, deep structural and avionics modification, airframe by airframe, is slow and expensive at precisely the moment the threat environment is outrunning the acquisition cycle. Obsidian Shield, a new offering from Newport News-based Integrity Defense Solutions, Inc. (IDS), is pitched as a way to close that gap now rather than waiting on a full recapitalization program that may take years to materialize. The Design Logic: Open, Modular, Bolt-On IDS describes Obsidian Shield as resting on a "truly modular, open-systems approach" paired with an "affordable, scalable production path." The intent is an architecture that can be...