Removing expended ordnance from ranges is time-consuming, costly and dangerous. That’s why millions of acres of land are in disuse. To solve the problem, the Pentagon’s Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise is sponsoring a competition with $2 million in prizes to competitors that build robots capable of clearing ranges of ordnance and related debris. Called the Robotics Range Clearance Competition (R2C2), the competition is scheduled for Camp Guernsey, Wyo., in August and September 2011.
Reviewed By Paul McLeary Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War BY Matt Gallagher Da Capo Press, 2010 310 pp., $24.95 For all of the rules and regulations the U.S. Army hands down, there is no one correct way to lead soldiers in combat. Leadership styles become especially varied when combat involves battling a counterinsurgency.
Editor-in-Chief Bill Sweetman was at Malmen air base, Sweden, for the 100th anniversary of Swedish aviation. The newly opened air force museum at Malmen houses the cannon-pitted wreckage of a Swedish C-47 shot down by a Soviet MiG-15 on a signals intelligence mission in 1952. The remains are displayed as they were found in the Baltic Sea 51 years later.
It must come from the sea,” said the chief of naval operations, Adm. Gary Roughead, recently about any new U.S. Navy procurement, leaving open to interpretation the programs and projects that will be included in coming budgets. The Navy is “reimagining naval power,” he said. “With cyber-power and unmanned systems we must ask ourselves fundamental questions.” If new capabilities proposed for procurement do not “come from the sea,” Roughead is not interested.
Two dozen Eurocopter EC635 light helicopters will be the first to integrate new transponders from parent company EADS to enhance air traffic control and friendly identification. The LTR-400-A transponder weighs 2.8 kg. (6.1 lb.) and will be delivered by year-end. Bernd Wenzler, chief executive of the defense electronics division of EADS Defense & Security, said in a statement that a more reliable transponder can curtail friendly fire incidents.
Cozy relations between Syria and Iran have many in Israel believing that the potential for war in the near future between Israel and at least two of its enemies, Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the southwest, both proxies of Damascus and Tehran, has significantly increased. Add to this the looming threat of Iran’s nuclear program to Israel (and neighboring countries) and the doomsday boilerplate directed at the country throughout the region, and it’s easy to see why “existential threat” is a state of mind among Israel’s defense planners.
Advances in rifles, bullets and combat optics herald a golden age for long-range shooting—so much so that snipers are recording kills at distances that were once unimaginable. The latest publicly acknowledged record for a long-range kill is 8,120 ft.: in Afghanistan by Cpl. Craig Harrison of the British Army’s Household Cavalry. The previous record was 7,972 ft. (2,430 meters), held by a Canadian sniper in Afghanistan in 2002. Harrison actually took out two Taliban wielding a machine gun and fired a third shot into the weapon to disable it.
Logistics and technology company ESG of Furstenfeldbruck, Germany, is upgrading an airborne workstation for helicopter search and rescue. The new version of the mission tactical workstation, rolled out at the Berlin air show in June, features wide-frequency reception capabilities and camera systems integrated with infrared, inertial, low-frequency and low-light sensors. The workstation is designed for German army CH-53 helicopters (Sikorsky Super Stallions, modified by Eurocopter), the workhorse of the service.
India is looking to acquire a range of surveillance systems for land and sea, as well as develop its own Airborne Early Warning and Control (AEWC) systems and unmanned vehicles that will give what is reputed to be the second-largest littoral- and ground-surveillance force in the world access to greater capabilities.
Having yielded last year to Russian pressure and abandoned plans for a third ground-based launch site for high-performance interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe, the Pentagon is now planning a new high-performance interceptor, also for deployment in Europe.
Selex Sistemi Integrati (SSI) is developing passive air-surveillance radar with the goal of producing a bistatic system—one in which the receiver is widely separated from “non-cooperative” transmitters. The passive covert location (PCL) radar builds on research that was carried out in the 1980s. Bistatic radar can be traced to the 1930s.
Two years ago, Taylor W. Lawrence took over as leader of Raytheon’s Missile Systems business. He manages a vast, diverse and changing portfolio of projects, from infantry weapons to cruise missiles, and with a wide field of new opportunities in areas such as non-lethal weapons, directed energy and missile defense. Raytheon’s missile enterprise is one of the most global operations in the U.S.
The U.S. Army has long relied on a complex Unix-based computer program to simulate cargo drops and develop data for missions. Called the NASA Decelerator System Simulation (DSS), the legacy software is difficult to learn and the analysis process that accompanies it is complex, with some functions having to be manipulated and plotted with external software. Moreover, because the Unix operating system is not widely used, availability of the software is limited, making it difficult for those involved with cargo drops to practice and learn.
There is no way that a nation with a population on the same scale as New York, and not on a war footing, can support a full range of nationally developed weapons. Since this is impossible, it is worth looking at how Sweden does it.
Demand for vehicle power increases as protection requirements go up. Two recent technology demonstrator programs, funded by the U.K. Defense Ministry and overseen by contractor Qinetiq, point the way to a quickly adaptable set of protective systems based on “plug-and-play” software architecture that will allow a rapid response to changing threats while enabling troop-carrying vehicles to generate significantly more energy to power them.
Situational awareness dictates that airborne surveillance data should be received in real time—but this isn’t always possible. One problem is that the multi-gigabyte size of image files means they must be stored on board an aircraft until it lands or transmitted by radiofrequency links in highly compressed formats that could lose data. MIT Lincoln Laboratory has developed an air-to-ground laser communication system that achieved initial error-free transfers of 100-gigabyte image files in seconds at ranges of 15-60 km. (9-37 mi.).
Surveillance systems that cover wide areas and store images usually require expensive cameras and costly processing software (see photo). Research by NASA Dryden Flight Research Center and SemQuest Inc. of Colorado Springs points to an effective low-power, low-cost alternative. As reported in the June 10 issue of NASA Tech Briefs, researchers developed a “string-of-lights” system in which more than 100 cameras similar to those in cell phones connect to a common power and data wire.
A hot, late-spring sun shines on the big hill sloping from the House of Flowers, the shaded resting place of former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito. Three busses packed with Serbian police in black riot gear and shields pull into the parking lot. Dozens of riot squad troops file out as onlookers pause to see what’s going on. But it turns out they’re not here for a civil disturbance in the shadow of the old marshal, or to pay their respects, but for a soccer match.
It’s never a good day when air strikes fail to hit their targets. U.S. services have been working through Joint Forces Command to close the loop in battlefield communication and keep air strikes accurate. In January, they reached a standardization milestone that outlined specifications for Digitally Aided Close Air Support (Dacas), such as for a baseline messaging network and how to digitally exchange tactical still imagery.
Rheinmetall recently took the wraps off its new anti-mine/anti-IED (improvised explosive device) tool: A mission module and sensor package paired with a robot arm that extends 14 meters (45 ft.). Dubbed KARS (the German acronym for ordnance detection and clearing system), the device will be mounted on the chassis of a GTK Boxer, the 8 X 8 Dutch-German armored fighting vehicle. Rheinmetall says KARS can detect suspicious objects at 300 meters; while stationary, it searches for explosives within a radius of 10 meters. Sensors scan for objects buried up to 1.5 ft.
The development of Malaysia’s new multiple-version 8 X 8 wheeled armored fighting vehicle (AFV), the AV-8, within the schedule specified by the defense ministry will be daunting for DRB-Hicom Deftech. The local company signed a letter of intent during the Defense Services Asia 2010 expo here in April launching the $2.4-billion program that calls for an initial 257 vehicles in different configurations and a total requirement of at least 500 (DTI June, p. 27).
The U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) has developed a crane for offloading cargo from ships at sea that is as productive as cranes operated from land or ships in port. Key to the operation of the Large Vessel Interface Lift-On/Lift-Off (LVI Lo/Lo) Crane, are sensors that detect crane, payload and ship positions, and an automated motion-compensation system for rapid, at-sea transfer of containers and other cargo.
