Late summer and early autumn are busy times for DTI's editors, what with a growing schedule of press events, shows and conferences to attend. Busy times as well for Ares readers, who post a steady stream of thoughts on the topics they see on the site. Here are a few examples. I would not be surprised if the [Joint Light Tactical Vehicle] program gets canceled or delayed indefinitely. Actually, if it's following the trend then a cancellation followed by a new 'restructured' program might be the most likely outcome.
Tank: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) Location: Washington Profile: Independent, nonpartisan policy research institute Debate over the fiscal 2012 defense budget will be contentious. The reason is the huge U.S. debt—$14.7 trillion and climbing—and budget deficit, projected at $1.3 trillion for 2011. With red ink like this, budget knives are being sharpened for big game, and that includes the Defense Department.
Touring the pride of the Royal Navy, the Type 45 destroyer HMS Dauntless, Editor-in-Chief Bill Sweetman managed to photograph a highly sensitive component of the ship's damage-control system.
The U.S. Army seems serious in its effort to create an armory of apps, pressing ahead with its vision of battle-ready smartphones laden with useful combat programs. If successful, it could transform the battlefield environment. The five winners of last year's Apps for the Army contest—A4A—came from internal Army early adopters and innovators. The next A4A, slated for launch next year, will include the public and industry.
Camp Bastion's main entry point (MEP) is, in effect, the front door for ground admission to NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Helmand Province. Here, the imperatives of force protection and base security meet, sometimes conflict with, and ultimately reinforce the wider purpose of the coalition mission. It may seem to be a dichotomy, but the MEP underlines the fact that security rises when trust is built—and vice versa.
Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors have improved vastly in the last decade in coverage and resolution. Their data-storage technology, on or off ISR platforms, has advanced more rapidly. What hasn't kept pace, however, is the ability to manage that information so everyone who needs to can use it with Google Earth-like ease.
The HNLMS Holland, the Royal Netherlands Navy's new offshore patrol vessel (OPV), could become a model for similar ships in an era of shrinking budgets and growing naval commitments among maritime nations. The Holland, the first of four OPVs ordered by the Dutch navy, was delivered in May. The class is larger than most OPVs—108 meters (354 ft.) long with a 16-meter beam and displacing 3,750 tons— and it is equipped with advanced electronics, capable of diverse missions, and designed for low-cost construction and cost-efficient operation.
A machine that quickly and accurately spots a liar has long been a dream of the national security community. Such a device could ferret out potential terrorists, double agents or dangerous criminals. The problem is that the polygraph, the mainstay of lie detection, is a cumbersome device whose utility is still debated.
Defense Research and Development Canada (DRDC) is working on a system that will provide ships in the littorals or those docked in port with continuous laser surveillance of optic threats—any weapon that uses a lens, including laser-guided rockets and missiles, along with binoculars, telescopes and other devices used by spotters.
The German military is deploying to Afghanistan the German Route Clearing Package, which is designed to detect mines and improvised explosive devices (IED) along convoy routes.
Sometimes, having a combat capability isn't enough: operating personnel have to become marketing teams and sell their services to comrades and allies. This is the lesson learned by the Royal Navy's tiny Sea King Airborne Surveillance and Control detachment in Afghanistan. The Westland-built Mk. 7 version of the Sikorsky helicopter, known by the acronym Skasac—and nicknamed “Bagger” for its large radome that hangs from the side in flight—has been in theater for more than two years, but developing an informed user base took time.
The U.K. Defense Ministry and Tata Steel showed a new grade of steel with high ballistic protection at the Defense Security and Equipment International exhibition in London last month. Called Super Bainite, the material has at least twice the ballistic performance of conventional rolled homogeneous steel armor, according to the Defense Ministry, and will be used in armored vehicles and other applications.
Bill Sweetman (Washington), Paul McLeary (Washington), Michael Fabey (Washington)
Innovative products were on display at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) conference and show here in August. But beneath the surface, the unmanned systems industry could be headed for a drastic contraction as military budgets shrink and NATO and U.S. forces pull out of Afghanistan. Companies will have to be strong and creative to survive.
IBM could be a decade away from computer chips with cognitive capabilities. This is the goal of the Synapse (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) project, which received $21 million of funding from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Researchers developed two prototype chip cores with 45-nanometer digital silicon circuits of SOI-CMOS (silicon-on-insulator complementary metal oxide semiconductor). These mimic the memory and computational ability of biological synapses and neurons.
Although the technology focus remains on the transition from Hermes 450 to Watchkeeper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), it is the subtler changes to platforms and operational concepts that deliver increased performance to the British Army. And while the tactical UAV continues to provide vital intelligence, it is the lower-tech, less glamorous platforms that are gaining in popularity with the troops whose missions they support.
Canada's National Defense Department (NDD) wants a special off-road vehicle: a hybrid-electric snowmobile that runs silently in the Canadian Arctic. The NDD released a tender for the vehicle and allocated $C550,000 ($563,000) for a prototype. Hybrid-electric propulsion is required for quiet operation. The NDD believes that internal combustion engines are too noisy for operation where cold, dry air carries sound.
Paul McLeary (Washington), Christina Mackenzie (Paris), Nicholas Fiorenza (Brussels)
After nine years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, why are our soldiers still involved in fair fights?” asked U.S. Army Maj. Gen. (ret.) Robert Scales recently. By “fair fights” Scales means the close-quarters combat that dismounted infantry engage in throughout Afghanistan daily, trading fire with an enemy who can partially negate NATO's technical advantage with small-unit combat from concealed positions.
Tests by robot-maker iRobot Corp. and Princeton Gamma Technologies (PGT), developer of radiological isotope detectors, show that unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) can monitor radiation in the ocean and detect leaks from nuclear power plants, and possibly dirty bombs and nuclear weapons in transit. A 3.25-lb. detector was attached in an aluminum vessel to the nose of iRobot's 1KA Seaglider, an autonomous, battery-powered UUV that follows preprogrammed routes undersea for months (see photo).
Israel is prepared for war on two fronts, should unrest in neighboring countries and other threats rekindle combat. Military leaders say that once the initial phase of strikes is over and pre-selected targets are destroyed, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would confront a situation where hybrid conflict persists. At this point, efforts to create a networked battlefield would pay off, with rapid intelligence reports directing maneuver warfare, air strikes and artillery fire to disrupt and defeat remaining combatants.
The F-35B short-takeoff/vertical-landing version of the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is to start sea trials on the USS Wasp this month. It costs more than the F-35A and F-35C and has lower performance, so the U.S. Marine Corps and its allies have mounted a public-relations offensive focusing on its advantages: the ability to fly off Navy amphibious ships and use small airfields with short runways like its predecessor, the AV-8B Harrier.
The U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Navy Experimental Diving Unit are working on a joint research effort aimed at studying how human cells behave when exposed to high pressure, deep undersea. The organizations have designed a hyperbaric laboratory environment that yields data permitting them to evaluate advances that are intended to protect Navy divers working as deep as 1,000 ft. The high-pressure test environment is created through use of a technique called patch clamping, which was originally developed to study single or multiple ion channels in cells.
There is a lot to like about HMS Dauntless, second-in-class of the Royal Navy's Type 45 antiair-warfare (AAW) destroyers, which I toured during the Defense & Security Equipment International show in London in September. Dauntless is sleek, fast and visibly stealthy, with an enclosed multisensor mast topped by a spherical radome that gives it the look of a pagan monument.
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.
