Developed by Germany as an antitank weapon in World War II, the Panzerfaust shoulder-launched weapon (SLW), manufactured by Dynamit Nobel Defense, is becoming increasingly effective against a range of targets, both in its traditional role as a portable weapon and mounted on platforms on land and at sea.
In November, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, U.S. Army vice chief of staff, took many observers by surprise when he said he'd like to see the term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) changed to post-traumatic stress injury, making what is regarded as a mental disorder akin to a battlefield wound. While the idea is controversial, new medical studies, particularly those involving mice, may actually support this change.
European air forces that provided strike sorties in Operation Unified Protector, the air campaign over Libya, will be digesting its lessons for years. In November, Defence IQ's International Fighter Conference here brought together a group of pilots, many of whom were involved in planning their nations' operations or carrying them out.
While the Tornado and Typhoon jets that flew strike missions against Libya won most of the plaudits after the NATO air campaign, the British platform that arguably did the most to enhance its reputation was the Sentinel R1.
Cassidian of Finland is partnering with the Jyvaskyla University of Applied Sciences (JAMK) to launch a cybersecurity center that will build simulations, models and testing protocols to better defend infrastructure and command facilities from attack. Cassidian, a subsidiary of EADS, is funding the project and will be involved in testing evaluations, a representative says. University staffers will lead the effort. JAMK already hosts an IT network for security research and training. Cassidian will provide network services for the center, which will be at the university.
The late spring or early summer of 2012 will see the field-test debut of a mobile imaging neutron spectrometer prototype long used for satellite-based solar space research, which has been modified for harbor and port security against nuclear smuggling and devices such as dirty bombs. The effort, led by researchers at the University of New Hampshire and engineers from Michigan Aerospace Corp. of Ann Arbor, is aimed at a vexing security problem: how to effectively patrol the vast acreage of container ports around the globe for rogue nuclear material.
The U.S. Army isn't shy about promoting its efforts to revolutionize the way it buys communications gear, sensors and ground robotics, while at the same time refocusing doctrine to push tactical decision-making down to its rifle squads as much as possible. The two efforts go hand-in-hand.
“When we went out on Herrick 14 in April, we characterized our tour as sitting on the seam,” says Royal Marines Brig. Gen. Ed Davis, commander of Task Force Helmand (TFH), referring to the U.K.'s six-month deployment of troops to the Afghan province, which ended in October. “And that's exactly how it played out.”
Snipers have experienced a renaissance in recent years, as asymmetric combat has turned their shooting skills into tactical and even strategic advantages for the forces that deploy them. One sniper can pin down hundreds of enemy combatants, disrupting or halting their operations and even forcing a retreat. The reason for this outsized impact is simple: Few soldiers will expose themselves to the “one shot, one kill” capability of modern snipers. When a sniper starts shooting, casualties follow.
The keel was laid Nov. 2 in Hamburg for Germany's first-in-class F125 frigate, which represents the navy's future vision of seapower: long missions, littoral operations, and countering conventional and asymmetric threats. The F125 is an “expeditionary frigate,” which means it can operate for two years (including 5,000 hr. at sea per year) away from its homeport. The navy will achieve this by berthing the four vessels scheduled for production in friendly ports, and transporting replacement crews.
DSM Dyneema, the Dutch manufacturer of Dyneema fiber, an ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene material with ballistic properties that are reportedly 15 times greater than steel, unveiled its latest version of the material, SB71, at the recent Milipol homeland security exhibition in Paris in October. Ballistic vests made of Dyneema fiber are primarily sold to law enforcement agencies. Ernst Jan van Klinken, global marketing director, says that only 30% of soft ballistic sales now go to the military. DSM is looking for the SB71 fiber to increase business in this market.
So far, the outcome of the NATO intervention in Libya has been more positive than my April editorial suggested. In November, fighters and other aircraft came home, and as this is written, the National Transitional Council has quelled one flare-up of hostilities. NATO air officers at last month's International Fighter conference in London were frank about what did not go well in the campaign, but as reports in this issue suggest, the alliance did a good job of putting together a coalition and running an air-only operation.
Taking the experiences of a single conflict and extrapolating them into “universal truths” can be perilous. Earlier this year, the U.K.'s Strategic Defense and Security Review took the operational template from operations in Afghanistan and made it the generic one for the future. Although lip service was paid to the idea of state-on-state warfare and other conflict options, it was simply that—lip service.
As the Libyan regime of Moammar Gadhafi withered and died after months of combat with rebel forces, the weapons that the dictator stockpiled in his 42-year reign came up for grabs.
Libya under Moammar Gadhafi had more man-portable air-defense systems (Manpads) than any other country, excluding those that produce the missiles. The collapse of the regime has Western officials scrambling to figure out what to do with potentially tens of thousands of surface-to-air missiles, including Manpads, which in many cases are unguarded and unsecured, and could pose a threat to civil aviation if they fall into the wrong hands. The biggest concern is the Russian SA-7B Grail.
Tank: Rand Corp. Location: Santa Monica, Calif. Profile: Non-profit, well-connected organization focusing on policy and decision-making issues In the $450 billion-1 trillion in defense budget cuts that are currently being debated in Congress, the Army's Heavy Brigade Combat Teams (HBCT) will almost certainly provide cost-cutters with an attractive target. In a new Rand report, David E. Johnson tries to cut the bean counters off at the pass.
Flight decks aren't the only operations that Mary Cummings wants to simplify (see above). The MIT professor and her research team are working with Boeing to fine-tune technology that permits a soldier to fly a micro-UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) with an iPhone. Operators could do this with just minutes of training, freeing them from conventional command-and-control platforms and enabling them to focus on mission-specific drone operations.
The tribal areas of northern and northwest Pakistan could see yet another foreign military mount operations there. According to The News International of Pakistan, Beijing wants bases in these areas to deter terrorism in neighboring Xinjiang Province by Chinese Muslim separatists. Insurgents trained by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in Waziristan, on the Afghanistan border, have repeatedly attacked Xinjiang. The most recent incident was a multiple bombing in Kashgar on July 30-31, which killed at least six.
The U.S. Army's unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) office in Huntsville, Ala., lost one of its most experienced civilian leaders recently when Tim Owings, deputy project manager for UAS, left to open a Huntsville office for defense contractor Sierra Nevada Corp. Owings, who went to work for the Army in 1989 as a newly minted Auburn University aerospace engineer, began working on unmanned aircraft in 1992. From 1999-2003, he was in charge of acquisition for AAI Corp.'s RQ-7 Shadow, and in 2004 became No. 2 in the Army UAS office.
David Walsh (Bethesda, Md.), Neelam Mathews (New Delhi)
Militaries are redoubling efforts to improve the realism of training, while reducing the potential for injury or death to trainees, and cutting costs. An important way of doing this is by using commercial gaming technology in advanced multiplayer (MP) mission-simulation systems. The result is simulators with high data fidelity that give personnel—whether recruits or seasoned operators—exposure to realistic battle scenarios. The axiom that soldiers should train as they fight and fight as they train is becoming as true in virtual reality as in real life.
Attending the International Fighter Conference (see p. 19) at the RAF Museum in London, Editor-in-Chief Bill Sweetman caught two1950s transport systems—the Westland Belvedere and, next to it, the Scammell Scarab. Which flew better was a toss-up, the Belvedere (used in Malaysia) being known to crews as “Mixmaster bilong suicide.” Why should a transport helicopter have a nose-up ground attitude? To load a torpedo (don't ask).
The fog of disinformation that surrounds British cybersecurity policy was not dispersed by the government's latest high-profile initiative. The London Cyberspace Conference, brainchild of Foreign Secretary William Hague, saw 700 delegates from more than 60 nations converge last month to discuss a range of issues, although more questions were raised than answered.
Reviewed By Pat Toensmeier Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men By Mara Hvistendahl PublicAffairs, 2011 314 pp., $26.00 Unnatural Selection documents the sex imbalance between boys and girls at birth in developing nations and its social impact. The book should be on the reading lists of policy makers and military planners, since the problems it highlights have global consequences.
Operational testing and evaluation has started on a method of dynamically balancing aircraft propellers that works continuously during flight and reduces direct operating and lifecycle costs. Developed by Lord Corp., the In-Flight Propeller Balancing System (IPBS) is being evaluated by the U.S. Air Force for its 500-plus fleet of Lockheed Martin C-130H transports, which are equipped with Hamilton Sundstrand 54H60-91 propeller systems.
