Bill Sweetman (Washington), Paul McLeary (Washington)
Conventional wisdom has it that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will leave office this year, giving his successor time to build a resume that supports President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. If so, that successor’s job will not be easy, and not only because he or she will not enjoy Gates’s unique advantage of being appointed by both a Republican and a Democratic president.
President Barack Obama’s foreign policy is under scrutiny by Middle East bystanders, who watch every move Washington makes with concern or glee depending on their allegiances. In this part of the world, allegiances are largely determined by religion, especially Islam’s centuries-old Sunni-Shiite divide.
Dear Colleagues, It is a great privilege for us to serve as publisher and associate publisher, respectively, of Defense Technology International, as Greg Hamilton fulfills his new role as president of Aviation Week. Andrea and I are as deeply committed to the founding editorial mission of DTI as we are to an exciting vision of the role it serves in our proud industry. For five years DTI has credibly delivered on these core promises: • Balanced land, naval, air, space and security content. • Global perspective.
There are plenty of challenges to keep policy-makers busy in 2011. Budgetary cutbacks, procurement programs, nuclear proliferation, regional tensions and cyberattacks will be key issues throughout the year. DTI asked six experts for their views on how these concerns will develop. Here are their perspectives.
An attempt to put the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program into an achievable trajectory could be the big story in the Fiscal 2012 U.S. defense budget, after a year that has seen isolated good news dwarfed by continuing problems.
The 2011 French defense budget will be the first in a three-year effort during which €3.6 billion ($4.8 billion) will be cut from funds allocated in the six-year (2009-14) military program law. The cuts are part of deficit reduction. Nevertheless, major procurement programs are spared as extraordinary income of €2.3 billion is expected from sales of military radio frequencies, buildings and satellites.
Sabic put its materials expertise to good use in developing Ultem rigid polyetherimide foam for use as the structural core in composite aircraft applications. Ultem is lightweight, with low moisture absorption, high energy absorption and low dielectric loss. It is transparent to radar, and suitable for a number of composite manufacturing processes—machining, vacuum bagging, compression molding and thermoforming.
Russia continues to develop its nuclear deterrent as part of a general rearmament of the armed forces (see p. 53). Planned expenditures on nuclear weapons in 2011 will grow by 44% compared with 2010 and amount to $870 million. According to Viktor Zavarzin, head of the parliament’s defense committee, expenditures for weapons procurement, modernization of the country’s nuclear triad and maintaining the triad’s combat readiness will increase by 50% during the next three years.
Sometimes simple is best. For Blue Sky, a U.K. design firm, the easiest route to a seating management system for economy-class cabins is seats with adjustable pitch. The company’s Stella Seat can be converted to premium economy seating without changing pitch by adjusting it for 6 extra in. of legroom or moving it 3 in. closer to the floor to increase the recline angle 40%. The seat thus permits creation of premium space without altering seating layout and can be changed according to individual flight needs. Winner: Aero Structures.
One advance in satellite technology is equipping miniature satellites, or cubesats, with inexpensive sensors and orbiting them in distributed arrays, from which they transmit combined images with the resolution of a larger-aperture device. Cubesats can be deployed rapidly and at low cost for many missions. One person involved in such work is Stuart Eves, head of military business at Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) of Guildford, England. Contributing Editor Michael Dumiak spoke with him about the changing nature of space imaging.
The German armed forces are on the verge of their greatest reorganization since the end of the Cold War. Defense spending will rise slightly in 2011, by €400 million ($535.7 million) to €31.5 billion, but only because of the transfer of military property worth €800 million to a civilian agency. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has admitted that it will not be possible to reduce defense spending by the €8.4 billion originally planned for 2011-14 because the size of the Bundeswehr will not be cut as drastically as had been envisioned.
Israel’s next war could be fought on several fronts and result in far more destruction and casualties on all sides than recent conflicts. So said outgoing Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin in an address to the Knesset in November. Yadlin believes that despite an unprecedented period of calm for Israel right now—primarily due to its deterrence, alliances with Egypt and Jordan, and peace in the West Bank—there is a strong possibility of a major escalation of hostilities with two neighbors, Lebanon and Syria.
Bill Sweetman (Washington), Pat Toensmeier (New York)
Almost 10 years ago, Prof. John Roulston—one of the leading technologists at a BAE Systems unit that is now part of Selex Galileo, Finmeccanica’s sensor unit—said that the company would get into active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars when they could be made less costly and better-performing. Selex believes that day has come: The “better-performing” side is the wide-angle AESA design adopted for the Gripen NG and Typhoon fighters; “lower cost” is represented by AESAs that Selex Galileo has (uniquely) sold to the U.S.
Terrorism, smuggling and other activities are forcing countries with long coastlines to bolster surveillance capabilities. Coastal radars are effective assets, but many have shortcomings that affect coverage. ITT Electronic Systems of Van Nuys, Calif., has developed a coastal radar that it says broadens coverage, improves sector surveillance, is unaffected by adverse weather conditions, resists electronic countermeasures (ECM) and is interoperable with other radars and command and control (C2) systems.
Love is in the air: One wonders how many shipwrecked sailors regained the will to live upon seeing this 1960s-era SA 321 Super Frelon helicopter arrive to rescue them. The helo was one of several historic aircraft on display at Euronaval in Paris (see p. 39).
With the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) program likely to be hit by further delays on top of the 13-month slip in development announced in February, competitors are beginning to see hope for the future despite tight budgets worldwide. The JSF program office canceled an appearance at Defense IQ’s October fighter conference here. People talking about other programs, though, were no longer shy about benchmarking their favorite jets against the ambitious U.S.-led project, now five years behind its original schedule with a sixth in the offing.
The U.S. Army has for years poured millions of dollars into trying to build big, complex networks that can push huge amounts of information around the battlefield in real time, connecting small, dispersed units to headquarters, while linking every unmanned sensor and vehicle.
Modified weapons, sensors and robotics were among the highlights of ISDEF 2010, the Israel Defense exhibition which focused on defense and security technologies here Oct. 18-20. With the line between military operations and security missions blurring in many areas, ISDEF exhibitors unveiled equipment that could be used effectively by an army or a security force, even first-responders. Included here were dual-use technologies that detect and track concealed enemies or locate disaster victims under rubble.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency recently issued contracts to Raytheon and Boeing for demonstrations related to the Triple Target Terminator (T3) missile, intended as a high-speed, long-range fighter-launched missile, compatible with F-22 and F-35 weapon bays and effective against aircraft, cruise missiles and surface-to-air missile targets.
Russia’s Military Industrial Co. showed an upgraded 4 X 4 Tiger-M light multirole armored vehicle at the Interpolitex security exhibition in Moscow in October. The Russian armed forces are testing a baseline version of Tiger-M, and the first vehicles are slated for delivery by year-end. The main improvement is a more powerful Russian-made YaMZ 5347-10 turbodisel engine, which replaces a Cummins B-205. The designers corrected deficiencies found during trials and met additional specifications.
Ten years ago, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley conducted a novel experiment at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, a training facility at Twentynine Palms, Calif. The goal: create a network of micro-sensors capable of tracking vehicles on the ground. A small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) dropped tiny sensors—known as “smart dust” or “motes”—over a target area. The sensors tracked passing cars and relayed the data to the UAV flying overhead.
The U.K. Defense Ministry has begun fielding the first airborne thermal-imaging cameras from Selex Galileo with advanced Albion technology. RAF Chinook helicopters were equipped during an upgrade in June with Titan 385ES-HD airborne turrets containing high-definition SLX Merlin medium-waveband (3-5-micron) infrared (IR) cameras that use Albion detectors.
Soldiers may power small electronic devices by doing nothing more than flexing nanoscale generators. Work by Zhong Lin Wang, a professor at Georgia Tech, shows it is possible to generate a 3-volt charge by compressing a nanogenerator—in this case layers of nanowires built up on a thin metal electrode and a sheet of polymer film, in test samples measuring 2 X 1.5 cm. (0.78 X 0.59 in.). The nanogenerators use the piezoelectric effect, which creates a charge when specially fabricated structures are flexed or compressed.
Israel and the U.S. recently renewed their agreement to continue cooperative development of the David’s Sling weapon system (also known as Magic Wand), extending the agreement signed in 2008 that paved the way for development of an advanced short-range ballistic missile defense program.
Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) can replace divers in routine but potentially hazardous jobs. One example of the capabilities UUVs offer was displayed at Euronaval (see p. 39). Roving Bat from ECA of La Garde, France, is being upgraded with 32 ultrasonic sensors, installed on the front end, that oscillate against the hull of a ship to measure thickness and detect corrosion. ECA says the sensors can be programmed to flag millimeter thicknesses that fall short of a preset minimum, indicating corrosion. The upgrade will be available in 2011.
