India’s defense procurement policy on offsets is intended to leverage the country’s military buying power to acquire advanced technology. The offsets requirement, coupled with the scheduled release in May of India’s Defense Procurement Policy 2008, which outlines procurement plans and expenditures, has many companies intensifying efforts to find local partners so they can bid on contracts.
Sustained terror attacks can wreak psychological and political havoc on a nation. An example of this is Israel, where the continuing barrage of unguided rockets launched at civilians, by Hamas from Gaza and Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, has sparked intense debates about the country’s ability to protect its citizens. According to some sources, more than 8,000 rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza alone since 2001. Israel’s military strikes back quickly, and occasionally kills rocket crews before or during a launch.
Two stories in this issue highlight an important fact about airpower, one that might illuminate the contentious debate about the relevance of military aviation in current and future conflicts. The U.S. Air Force, for the first time in almost 30 years, is spending real money on a new bomber: subsonic, survivable, with a bigger ordnance load than a formation of fighters (see p. 16). In other news, the classic Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) seems to be giving way, in many missions, to its bigger sibling, the Predator B or Reaper (see p. 44).
Driven by demand for surveillance and realization that crew training is the limiting factor in Predator operations, the U.S. Air Force and export customers are shifting attention to the more productive, turbine-powered Predator B/Reaper unmanned aerial vehicle from the Predator A. General Atomics-ASI is ramping up Predator B production to three a month from two. USAF requests nine MQ-9As in the Fiscal 2009 budget, following 12 in 2007, plus another eight aircraft under the Global War on Terror supplemental budget for 2008.
Israel is upgrading rocket battalions of an undisclosed former Soviet republic, as part of a large-scale arms transfer, sources tell DTI. One system has been delivered. The battalions are equipped with Russian Grad rockets on mobile launchers. Upgrades are based on Israel Military Industries’ Lynx, an autonomous, modular artillery system that fires rockets and tactical missiles from one platform. The system deploys LAR-160 rockets with IMI’s Trajectory Correction System.
The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and Special Operations Command are sponsoring programs aimed at demonstrating technology for a UAV that flies for several days at 65,000 ft., with a 400-500-lb. sensor payload. The teams are AeroVironment and Aurora Flight Sciences, which is working with Boeing. Both use liquid hydrogen (LH2) fuel.
The NGB has been described as having a 2,000-naut.-mi. range and 14,000-28,000-lb. weapon load, a combination that could be met by an aircraft resembling a scaled-up X-47B that’s about half the size of a B-2.
Bourges is the center of France. It is also the heart of French efforts to counter the impact of improvised explosive devices. Just outside the medieval city, 800 military and civilian staff form the ETBS (Etablissement Technique de Bourges), the land weapons and protection technologies test center of the French defense procurement agency DGA, which is rapidly gearing up to support counter-IED programs and prepare for next-generation threats.
French companies Bertin Technologies and CEA, working with the National Institute of Advanced Technologies and the DGA defense procurement agency, developed a digital electro-optical sensor in which each of 40,000 pixels has a dedicated processor. The sensor, known as Caladiom (a French acronym for “long-range sensor for detection and identification of mobile targets”) has a programmable digital retina of 200 X 200 pixels. The detector array is controlled by electronic architecture and consumes just 1.8 watts of energy.
The development of top-end submarine sonars is part high-tech, part black art and part a bespoke business with minuscule production. Which is the problem facing Thales Underwater Systems Ltd. The unit began work in the 1980s on a new sonar for the Royal Navy’s Trafalgar-class subs, to restore their edge over improved Soviet boats.
Israel’s Integrated Advanced Soldier program is procuring an array of equipment to facilitate communications between dismounted combat teams and command centers. The equipment is modular, and designed for use in urban and open terrain. The program, run by the government’s defense directorate for research and development (DDRD) and Elbit Systems, began with a feasibility study in 2003, which was followed a year later with a combat lab. The first kits are now being delivered and will be used in company and battalion exercises this year.
The U.S. Air Force successfully tested an experimental data-transmission technology from Rockwell Collins that allowed two F-22 Raptors to communicate with ground stations. The test occurred during the JEFX (Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment) 08-3 exercise at Nellis AFB, Nev., in April. F-22s are not equipped with conventional data links, which can be detected by enemy sigint. They use a narrow-beam intra-flight datalink (IFDL) to relay data and synchronize situational pictures between each other.
Small European air forces are increasingly seeking innovative ways of staging realistic live-flying exercises for their fighter squadrons, due to weather restrictions and environmental rules that restrict training. One example is the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF), which completed an extended period of live-flying training exercises in North America in May.
German federal research chief Thomas Rachel has set a security agenda with an array of projects weighted toward probing the terahertz spectrum in an effort to develop see-through scanners that detect weapons and explosives. Rather than go for a home run with one detector that does it all, Berlin is making small bets around the country, with teams looking to produce different devices that do well-defined jobs. For a nation with a limited and sensitive defense appetite, and great engineering and scientific talent, there is logic to this approach.
Two weeks after Lockheed Martin issued a press release assuring the world that all was well with Joint Strike Fighter cost projections, the JSF Executive Steering Board announced at a meeting in Amsterdam that the systems development and demonstration (SDD) and testing phases will probably be extended by another year. The decision won’t be made formal before this fall.
TDA Armaments has orders for its new 120-mm. 2R2M rifled-mounted recoiling mortar from Oman and another Middle East customer. Oman ordered the system for integration in VAB 6 X 6 armored personnel carriers from Renault Trucks Defense. The second customer, understood to be Saudi Arabia, will use the system to modernize M113 mortar carriers as part of a fleet upgrade program. In a recent demonstration for DTI in Bourges, France, the 2R2M fired several rounds. It has a range of 13 km. (8 mi.) and terminal effect that “almost matches a 155-mm. howitzer,” TDA claims.
The big story online last month was Ares Goes Dutch Again. Editor-in-Chief Bill Sweetman wrote about an Ares entry being cited in the Dutch parliament on Apr. 9, concerning cost overruns for the Joint Strike Fighter. An online debate resulted, which yielded 27 comments as of this writing (May 9). Our editors helped to stoke the exchange with their expert commentary. Here are a few great observations (edited for space) from readers.
Italy’s Cavour aircraft carrier is the first ship to install the new RAN-40L radar from Selex Sistemi Integrati. It was developed to meet several needs: long range, precision detection, resistance to electronic countermeasures (ECM), low weight and economy. The navy set out to replace its 40-year-old RAN-3L radar (military designation MM/SPS-768), a 1-2-GHz. L-band (NATO D-band) system, with one that would be initially installed on the Cavour and two De La Penne-class destroyers during mid-life upgrades.
In order to have a communications network like the one the U.S. Army’s $160-billion Future Combat Systems program is trying to build, you first need to gather the information to send through the system. Key subsystems in this area are two Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS): the tactical sensor and the urban sensor. Manufactured by Textron Defense Systems, the tactical UGS and urban UGS are going through testing at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. As of May, the company had delivered about 150 sensors to the Army.
Armies are building up artillery rocket arsenals with weapons that combine increased range and greater accuracy with improved mobility and fast launch capabilities. Major players such as the U.S., Israel, Turkey and Russia are adding technologies for rapid firing, variable launch trajectories, advanced navigation, multiple warheads and precision targeting.
The French defense procurement agency DGA plans to award the first contracts early next year in France’s Scorpion land forces transformation program. The €10-billion ($16-billion) program will overhaul the army’s battle capabilities through acquisition of next-generation C4I (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence) systems, missiles, armored vehicles and drones, and by upgrading legacy systems. Scorpion is scheduled for implementation between 2009 and 2025.
Two main battle tanks will enter service in Japan and South Korea in the next decade, each designed for improved mobility in its country of origin. Japan’s TK-X tank will be road- and rail-transportable, while South Korea’s K2 Black Panther will be capable of deep-water fording.
The Russian air force has taken another step in modernizing its fleet of MiG-31 Foxhound interceptors, which entered service in the early 1980s. The first two upgraded MiG-31BMs were delivered to a training center at Savasleika air base in March, where operational tests and evaluations—as well as air- and ground-crew training—take place. The updates focus on the Zaslon weapon-control system, which uses phased-array radar, and is capable of simultaneously tracking 10 targets while engaging four at a range of 110 naut. mi.
Technology plays a crucial role in defeating improvised explosive devices, but training soldiers to identify IEDs, along with those who build and plant them, is the most important way to counter the deadly devices. This was the consensus of speakers at the annual technology outreach conference of the Pentagon’s Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (Jieddo). The most important part of counter-IED operations, said U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, is “good, old-fashioned training.”
The link between the Army’s Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW) and Sandia National Laboratories is the hypersonic boost-glide vehicle (BGV), the core technology of the Prompt Global Strike program. BGV is an old technology, first tested more than 60 years ago, but one that has yet to find an operational application.
