U.S. lawmakers appear to have put the last nail in the coffin on the $10-billion, 30-year-old Yucca Mountain nuclear repository project, passing a bill forbidding radioactive waste disposal at the Nevada site. The Energy Dept. is left with a very expensive hollow mountain. And from a security perspective, decades of nuclear fuel is still scattered across the country. At least 25 reactors have “temporary” storage on-site. Two decades ago officials had decided to store those fuel rods at Yucca Mountain. That option is now closed.
Maryland health officials say the state will be the first in the U.S. to have full front-line participation in an early-warning data network that alerts authorities to bioterror attacks and disease outbreaks.
One of the most important innovations in the FBI’s post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts consists of a portable workstation and a miniaturesatellite dish. Called the Quick Capture Platform (QCP), it electronically scans fingerprints and beams them to a database here.
The largest and most advanced deployment of antiballistic-missile assets in the region was the central feature of Operation Juniper Cobra, the biennial military exercise conducted by Israel and the U.S. Experts say this year’s operation, which ran from Oct. 12-16, was designed to test the countries’ joint ballistic missile defense (BMD) capabilities and send a message of deterrence to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. Iran, in fact, held war games of its own shortly before Juniper Cobra, which included firing missiles that could reportedly hit Israel.
Space imagery used to be the domain of a handful of nations that could afford expensive and ambitious satellite-development programs. This has changed dramatically in the last decade, as commercial providers started offering relatively high-resolution imagery. Almost every nation can now obtain satellite pictures of neighboring countries, and in the process monitor sites of interest and benefit from up-to-date mapping techniques.
The camera didn’t catch the helicopters landing, or see the soldiers piling out and securing the landing zone. The unblinking eye attached to a U.S. Army Warrior Alpha unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) circling thousands of feet above the Afghan countryside was too busy keeping watch over the high mud walls of a compound the soldiers were preparing to assault.
Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has unveiled an innovative weapon that provides dismounted and maneuvering forces with a precision attack weapon. The main component is the new, vertically launched Jumper supersonic guided missile, 180 cm. (70.8 in.) long and 15 cm. in diameter. Each launch unit covers a 50-km. (31-mi.) radius and uses vertical launch to set the missile on course without prelaunch slewing or elevation. The launch unit can be loaded with several types of missiles equipped with antipersonnel, antistructure or penetrating warheads.
International pressure is driving militaries to adopt alternatives to cluster bombs. The weapons are controversial because they leave unexploded ordnance (UXO) on a battlefield, where it can injure or kill civilians. Treaties may limit their use, and suppliers are looking at ways of adapting weapons to new requirements. These could include a shift toward unitary warheads, enhanced fuzes and fail-safe measures that eliminate UXOs.
The Air Force Assn. convention here last month caught leaders, planners and marketers at a difficult time: waiting to see what the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) will have to say about USAF programs and airpower.
The U.S. Army destroyed 4 million lb. of chemical weapons and cleaned up its disposal site in the Pacific. But it’s being targeted over handling of chemical weapons at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado. State health officials and the attorney general filed two lawsuits last summer, reports the Pueblo Chieftain. The first seeks a final date for weapons disposal; the second asks for more stringent monitoring and storage. The depot stores 780,000 shells containing mustard blister agents that are old and potentially leaky.
Deliveries of Raytheon’s Excalibur guided 155-mm. projectiles to the U.S. Army have restarted after a pause due to problems with the inertial guidance platform, thanks in large measure to a small U.K. company, Atlantic Inertial Systems. AIS is delivering 200 IMU02 inertial measurement units (IMUs) to Raytheon per month against two 1,000-unit contracts—one for new rounds and one covering retrofits of rounds already delivered.
One difficulty in keeping tabs on rogue states in their efforts to develop nuclear weapons is that underground explosions are hard to detect. A program led by the U.S. Energy Dept.’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is focusing on improving the regional seismic travel time (RSTT) predictions used for earthquakes to detect and locate underground explosions. The goal is to separate the physical characteristics of a detonation from natural and manmade seismic activity (such as the detonation of 2 million lb. of ordnance in Iraq, below).
“Everything in war is very simple,” wrote Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz. “But the simplest thing is difficult.” Put another way, a soldier’s job in combat is to kill or capture the enemy, but how a soldier goes about this is rarely simple, and with new battlefield technologies, the ways in which this goal can be accomplished have expanded—and been complicated—tremendously.
If terrorists ever detonate a dirty bomb in a city, one factor that will complicate cleanup is grime—the dirt that accumulates everywhere in an urban environment. A research operation led by Ted Sykes of the Canadian Center for Security Science is conducting computer simulations in Ottawa and New Brunswick, and experiments in laboratories across Canada, to determine how complicated cleanup would be and, consequently, how long it might take to restore a city to some semblance or normality after an attack.
Thales U.K. has been awarded a £150-million ($245-million) supply and in-service support contract for the Surveillance and Target Acquisition (STA) suite of FIST, the U.K. Defense Ministry’s Future Integrated Soldier Technology program. The STA suite will, Thales says, comprise weapon sights, observation equipment and target-location systems from various suppliers that are designed primarily for close-quarters battle (CQB).
Of all the demands made on British armed forces in Afghanistan, the need for forward air controllers (FACs) is among the most pressing. So it is surprising to find that the Joint Forward Air Control Training and Standards Unit (Jfactsu), which trains FACs from every branch of the U.K. military, is housed in a dilapidated prefab building here.
REVIEWED BY PAUL MCLEARY THE NEW COUNTERINSURGENCY ERA: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars BY DAVID H. UCKO Georgetown University Press, 2009 268 pp., $44.95
It could be that Brazil likes France’s attitude toward technology transfer. Or maybe it’s that French submarines, helicopters and fighter aircraft are the best, or the cheapest. Or perhaps Brazil likes being treated as an equal partner when it comes to procurement, or that the two nations’ presidents are best buddies.
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The U.S. military is testing applications for a novel class of materials that have high-performance properties ranging from impact strength and heat resistance to adhesion. Called geopolymers, they are being considered for applications that include runway repair, fireproof coatings and blocking shockwaves.
Work is underway at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to use flashes of laser light to remotely create underwater sound. The resulting acoustics could be used for communication, navigation and imaging. The process of converting light into sound begins by concentrating laser pulses in water. As small amounts of water absorb laser energy, they ionize and become superheated. This creates tiny steam explosions that release 22-dB. sound pulses. The process is controlled in two ways.
Marines in battle-torn Helmand Province are finding that the size and heft of mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicles offer limited utility. The terrain of the region, coupled with the nature of their counterinsurgency campaign, is forcing Marines to spend most of their time on foot instead, despite the threat of buried bombs.
South Korea is reviving its KFX fighter program, with a potential production run of up to 250. If approved, the KFX will be developed as a Generation 4.5 rather than a fifth-generation fighter, making it simpler and cheaper than the original concept by dropping requirements for F-35-like stealth. Instead, the new fighter will combine a moderately reduced radar image with electronic jamming and agility.
Mini-Spike, the smallest of Rafael’s electro-optically guided missiles, is the first antipersonnel, precision attack, wireless guided missile for operation at company and platoon levels. The man-portable unit weighs 12 kg. (26 lb.). The system has a command and launch unit (CLU) that facilitates target acquisition and missile control. A soldier carries the CLU and two missiles—each weighs 4 kg. Other members of the unit carry spare missiles. An imaging sensor is in the transparent bubble in the forward section of the missile.
