The Hurkus, Turkey’s locally developed primary and basic pilot training aircraft, will make its first flight in late 2009. Tusas Aerospace Industries (TAI) of Ankara received a $92-million contract in March 2006 from Turkey’s Undersecretariat for the Defense Industry to develop the aircraft, which is scheduled for service by 2011. The trainer, named for aviation pioneer Vecihi Hurkus who built the first Turkish airplane, is the first modern all-Turkish military aircraft.
A completely different class of vertical takeoff UAV is being designed for operations in obstructed areas or urban canyons. The goal is to overcome line-of-sight blockage and to get into areas that fixed-wing UAVs cannot reach.
Afghanistan has become a proving ground for NATO’s evolving role as an expeditionary pacification and crisis-management organization. The alliance is leading the 40,500-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that supports the Karzai government’s nation-building and democratization efforts in the face of mounting attacks by a complex mix of militant forces.
Inside a cavernous former General Electric turbine plant on the outskirts of this tiny town, hundreds of workers crawl over the shells of incomplete Cougar, Buffalo and Mastiff armored trucks. This is the assembly floor of Force Protection Inc., which builds a menagerie of blast-proof vehicles for an alphabet soup of Pentagon programs and a growing list of foreign customers.
Solid Laser Northrop Grumman’s Joint High Power Solid State Laser program has passed a U.S. Defense Dept. critical design review and is moving to Phase 3 integration and testing, leading to the development of a weapon-grade laser using no chemicals and requiring only electrical power. The program seeks to build a 100-kw. laser for force protection and strike missions such as wide-area, ground-based defense against rockets, artillery and mortars; precision-strike capabilities for airborne platforms, and shipboard defense against cruise missiles.
There was a sound like a thunderclap and a column of debris curled into the sky two blocks away. A platoon of Australian soldiers, lounging in their makeshift camp at a boys’ school in this impoverished capital of Uruzgan province on June 16, leaped to their feet, scrambled to strap on body armor and fumbled with weapons—their eyes drawn to the thickening pall of smoke spreading from the blast. The signals sergeant was radioing for information; the platoon leader, Lt.
Armed unmanned aerial vehicles top the wish lists of Marine Corps officers in western Iraq. But requests for the drones are mired in a long-delayed program to procure “Tier II” UAVs as part of the Marine Corps’ future airborne-surveillance architecture.
Paul McLeary Despite ongoing questions about funding, cost overruns, development delays and even relevance, the Pentagon’s Future Combat Systems program is moving ahead, with plans to start field testing its technology by early next year. The goal, according to program officials, is to get the first versions of networked manned and unmanned sensors, robots and weapon systems to soldiers by 2010.
Australia’s Ministry of Defense in June picked Spanish firm Navantia to provide blueprints for two 27,000-ton amphibious assault ships and three 6,000-ton air-defense destroyers worth a combined $12 billion. The destroyers, slated to enter service between 2014-17, will be based on Navantia’s successful F100 frigate design in use by Spain and Norway. They willl be equipped with Lockheed Martin’s Aegis radar paired with Raytheon’s SM-2 missile.
The U.S. Army’s Future Combat Systems program may take a major funding hit in 2008. Defense budget authorization legislation passed by the House of Representatives in May cut the Bush administration’s budget request for FCS research and development by 25%, or $867 million.
The indecisive end to last year’s Second Lebanon War is causing the Israel Defense Force to question changes to combat doctrine under its last two chiefs of staff, changes that placed a priority on precision standoff firepower over maneuver warfare, affecting force structure and operational concepts. Although commanders said they intended to maintain classic maneuver skills alongside standoff firepower, the balance has not prevailed.
LANdroids Soldiers moving through urban environments struggle with poor radio communications caused by obstacles that distort signals. Wouldn’t it be handy if fixing the situation were as simple as dropping tiny radios all over an area? That’s the goal of a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program called LANdroids. The robotic radios envisioned by Darpa would establish and manage themselves in a mesh network, a temporary local area network designed to establish communications.
Electromagnetic armor for land vehicles remains a laboratory experiment, but proponents say it could become an effective means of protecting armored vehicles from some of the most lethal projectiles on the battlefield.
The Russian navy is making plans to restore its fleet of aircraft carriers. Fleet Adm. Vladimir Masorin said in July that in 20-30 years Russia should have at least two aircraft carrier battle groups—one in the Northern Fleet and one in the Pacific Fleet. Each battle group will have three carriers: one at sea, one working up to deployment and one in refit or reserve. The military plans to set requirements for the carriers by the end of the year. Masorin said the ships would be smaller than U.S.
Launch and recovery issues are why the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) business has bifurcated, with most of the action at the high end—long-endurance aircraft, operating from main bases and using range to provide cover over distant battlefields—or at the low end, with small hand-launched vehicles that can land softly in a deep stall.
Hypersonic Success The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Australia’s Defense Science and Technology Organization achieved a milestone recently with the successful test of an experimental scramjet engine at speeds to Mach 10. The flight test, which took place June 15 at the Woomera Test Facility in southern Australia, was designed to gather data on a hydrogen-fueled, axisymmetric, inward-turning scramjet engine. Unlike conventional jet engines, a scramjet has no moving parts.
The Russian navy is developing a class of surface combatants as part of a larger effort to renew its aging and, in many cases, outdated fleet. The first-in-class vessel, the corvette Stereguschiy, is a milestone in naval design, in that it represents Russia’s latest attempt to apply stealth technology to a frontline ship.
Having secured a £7.7-billion ($15.8-billion) increase in its defense budget covering the next three years, Britain is placing orders for two 65,000-ton aircraft carriers, Defense Secretary Des Browne announced July 25. The HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales will enter service in 2014 and 2016, respectively, and be based in Portsmouth. “In parallel,” Browne says, “we are continuing efforts to cooperate with France. This has already led to a common baseline design for the carrier to which we are now committing.
Autonomous underwater vehicles are getting smarter, more independent and more capable, and if current research bears out, may well become the undersea equivalent of fire-and-forget missiles. Technology leaders like French research agency Gesma, often working in partnership with suppliers and other science organizations, are testing advances in sensors and sonars that will permit AUVs to navigate, analyze their environment, assess threats and identify targets with no outside aid, in littoral or blue-water operations.
Moving Base It’s every patrol vessel captain’s dream: his own vertical takeoff and landing UAV that can be launched and recovered even in rough seas. An innovative idea conceived at a Netherlands university may turn that dream into reality. The idea from Ampelmann, a company spun off from Delft University of Technology, is to use flight-simulator technology to provide a fully stabilized takeoff and landing platform, so that the UAV has a stable landing spot even if the ship is rolling and heaving.
RoboCops The maker of the U.S. military’s PackBot family of robots has teamed with Taser International to integrate Taser’s X26 stun gun on the PackBot Explorer. The goal is to develop robots for military and law enforcement that “remotely engage, incapacitate and control dangerous suspects,” state the companies, which started pitching a prototype of the Taser Robot at trade shows. The PackBot Explorer is a rugged, lightweight robot that can be hand-carried and deployed by a single operator to search hazardous areas. The Taser X26 can hit targets 35 ft.
Strike Two The U.S. Air Force has awarded Boeing an $8.97-million contract to develop a conventional ballistic missile capable of destroying targets around the world in less than an hour. The study is intended to fulfill U.S. Strategic Command’s Global Strike Initiative focused on fleeting targets. It is an emerging rival to the Conventional Trident Missile program, which would convert nuclear-tipped Trident missiles by arming them with conventional warheads.
Europe’s Neuron unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) project passed a feasibility review on June 1, clearing the program for its next stage and toward a first flight in 2011. Fifteen months into the project—which formally started in early 2006 after Sweden resolved political issues—the Neuron team is reporting progress.
Once touted as a key program in the Pentagon’s efforts to transform the military, the Joint Tactical Radio System fell on hard times around two years ago. Cost overruns and production problems caused Congress to mandate a pause in the development of the software-defined radios while telling the Pentagon to re-examine the program’s direction.
