The Pentagon is looking at innovative technologies to improve bunker-busting munitions. The objective is to develop bombs that burrow more efficiently than current ordnance to reach deep targets. Design, propulsion and casing materials will determine the penetration capabilities of new ordnance. The biggest bunker-buster bomb in the U.S. Air Force arsenal right now is the 5,000-lb. BLU‑122, which reaches a depth of 20-plus ft.
The U.S. and Israel have started development of an upper-stage component to Israel’s Arrow-3 missile defense architecture. Arieh Herzog, director of Israel’s missile defense program, says the main element will be a highly maneuverable exoatmospheric interceptor that zeros in on an incoming missile. The decision to add the component, which will be jointly developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Boeing, stems from a study conducted in 2006-07 that identified a need for it in Israel’s ballistic missile defense system.
Israel’s defense ministry confirms that the Iron Dome counter-rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) interceptor system passed recent qualification tests. The air force expects to receive the first systems this month, and air defense command’s Iron Dome battalion is scheduled to reach initial operational capability in May. Iron Dome was developed and produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The Iron Dome battalion will deploy the first unit to protect the area bordering northern Gaza (which includes Sderot in southern Israel).
The reverberations from Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s decision last year to cancel the Pentagon’s ill-starred $160-billion Future Combat Systems (FCS) program have been felt nowhere more deeply than by the team tasked with designing the program’s Manned Ground Vehicle (MGV), which was billed as the Army’s infantry carrier of the future.
After almost five years of combat in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province, places like the Arghandab Valley, the Panjwayi and Zhari have assumed a meaning for the Canadian military similar to what Fallujah and Najaf conjure in the minds of American forces who served in Iraq—places of loss, bravery and tactical victories with little strategic gain.
Experts forecast that hundreds of millions of video surveillance cameras will be installed worldwide in coming years, as users—whether military, business, industrial or government—seek to provide greater security and thwart terrorist attacks and criminal activity. The main problem with this blanket coverage is that there will be too few trained people available to monitor every camera.
“It was not our finest hour,” admits U.K. Defense Minister Bob Ainsworth, of the protracted procurement of eight Royal Air Force Mk3 Chinook helicopters, the first two of which he unveiled at RAF Odiham on Jan. 13. The Mk3s, ordered for special forces in 1995, arrived in 2001, but software issues prevented their being certified as airworthy. They could only be flown above 1,000 ft. and in good weather. After years of delay, the airframes underwent reversion, stripping out the digital cockpits and inserting Mk2 analog equipment.
Bioterror is a big concern to civil and defense institutions and the focus of a muscular, multidisciplinary research effort. The fear spawned by a few bioterror attacks in the U.S.—e.g., the Baghwan botulism spread via salad bars in rural Oregon in the late 1980s, letters containing anthrax powder in the wake of 9/11—show what an outsized effect bioterror has. The prospect of a disease invisibly stalking people and animals is grim, and outbreaks generate considerable attention.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is showing the new Bird-Eye 650 mini-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the Singapore Airshow this month. The drone is an enhanced version of the Bird-Eye 400, a mini-UAV that IAI introduced a few years ago. The 650 carries the same payload, but flies faster and higher than the 400 and has greater range and endurance. (IAI has not posted performance figures.) The drone operates for 3 hr. on rechargeable batteries. IAI flight-tested a 650 powered by fuel cells and reports endurance of up to 7 hr.
Lockheed Martin Corp. closed out 2009 with a bang—one that may be heard around the world if the need arises. The Missiles and Fire Control division of Grand Prairie, Tex., received a $968.7-million firm-fixed-price contract on Dec. 30, for Fiscal 2010 production of Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-3 tactical missiles and related equipment. The work, contracted by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command, includes upgrades to PAC-3 systems in Germany, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan, as well as the U.S.
Over the last few years, northern elephant sea lions and harbor seals have turned the beaches of San Nicolas Island, 60 mi. off the coast of Southern California, into a pinniped playland, where the creatures bask in the Sun and breed in growing numbers. San Nicolas, a 10-mi.-long strip, also happens to be an active weapons test range for the U.S. Navy. The mammals share their love nest with supersonic sea-skimming drone targets flying overhead at Mach 2.5.
Golden hamsters in Montana labs are lining up on the front lines of peptide research in animal trials aimed at taming a virulently lethal virus carried in bat urine. The recently discovered virus prompts concern about a bioterror attack using infected bats or an accidental outbreak given the easy movement of foreign species in a global economy.
There is no equivocation in how the Israeli military views cyber-security. “Using computer networks for espionage is as important to warfare today as the advent of air support was to warfare in the 20th century,” says Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, chief of military intelligence.
Hand-fired rockets with explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) can defeat heavily armored vehicles. This is because the EFP has a concave liner that transforms after firing into a hypervelocity jet of metal that penetrates armor. The EFP has drawbacks, though: The forming process is inefficient and cannot be controlled to maximize destruction; and the metal jet breaks up over distance. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) seeks a more effective EFP.
As India plans to hold trials for towed howitzers in late February, the push for towed and ultra-light guns is drawing interest from two contenders, Singapore Technologies (ST) Kinetics and BAE Systems.
Warfare has driven the design and construction of some of the biggest and most complex machines of their time. No contemporary device matched a sailing warship of the 18th century, a 1900s dreadnought or a B-29 bomber. Despite all this practice, you wonder sometimes if we’re any good at it.
Researchers at the University of Liverpool and two other U.K. colleges are developing a prototype bomb-screening machine that detects explosives in luggage by their atomic composition. The device is based on the fact that explosives are organic and contain nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and hydrogen, which comprise unique elemental formulations. The National Academy of Sciences reports that only two of 90,000 compositions in the Aldrich chemical catalog have the same elemental composition as explosives.
Flight tests and payload evaluations have resumed on an innovative unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) called Zephyr, which is designed to prove that an ultralight solar-powered platform can be operated economically for high-altitude, long-endurance missions. The UAV was developed by defense contractor Qinetiq North America, and is being tested by a U.S./U.K. team at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. Zephyr, powered by twin propellers, is made of carbon fiber, has a wingspan of 75 ft., weighs less than 100 lb., and can be launched by hand.
Tank: U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (Tradoc) Location: Ft. Monroe, Va. Profile: Tradoc develops warfighting doctrine and integrates concepts and capabilities to assure a campaign-capable expeditionary army. Most people would not regard the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command as a think tank. But its analyses and publications are as influential—even more so—as those of civilian peers when it comes to the number of people, amount of money and political decisions they influence.
Japan’s 2010 defense budget was submitted twice. The first request, for ¥4.7 trillion ($52.3 billion), a 3% increase over 2009, was made on Aug. 31 by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In the election one day earlier, the LDP lost its 54-year grip on power to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which won by a landslide on pledges to provide European-style social benefits, cut wasteful outlays and ensure that elected officials, and not bureaucrats, make decisions. The DPJ discarded the budget request and submitted a new one on Oct.
Elbit Systems worked with Humvee manufacturer AM General and armor specialist Plasan in development of Legatus, a light tactical reconnaissance, all-terrain armored vehicle, assembled on a Humvee platform. The air-transportable 4 X 4, on display at Expomil 2009 in Bucharest, Romania, last November, is designed for reconnaissance and relaying real-time intelligence to tactical commanders. It provides vision-based terrain scouting and target acquisition, and is capable of long-range operation over harsh terrain in all weather conditions, day and night.
Development of strategic nuclear forces remains the top priority for the Russian military. Within the nuclear triad, the military has a big stake in reinforcing naval strategic forces, although the other two elements, ground-based missiles and strategic bombers, are also being modernized.
While the trajectories of American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan are heading in opposite directions in 2010—with U.S. forces slated to begin drawing down in Iraq at the same time that President Barack Obama is sending 30,000 new troops to Afghanistan—the missions in both countries will nevertheless resemble each another in one crucial respect. The name of the game these days is building host nation capacity.
The costs of war dominate the U.S. defense budget, explaining why major programs (see pp. 51-56) must fight for survival, even with $660 billion plus flowing into the Pentagon in Fiscal 2010.
Three Australian PhD. students used their skills in robotics to develop a humanoid target that the Australian military could use for live-fire training. Called Rover, the robot moves as fast as a human, stops suddenly, avoids obstacles and behaves unpredictably—just like an insurgent would in urban combat.
