The failure of North Korea's much-publicized rocket launch on April 13 occurred as Japan readied its ballistic missile defense force to destroy the rocket if it fell toward its territory.
Reviewed By Pat Toensmeier Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth By Frederick Kempe Berkeley Books, 2011 579 pp.; $29.95 The Berlin Wall symbolized the Cold War. Frederick Kempe writes of the events that led to its construction in 1961, sealing the division of Germany.
Reviewed By Angus Batey 21ST CENTURY CYBERWARFARE BY WILLIAM T. HAGESTAD, 2nd IT Governance Publishing, 2012 348 pp., $119 In recent months, Bill Hagestad has become a familiar yet discomfiting figure on the cyberdefense conference circuit.
Harvard researchers have devised a technique for building microbots that was inspired by pop-up books. Pratheev Sreetharan and J. Peter Whitney, doctoral candidates, developed the method for the Harvard Monolithic Bee, or “Mobee,” a flying microbot that fits on a quarter and has mass of 90 mg. Making Mobees by hand is slow and difficult. The technique, called Printed Circuit MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems), is a layering process in which micro-machined materials are assembled, aligned and machined again into what will be 3-D shapes.
Roadside attacks have been around almost as long as soldiers have marched down roads. Until 9/11, casualties from these attacks were less significant compared with the large numbers lost on battlefields to poisonous gas, machine guns and air assaults. But in today's often urbanized, counterinsurgency warfare, roadside attacks with homemade bombs and mines—collectively known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—are the principal cause of loss of life and limb among Western militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is urging Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to stop an arms deal with Russia as Syria smolders. The March letter asks the Pentagon chief to end all business with Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms firm, to protest its continuing sale of weapons to Syria. At stake is a deal worth up to $1 billion to supply Russian Mil Mi-17 helicopters and spare parts to the Afghan military. “U.S. taxpayers should not be put in a position where they are indirectly subsidizing the mass murder of Syrian civilians,” the senators wrote.
It has been decades since the U.S. Army had the chance to define a clean-sheet rotorcraft. But an opportunity is approaching as the service heads toward the multi-year demonstration of configurations and technologies for next-generation utility/attack rotorcraft that could replace today's Sikorsky UH-60s and Boeing AH-64s, beginning around 2030.
Backing for the Assad regime in strife-torn Syria hinges on a centuries-old Russian ambition. From the Crimean War to “the great game” of the 1800s, the lack of a deep, warm-water port has cramped Russia's global desires.
Tank: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Location: U.K. Profile: Dedicated to the end of U.K.'s independent deterrent Apart from beer, one area where the U.K. outclasses the U.S. is in antinuclear-weapon activists. The U.S. has mostly gray-ponytailed, Chomsky-spouting relics, while the U.K. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and activists are a fount of useful data on British nuclear weapon programs, and, by association, U.S. developments.
As missions expand for self-propelled unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), efforts intensify to find routes that shorten travel, minimize energy use and increase data acquisition. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers led by Prof. Pierre Lermusiaux developed an algorithm that plots optimal paths for swarms of UUVs. Previous efforts by other researchers were imprecise and did not fully integrate the complexity of ocean environments or the challenge of directing multiple vehicles in changing seas.
By the end of this month, the U.K. may have performed one of the biggest flip-flops in the history of defense acquisition. In early March, London media were almost unanimous in reporting that the British government would reverse its October 2010 decision to dump the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) F-35B variant of the Joint Strike Fighter in favor of the catapult-takeoff-but-arrested-landing (Catobar) F-35C. The volte-face was then predicted before Easter, but now no word is expected until after the holiday recess.
Getting Helicopter Development Right For The U.S. Army Getting Helicopter Development Right For The U.S. Army Getting Helicopter Development Right For The U.S. Army
From the way that Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and other members of Congress grumbled when the Obama administration pulled 1,200 Army National Guard soldiers off the U.S.-Mexican border in February, you would think the White House threw open the gates and sent every uniformed U.S. service member home. “It defies logic that we would remove the National Guard from the border when the border is not secure,” Poe said. “If anything, we need more National Guard troops.”
The U.S. Navy plans carrier launch and recovery tests for its two X-47B unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV) next year—but guiding UCAV on deck is a challenge. Work at MIT with gesture-recognition software could eventually enable personnel to direct UCAV via hand and body gestures as they do with manned aircraft. Doctoral candidate Yale Song is fine-tuning software he helped develop that recognizes gestures now in use by deck crews. Song uses a stereo camera to record body movements.
A bullet that seldom misses would be an asset in combat. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have developed a prototype self-guided round that is in effect a tiny missile, 4 in., long, with optical sensor, 8-bit CPU, guidance and control electronics, and steerable fins with electromagnetic actuators. The bullet flies at 2,400 fps.; range is 2,000 meters (1.24 mi.). The optical sensor detects a target illuminated by a laser in the rifle's optics. Fins maneuver the projectile to remain on target despite distance, crosswinds and other variables.
Over the next several years, more than a few big-ticket items in the Army's annual budget will reach major milestones—transitioning from new-build production to long-term sustainment accounts. Overall, 37 Army systems will make that switch, moving Army dollars away from the production line to the often more complicated—and very expensive—world of spare parts, upgrades and reset contracts.
Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) is changing in the same way as warfare as a whole. Targets used to be easy to find and identify, though hard to kill, but now the reverse is usually true. ISR data used to be hard to get, which made the volumes manageable. Now, collection is cheap but meeting the demands of processing, exploitation and dissemination, or PED, is hard.
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has achieved a land-speed record for Cheetah, a four-legged robot developed by Boston Dynamics of Waltham, Mass., for the Maximum Mobility and Manipulation program. Cheetah was clocked at 18 mph while galloping on a lab treadmill. While this is a fraction of the speed that its flesh-and-blood namesake achieves—0-60 mph in 3 sec.
U.S. Marines began deploying BAE System's Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) in Afghanistan last month. APKWS is a mid-body attachment that converts Hydra-70 2.75-in. unguided aerial rockets to laser-guided missiles. Reported accuracy is less than 1 meter (3.3 ft.) at 3 mi. APKWS was in development for years by the Army, then, following cutbacks, the Navy, which designates it WGU-59/B. The weapon fills a niche in asymmetric warfare: destroying soft and lightly armored targets cheaply and with low collateral damage.
Passing time in London's Wallace Collection, the editor-in-chief saw these curious 17th century left-hand daggers (either side of the crossbow). Called “sword-breakers” the idea is to trap, twist and snap the opponent's weapon. The adage “if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough” apparently pre-dates air combat.
Elbit Systems' Large Area Display (formerly Cockpit NG) received an important endorsement last month when Boeing chose it to provide the advanced avionics systems for its fighter aircraft, including upgraded versions of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-15SE Silent Eagle. The system integrates tactical data, mission planning and flight information into an 11x19-in. complete situational picture responding to specific mission phases and pilot controls.
Paul McLeary (Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Aberdeen, Md.)
The U.S. Army is not sugarcoating it: The armed service is about to go through deep, emotionally wrenching changes. Even as the smell of cordite still hangs in the Afghan air, the service's chiefs are busy planning the Army's postwar posture and equipment needs.
