December was a great news month. Editor-in-Chief Bill Sweetman posted a photo of a secret UAV we dubbed “The Beast of Kandahar” on Ares, and he and Aviation Week Senior Military Editor David A. Fulghum got an admission from the Air Force that it was the RQ-117 Sentinel built by Lockheed Martin. This brought recording-breaking traffic. We also followed the A400M’s first flight, which resulted in readers suggesting names for the aircraft. No prizes, unfortunately, but lots of insight from the responses. What’s in a name? Read for yourself:
There’s no shortage of issues to interpret and analyze when it comes to evolutionary and, occasionally, revolutionary technology applications, and no lack of knowledgeable people who understand their meaning and the influence they exert on operations. DTI asked six of the best to present their opinions on a range of topics. Their views are thoughtful and insightful.
The U.S. Navy’s EA-18G Growler has been declared operational, marking a new era in the Pentagon’s ability to conduct electronic attack missions. The aircraft’s introduction will bring relief to an overtasked and aging EA-6B fleet, which has been conducting escort jamming missions since the Air Force retired the EF-111 in 1998. The Navy declared initial operational capability for the Growler in September.
Navies of many countries are procuring amphibious vessels. The type of ship they want depends on what their armies need. French military shipyard DCNS is making gains with its Mistral-class multimission ship which, although not yet exported, has caught the eye of more than one foreign navy, notably Russia’s (DTI December 2009, p. 24). Contributing Editor Christina Mackenzie spoke with DCNS Business Development Director Michel Accary about the Mistral.
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.
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.
Device manufacturer Neuro Kinetics Inc. is collaborating with one U.S. military medical laboratory and three medical centers in a comprehensive research project to improve early diagnosis and treatment of mild traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). This is a critical research area, since an estimated 20% of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from mild TBIs.
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.
Adieu, Kosovo. NATO has wanted to say this for years, but it remains bogged down, maintaining a force to protect the Serb minority from Kosovars and stabilize the country.
As vice president of Raytheon’s Information Security Solutions unit, Steven K. Hawkins directs a team that sells information-assurance tools to civilian and military government users and private industry. In 30 years with Raytheon and its predecessors—mostly E-Systems—Hawkins has dealt with many sensitive technologies, his previous assignment being vice president for National Systems. Hawkins talked to DTI Editor-in-Chief Bill Sweetman about the threats that cyber-attacks pose to the defense enterprise and public security.
It would not be hyperbole to say that thousands of technologies are developed, fine-tuned, upgraded or otherwise advanced every year for the defense industry. Few other markets offer the demand, funding opportunities, manufacturing scale and product volume of defense. Every year the Pentagon and defense ministries worldwide routinely award contracts for huge amounts to initiate, continue or make production-ready new examples of scientific innovation.
Camero Ltd.’s Xaver 400 through-wall imaging radar is a hand-held sensor that provides real-time information, indicating the number and position of people inside a location from 8 meters (26 ft.) away. The 3-kg. (6.6-lb.) unit uses ultra-wideband signal processing to simultaneously track moving and static targets. The system provides 2D imaging and is intended for deployment with assault teams in urban areas. The imaging system penetrates common wall types.
The U.S. Army is fielding a “tool kit” of small unmanned aerial vehicles to a brigade in Afghanistan. The service is responding to requests for AeroVironment RQ-11 Ravens to fly higher and longer, and for a smaller platform to operate in conjunction with them. As the Army works its way through the acquisition process, it is testing the concept in the field first. The package consists of three small UAVs flown by the Army—Wasp, Raven and Puma, all from AeroVironment.
Fifty more Hawker Beechcraft MC-12 intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft are being sent to Afghanistan starting in January to provide “persistent eyes in the sky” as part of Task Force ODIN, according to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. The manned, unarmed turboprops will add to ODIN’s mix of manned and unmanned platforms that hunt for insurgents planting roadside bombs, while also providing overwatch for supply convoys and missions conducted by ground troops.
The MiG-35 fighter that will compete for India’s Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft program is the first Russian aircraft to be equipped with an advanced, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar, the Zhuk-AE, developed by Phazotron-NIIR Corp. Phazotron has been designing radars for 50 years and has a reputation as an innovator. Yuri Guskov, deputy general director and chief designer, spoke to Contributing Editor Maxim Pyadushkin about the development and performance of Phazotron’s AESA technology.
Security issues in Latin America have largely been on the back burner in American political and military circles for years, with continued U.S. funding for the Colombian military and the belligerence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez only briefly engaging American consciousness.
China will announce its annual military spending plans in March. If the 15% increase from 2009 is sustained, the officially acknowledged spending for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could surpass $80 billion. But as China has never published a detailed defense budget, Western estimates of the amount vary. One Pentagon estimate put spending in 2009 at more than $215 billion—second only to the U.S. Whatever the true amount, China is funding a multitude of programs.
We can write about complex, pressing and serious issues all week at DTI and our Ares blog, but as we just reconfirmed, there’s one topic that sends traffic through the roof: secret airplanes. A reasonable-quality photo of a classified unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), taken in late 2007 in Kandahar, popped up on a web site run by French magazine Liberation in December. After we ran the photo on Ares, with a little pushing and some help, Aviation Week editor Dave Fulghum extracted the identity of the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 from the Air Force (see p. 10).
For the U.S. Navy, 2010 will not be a year of radical change, says Rear Adm. Bill Landay, head of the Program Executive Office for Ships (PEO Ships). It will, however, be one of steady improvement and continued efforts to streamline the shipbuilding process.
Snipers are the bane of an infantryman’s existence. But in 2009, the U.S. Army began to turn to the Ears system, a 6.4-oz. palm-sized device that pinpoints a gunshot in less than 0.1 sec., even when mounted on a Humvee moving at 50 mph.
German defense expenditures in 2010 are unchanged from 2009. The previous coalition government, led by the Christian Democrats, approved a €31.1-billion ($45.2-billion) budget, an annual allocation that is expected to remain at this level until 2013. Although defense spending is not growing, troops on deployment have increased to 7,600 from 7,100 in November 2008, and efforts are underway to modernize their equipment.
Northeast Asia—encompassing Japan, North and South Korea, Taiwan and eastern China—has seen no major war since the end of the Korean conflict in 1953. However, small armed clashes have broken out every decade since as if to remind leaders that peace in the region, which lacks a formal multilateral security mechanism, is fragile beneath the surface.
Wrapped in secrecy for most of the decade following its 1998 test flight, Chengdu Aircraft Corp.’s J-10 multirole fighter is set to enter the global market. Following a development history that extends to the 1960s, and five years in the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), the J-10 may emerge in the market soon after 2010, offering capabilities approaching Lockheed Martin’s F-16C Block 60, at half the price.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working with Berry Plastics, has come up with an adhesive wallpaper that can keep a shelter’s walls from collapsing in an explosion, while containing debris. Installation of “X-Flex” is as simple as peeling off the backing and adhering the rollable sheets to the inside of brick or cinder-block walls, with fasteners at the edges for reinforcement. Army officials describe X-Flex as a fiber-reinforced polymer composite that works as a stretch-and-catch system.
After President Barack Obama told a crowd in Prague that he would “seek the security of the world without nuclear weapons,” he won the Nobel Peace Prize. How history judges that prize may depend largely on Obama’s ability to deliver on a second promise—to “immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the comprehensive test bantreaty” (CTBT). In 1999, the Senate rejected the treaty, largely along party lines.
