China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) is modernizing. It has acquired an aircraft carrier, developed at least one unmanned aerial vehicle, and a stealth fighter, and is trying its hand at public relations.
Oto Melara is working on two projects that could increase the firepower of Italian land and sea forces without generating high procurement costs. As a result, the work may become a standard for defense technology among militaries that seek advanced capabilities in a period of budget cuts.
Not only are there summer passages in the northern Arctic that are potentially inviting new sea lanes for commercial and military traffic, but an increasing proportion of the ice that remains is younger and thinner, according to data streaming into NASA and German science labs.
Growing concern over China's military buildup—symbolized by its first aircraft carrier—may prompt Japan to convert its new 24,000-ton through-deck destroyer into an aircraft carrier, but opinions diverge on its usefulness and survivability in the East China Sea.
General Electric says it has successfully tested a faster, cheaper way to produce nuclear reactor fuel, and is planning to commercialize the technology by building a facility in Wilmington, N.C. While the prospect of saving resources to generate energy at a lower price sounds like a breakthrough, scientists are concerned that the top-secret method of enrichment that GE is using will indirectly elevate proliferation risks around the world, thus inspiring rogue states to develop their own laser enrichment facilities for nuclear weapons.
At two recent shows—Defense Security and Equipment International (DSEi) in London and the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) here—contractors touted the non-developmental nature of their new vehicle programs as evidence of affordability and production-ready design. The experience was a far cry from a few years ago when the same companies boasted about outfitting their trucks, weapon systems and communication gear with the latest, greatest and often unproven technologies.
The counterinsurgency operations conducted by the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan use a number of new weapon systems. Yet there is room for technologies that are long in the tooth—military working dogs (MWD). Although used in combat for centuries, the profile of military working dogs has risen in recent years. The U.S. began to train dogs in 2005 to work off-leash to detect explosives. In May, a Belgian Malinois named Cairo was involved in Operation Neptune Spear, the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden.
Begun in the 1990s to meet the requirements of the British, French and German armies (later joined by the Netherlands), the Boxer 8 X 8 armored transport vehicle is in full production for Germany, and deliveries to the Netherlands are to begin in October 2012. (France and the U.K. dropped out of the program.) Armored Technology (Artec), a joint venture between Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) and Rheinmetall, is producing 272 Boxers for the German army and 200 for the Dutch army, although what impact defense cuts in the Netherlands may have on final totals is not clear.
India's defense establishment has ambitious plans for modernization of the armed forces, procurement of advanced weapons and systems, and establishment of a world-class defense manufacturing base. It must, however, cope with rules that can stymie procurement, deal with complaints over offsets and issues of technology transfer that occasionally impede foreign investment, and walk the fine line between guarding its own intellectual property and developing a viable export business. Involved in many decisions related to these issues is Minister of State for Defense M.
Tiny and ubiquitous, Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers have rendered map-reading skills as obsolete as the ability to get your lunch with a trap. Until, that is, you are indoors or in a canyon, urban or manmade, or someone is jamming you.
Israel's defense and finance ministries are close to a decision on whether to award Israel Shipyards contracts for at least two 2,200-ton advanced missile boats. Senior officials are working out a deal in which the finance ministry subsidizes the ships, which would be the largest military vessels ever built in Israel.
Unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) have the potential to revolutionize air warfare. The ability of armed UAVs to fly undetected over many areas and launch precision-guided strikes against time-critical targets makes them a major factor in the asymmetric battles that dominate current conflicts.
The immediate reaction to the resignation of Liam Fox as defense minister of the U.K. has been urgent calls in the media and elsewhere for restrictions on political lobbyists. But important questions remain unanswered about the direction the Defense Ministry will take now that Fox, who resisted deep cuts in defense spending, has left the post.
In biomechanical energy harvesting, electricity is generated through a device by body motion. The current powers portable electronics, replacing batteries. One development in this area is the Soldier Power Regeneration Kit, or Spark, developed by Army Col. Joseph Hitt, an engineering professor at West Point, and SpringActive Inc. of Tempe, Ariz., and tested by the Army Natick Soldier Center. Spark is a 1.4-kg (3.08-lb.) device that attaches to a boot.
As the U.S. workforce—both private and public—moves away from the desktop computers and landline telephones of their employers to their own mail accounts and personal wireless devices to work from remote locations, companies and government agencies face a big problem: controlling digital data. IT departments have traditionally regulated the flow of this information, how it can be accessed and by whom. In most cases that information is being easily downloaded by employees on all sorts of devices and over many different networks wherever they are working or traveling.
As American forces draw down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and increase security force assistance and foreign internal defense missions around the world, Africa looms large in U.S. strategic planning. A number of initiatives have been undertaken in Africa this year. For example:
One point made clear by recent wars, humanitarian missions and other operations, is that U.S. and coalition forces are likely to end up using primitive or damaged airfields for supply and transport. The U.S. Air Force wants to overcome one aspect of this through development of the Deployable Instrument Landing System (ILS). USAF awarded Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. an initial $8.8 million contract to design an ILS that is easy to transport and assemble, and able to guide aircraft on final approach in low visibility or poor weather conditions.
Tensions are rising in the eastern Mediterranean between Israel and Turkey, only this time the catalyst isn't religion or politics, but natural resources—the discovery of an oil and natural gas field in waters 160 km (100 mi.) south of the Republic of Cyprus.
Few people,” says Ivor Ichikowitz, executive chairman of South Africa's Paramount Group, “understand what we're doing.” In September, the company unveiled the full-scale mockup of a unique aircraft, the Advanced High-Performance Reconnaissance Light Aircraft (Ahrlac), and announced it was well along with development and fabrication of a prototype. However, little if any of the media coverage dealt with what makes Ahrlac unusual and better-founded than most startup aviation projects.
Saab Bofors Dynamics of Sweden recently rolled out a new version of its venerable RBS 70 Manpads (man-portable air-defense system), the RBS 70 NG. New software and other enhancements equip the sighting system with digital 3-D target-designation coordinates, a better target-cueing system, automatic tracking of moving targets and a new integrated thermal imager for night use. The auto-tracker works by keeping the mirror, which reflects the laser sight, focused on a selected target, a Saab representative says.
Efforts to encrypt data have taken an innovative and, some might say, sustainable turn with the use of bacteria as a type of “invisible ink.” Work conducted by David Walt, a chemist at Tufts University, and Harvard chemist Manuel Palacios, yielded a color-coded method of encryption based on bacteria that can be made to glow under UV light. The technique, which the scientists call InfoBiology, produces messages and marks that are virtually immune to decipherment and forgery. Walt and Palacios placed E.
German officials say the country's newest unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will work like a “vacuum cleaner” in terms of its ability to gather intelligence while airborne. The military unveiled the Euro Hawk UAV last month, which is based on the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk and built by that company and EADS. Euro Hawk is equipped with German-designed sensors and surveillance gear that simultaneously detect ground targets and listen in on conversations and other signals from a range of electronic devices. Real-time data will be transmitted to a ground station in Germany.
` We talk a lot about cost overruns in defense acquisition. A new report by Barry Watts and Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (see p. 4) casts historical perspective on the defense industry's failure to meet schedules and budgets.
Reviewed By Pat Toensmeier Black Ops: The Rise of Special Forces in the CIA, the SAS and Mossad BY Tony Geraghty Pegasus Books, 2010 440 pp., $28.95 Special forces receive public, political and military acclaim. This hasn't always been the case. After World War II and Vietnam, they were viewed with suspicion and often derided by conventional commanders as undisciplined.
