In the conflicts of the future, dominance of the electromagnetic spectrum will be a military imperative for victory – either denying access to an enemy, or ensuring unimpeded access to friendly forces. The rate of development of sophisticated electronic warfare applications to support these objectives is, unsurprisingly, accelerating. High performance/low latency is essential in the hardware that supports such applications. COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) solutions, especially those that leverage the unique capabilities of FPGA (field-programmable gate array) technology, are now capable of delivering not only on this prerequisite – but also on other key requirements.