Israel is among the nations that rushed to Haiti’s aid in the aftermath of the Jan. 12 earthquake. The benefit a military can provide by lending battle-tested assets to civilian disaster relief was evident in the mobile medical and communication centers the Israel Defense Forces set up there. A $2.5-million satellite-based telecom system, which was guaranteed 24/7 access to one of Israel’s Amos satellites, became the medical group’s principal means of communication in Haiti and with support personnel in Israel.
On one side of the static display at Singapore’s February air show was a row of almost a dozen front-line combat aircraft. In terms of their basic design, the newest was the F-15, ordered into development just over 40 years ago. With “the local customer”—as the Singapore armed forces are known in the nation—thus far committed to the F-35, the rest of the fighter world stayed away, and news was to be found in the exhibit halls.
India made a request in February through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program to buy 145 M777 towed, ultra-light howitzers, a 155-mm. weapon, from BAE Systems. The deal, valued at $647 million, would include training, support, spare parts and test equipment. If the sale is approved, India will use the howitzers to modernize its armed forces, standardize heavy weapons and improve interoperability with U.S. forces that use the M777 as their primary means of indirect fire (see photo).
Scientists at the University of Oxford and Nova Bio-Pharma Technologies in Britain have proved the effectiveness of a simple and economical way of storing live-virus-based vaccine for at least a year without refrigeration or freezing. The technique, patented by Nova, is the Hypodermic Rehydration Injection System. Vaccine is mixed with trehalose and sucrose sugars and dried on a membrane. As it dries, water evaporates and the vaccine turns into syrup that solidifies on the carrier, forming a film.
It is likely that none of the Pentagon’s 10 combatant commands sparked as much consternation, or rumor-mongering, as did U.S. Africa Command (Africom) when it was formally announced in February 2007.
Given the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. has spent on its fleet of tactical wheeled vehicles since the start of hostilities in Afghanistan in 2001, and the changes those vehicles have undergone, it is amazing to think that the Pentagon still has no discernable strategy for where to take its tactical vehicle fleet in the future.
Today’s wars dominated the Fiscal 2011 U.S. defense budget, released in February. After last year’s cuts to weapons deemed “exquisite,” like the F-22, the latest budget further boosts unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and rotorcraft (see editorial, p. 50). The budget and decisions taken in the same month also show a Pentagon ready to get tough with old-fashioned industry practices and reward newcomers.
As we go to press, much of the U.S. East Coast has been pounded with snow, shutting down government offices in Washington—home base for DTI—and disrupting business and life for millions. But Ares soldiers on from the safe confines of each user’s office or home. The discussions that emerged on Ares last month reflected their usual diversity, and writers posted their usual opinionated comments, this time around on topics ranging from armored vehicles to Brazil’s fighter competition. Here are some examples. Marcase wrote:
Reviewed By Paul McLeary Decoding The New Taliban: Insights From the Afghan Field Edited By Antonio Giustozzi Columbia University Press, 2009 318 pp., $40.00
A project from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) called Fracture Putty aims to treat serious bone injuries, including compound and non-union fractures that may lead to amputation.
Remotely piloted helicopters may soon be as ubiquitous over battlefields as unmanned aerial vehicles. The latest to announce plans in this area is Sikorsky Innovations (SI), a new unit of Sikorsky Aerospace. SI is working on sensors for Black Hawk helicopters that will increase awareness of battlespace threats, permit landing in zero visibility, improve flight efficiency and provide diagnostic data that extends component life.
The Defense Dept.’s chief weapons buyer signed off on a program office for Russian aircraft on Jan. 19, and named the Army the lead service for Russian aircraft procurement. The decision standardizes management of what the Defense Dept. calls “nonstandard,” or Russian aircraft. The decision ends months of discussion over how to proceed with Russian aircraft, primarily Mi-17 helicopters (see photo) bought for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Those purchases, which were previously managed by different offices and services, are estimated to exceed $900 million.
NASA engineers are testing an energy-absorbing device, conceived for next-generation manned spacecraft, as a way of cushioning helicopters in crash landings. The device is described as an expandable airbag with an internal honeycomb construction, fabricated mostly of Kevlar aramid fiber. A recent crash test on a U.S. Army MD 500 helicopter loaded with four crash-test dummies yielded encouraging results for occupant safety and airframe survivability (see photos). The helicopter was raised to 35 ft.
One of the Royal Air Force’s newest command centers has no aircraft, boasts a staff of just 20 and operates from a windowless bunker in the heart of the U.K. Yet it is a key component in an increasingly vital international effort to survey, map and understand the largest and arguably most complex battle zone of all.
Russian aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi has started flight-testing the fifth-generation T-50 fighter developed in the PAK FA program. The first prototype made a 47-min. maiden flight from the airfield at Sukhoi’s Knaapo facility in Komsomolsk-on-Amur on Jan. 29. The fighter is slated to replace Russian air force Su-27s beginning in 2015.
The Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is feeling the need for speed to contend with the sprawl of Afghanistan, the unit’s commander, Col. Clay Hutmacher, told an Assn. of the U.S. Army aviation symposium here in January.
Hydrogels are biocompatible materials with numerous medical uses: as surgical wound dressings (see photo), a matrix for growing tissue, replacement for cartilage or for targeted drug delivery. A drawback, though, is weakness—being 95% water, scientists have been unable to combine the strength and flexibility necessary to advance applications. Researchers at Tokyo University, the University of California and other schools have developed a compound that may overcome this. An article in the Jan. 21 issue of Nature reports that the compound is called G binder.
The attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day pushed airport security to the forefront of public attention. Abdulmutallab’s ability to book a flight from Lagos to Detroit via Amsterdam with his “underwear bomb,” despite behavior that should have red-flagged him for questioning and inclusion on a U.S. international terrorist database, raises questions about the effectiveness of airport security.
Israel is always on high alert when it comes to the potential for war with its neighbors, particularly the two groups viewed as proxies of Iran and Syria: Hamas and Hezbollah. Though neither seems particularly eager for a full-blown conflict with Israel at present, defense analysts see a number of developments that could lead to another war with one or both, perhaps as soon as this year.
Dutch and Canadian forces in Afghanistan have been protecting their camps with the Deployable Integrated Sensors for Compound Security (Discus) system from Thales. The company, which delivered the system to the Dutch army under an urgent operational requirement in 2005, now offers an improved version of Discus called I3 Guard. I3 stands for integrated, interactive and interoperable. The system reportedly integrates any sensor or effector, and can be set up for virtually any mission or task.
The U.S. Defense Dept. is aggressively pursuing alternative energy programs that can provide stable and cost-effective power for numerous operations. One source under study by the Navy is ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), which converts the solar radiation collected in the surface of tropical water into electricity.
Regional battles and asymmetric warfare are pushing naval conflicts to the littorals, where a range of tactics that rely as much on numbers for success as firepower are evolving to threaten capital ships. Key to these tactics are small boats, which have a history of successful deployment in hit-and-run attacks against materially superior adversaries.
Elbit Systems has begun shipping its new software-defined radio (SDR) as part of a large order for an undisclosed military customer. The latest configuration of the radio, designated SDR-7200, was unveiled last month at the Singapore Airshow and at Defexpo India. The encrypted, frequency-hopping, multichannel radio is designed for operation on tactical land, air and naval platforms.
