Often regarded as a “poor man’s artillery,” the mortar is being upgraded with new technologies and applications to enhance accuracy and firepower. Among features being added to the weapon are GPS-coordinated fire-control systems, a precise laser-guided round and under-armor models designed so that tank crews can harass or destroy an enemy with indirect fire from the safety of their vehicles.
Got Exoskeleton? Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a prototype exoskeleton that relieves 80% of the burden of an 80-lb. pack. This makes it handy for dismounted soldiers, but there is a tradeoff: It impedes a walker’s gait and requires a user to consume 10% more oxygen than normal. The spring-based device, however, only requires a 1-watt power source. Solve the problem with the gait, and it could be viable.
Hide in Plain Sight Invisibility cloaks have been making news this year, with university researchers around the world demonstrating the usefulness of metamaterials, small coils and wires that bend light waves around an object to make it seem invisible. But the U.K. Ministry of Defense confirms that its Royal Engineers and scientists from research agency Qinetiq are testing technology that makes tanks and troops invisible by simpler means: cameras and projectors.
A U.S. biotech firm is the latest company to develop a compound aimed at stanching a common and deadly battlefield injury—arteries ripped open by bullets and shrapnel.
Programmable Matter The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is launching a program that will enable mesoscale building blocks to reversibly assemble into 3D objects. The capability could be used by soldiers to create an “instant toolkit” in which an amorphous material is programmed to turn into a wrench, screw driver or hammer on demand and then revert to its original form for reuse. Mesoparticle-based construction is the key because mesoparticles, which are up to 1 cm., can have a variety of shapes, sizes and compositions, Darpa says.
Sniper Boost Much has been written about the Pentagon’s rising R&D budget for technologies that counter snipers, but less is known about how well U.S. snipers perform in Iraq and Afghanistan. It turns out that heavy crosswinds are, not surprisingly, a problem. A sniper can miss a target just 400 meters (1,312 ft.) away in winds of only 5-10 mph.
Improvised explosive devices (IED) cause more casualties among U.S. forces than any other weapons in Iraq. But even though there’s been a six-fold increase in IEDs, bomb handlers are clearing half of them, with the casualty rate holding steady over the past two years.
Laser Avenger The U.S. Army and Boeing Corp. demonstrated a new vehicle-mounted laser that can defeat roadside bombs and unexploded ordnance. The Laser Avenger was successfully tested in September at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., where it destroyed five targets and two small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) on the ground. Laser Avenger, with a 1-kw. solid-state laser, proves that directed-energy weapons are ready to deploy, according to Boeing, which developed the system in less than eight months.
Commanders directing stability and counterinsurgency operations in hostile territory sometimes face a difficult choice: Should they take more troops and more money to parcel out to locals for reconstruction, or take fewer troops and less cash, but a vastly superior communications network, giving platoon- and company-level units better real-time intelligence and the ability to change plans on-the-fly?
The Pentagon in a surprise move added 2,380 orders to the first round of Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicle purchases: 1,000 from Navistar/International Trucks, 780 from Force Protection and 600 from BAE. The orders solidify the dominant positions these companies have among the roughly dozen MRAP manufacturers (DTI October, p. 46). Foreign armies are taking notice of the 15-25-ton armored trucks. In November Spain announced a two-phase competition to buy as many as 575 MRAP-style vehicles through 2013. Some of the successful U.S.
“Half of today’s warfighters grew up with a game controller in their hands,” says Drew Lytle, group manager for Microsoft’s new ESP platform. “They’re ready to learn in this manner. Textbooks don’t cut it.” But traditional simulations don’t meet the need either. At this summer’s DarpaTech convention in Anaheim, Calif., the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency outlined a project called RealWorld to develop “simulation without software.”
Convoys are prime targets for insurgents who can inflict heavy losses on a force with a simple combination of roadside bombs followed by attacks on disabled vehicles. Protection can be improved, however, through the coordinated use of ground and air technologies that include armored vehicles, robots, sensors and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Northrop Grumman and its partners are building two X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator (UCAS-D) prototypes for the U.S. Navy. The challenge is to accomplish by 2011 a trifecta of firsts: the first tailless aircraft, the first stealth-configured aircraft and the first unmanned aircraft to land on a carrier. Along with that comes the challenge of managing an unmanned aircraft on the carrier deck, a tight and unforgiving environment where, until now, every vehicle has been controlled by human hand signals.
Cyberspace is the new frontier of tactical and strategic war planning, and the U.S. Air Force means to own it. In September, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne announced the establishment of a Cyber Command that will be administered by the Eighth Air Force and be based at Barksdale AFB, La.
Not relying on stealth for survival makes it easier to communicate, something Raytheon and L-3 Communications have exploited in tests that use the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet’s new AESA radar as a communications device.
The U.S. Coast Guard is standing up a new “Deployable Operations Group” (DOG) to gather under one command its 3,000-strong specialized forces, including 12 Maritime Safety and Security Teams; the Maritime Security Response Team; eight Port Security Units; two Tactical Law-enforcement Teams; and the National Strike Force Coordination Center with its three strike teams. DOG will facilitate the rapid deployment, domestically or overseas, of teams for harbor security, law enforcement or disaster relief.
Sloppy welds, a too-thin superstructure skin, overweight brackets and fasteners and improper engine mountings are some of the flaws in the U.S. Coast Guard’s first-in-class National Security Cutter Bertholf, says a former Northrop Grumman contract shipwright. Martin Shearington, who has worked on scores of vessels in his 40 years at various yards across the country, says Bertholf, launched in September 2006, and her planned seven sisters will not meet Coast Guard performance goals.
Novator Design Bureau has expanded the Club missile system’s deployment options with a land-based Club-M and air-launched Club-A. NDB, part of Russia’s Almaz-Antey defense consortium, showed the new versions at the MAKS 2007 aerospace and defense exhibition in Moscow. This is a new development for Club, originally a naval weapon. The first test firings of the sub-launched system (Club-S) in 2000 were from Russian submarines. The ship-based version (Club-N) followed almost immediately.
TNO Defense, Security and Safety of the Netherlands starts training sessions early next year with a complex flight simulator it helped to develop. Called Desdemona, the unit is in TNO’s new simulation center in Soesterburg. Bernd de Graaf, who runs the center, says Desdemona is “capable of sustained G-loads, something that is impossible with standard hexapod moving-base flight simulators.” Desdemona utilizes a six-degree-of-freedom centrifuge design.
U.S. Army and Marine Corps and Canadian artillery units are firing the new multinational M982 Excalibur 155-mm. guided artillery shell in combat. Developed by Raytheon, Bofors and General Dynamics, Excalibur is in service with the M777A2 version of BAE Systems’ new lightweight howitzer, used by the Marines and Canada, and the U.S. Army’s M109A6 Paladin self-propelled gun. Australia has also requested 250 rounds, to be fired from an upgraded M198 towed gun for precision fire support to combat units in Afghanistan.
About 90 minutes’ drive from the medieval spires of Prague, doctors and 20 macaque rhesus monkeys are hard at work at seemingly the most exhaustive study into the weaponization of the rave drug ketamine. While Russian, Chinese and American scientists may have similar lines of study, the Czechs are brazen enough to go on scientific record.
Chess Dynamics of Horsham, England, has prototyped an integrated low-cost electro-optical surveillance system, designated Spyder, for buildings, vehicles or ships. The sensor is a stationary unit with up to 16 video cameras for continuous 360-deg. monitoring. On top is a direct-drive electro-optical director with zoom function for long-range target identification. Chess Dynamics technical director Gregory Poole says the electro-optical director can be cued to a target from data provided by the surveillance subsystem.
