India's maritime surveillance capabilities are being severely stretched as the country's economic boom dictates a greater command of the seas by its navy. Government and military officials are looking to upgrade the navy's fleet of surveillance aircraft with the goal of extending their operational range and ability to respond to a variety of threats. Plans are underway to acquire manned and unmanned aircraft as well as advanced navigation gear and weapons systems.
Three years after it was cobbled together using old patrol boats, the new Iraqi navy is making another attempt to rebuild its forces. In September, Iraq signed an €80-million ($105-million) contract with Italian shipbuilding group Fincantieri, to build four boats that will be the navy's operational backbone.
FEATURES drones down under 22 Australian funding of U.S. Navy's BAMS program has a price: higher-performing UAVs. power play 24 India's navy is extending maritime surveillance to safeguard country's sea trade. ready to roll 25 Crash program is underway to develop a new generation of armored vehicles for U.S. troops. tailor-made 28 U.S. Marine Corps touts the comfort and mobility of Modular Tactical Vest for body armor.
The British Royal Navy's newest destroyer, HMS Dauntless, was launched on Jan. 23. The vessel, the second of six Type 45 destroyers that have been ordered by the Navy, will enter service early in the next decade. Type 45 destroyers are designed for anti-air warfare operations and local-area fleet defense.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) wants to develop fake black ice to literally trip up the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, while using an instant reversal agent to keep U.S. soldiers and their allies on firm footing. Darpa declined to discuss details, such as whether polymer ice is one of its more fanciful ideas or something with real near-term potential. A Jan. 16 request for proposals states that there is an immediate need for methods to deny enemy transit by messing with their traction.
Thales Nederland has teamed with General Dynamics Canada to propose a key combat systems upgrade for Canada's 12 Halifax-class frigates, built between 1987 and 1996. The team will build its bid around Thales-NL's Tacticos Net Centric combat management system, Thales officials said.
January was a bad month for U.S. Army robots. On Jan. 9, the Pentagon announced that two of the four aerial drones planned for the Future Combat Systems family of networked vehicles would be abandoned to save money. Two weeks later, FCS program manager Brig. Gen. Thomas Cole said one of the four ground robots would go, too. The Armed Reconnaissance Vehicle, he added, was being downgraded to a research program. The Army's grand vision of humans and robots working hand-in-mechanical-claw on the future battlefield seemed to be in some jeopardy.
The Swedish Defense Materiel Administration has awarded BAE Systems an SEK100-million ($14.1-million) contract for a new phase in the next-generation Archer artillery system. Archer is a self-propelled artillery gun that relies on a commercial off-the-shelf chassis, and a crew of three, compared with 6-10 for most artillery systems. BAE says the gun's lethality is equivalent to 4-6 traditional artillery systems.
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The U.S. Navy late last year began using a handheld biometrics device to identify sailors on commercial vessels during counter-drug and counter-terrorism interdictions, according to the Defense Dept.'s Biometrics Task Force, which displayed the technology at Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Assn. West 2007 in San Diego.
As European nations wake up to the fact that advanced ballistic missile technology continues to proliferate, countries such as the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the U.K. are either acquiring or considering national capabilities to detect and engage incoming missiles.
With the world market for aerial refueling aircraft growing, a top Israeli aerospace company is hoping to team with a U.S. partner to provide a tanker designed to be cheaper and "smarter" than the competition.
Boeing will pitch an unmanned version of the Gulfstream G550 business jet to perform the U.S. Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance mission, or BAMS, according to competitors. Boeing's decision follows what one insider calls "the dumbing down" of the BAMS requirements in order to encourage more manufacturers to enter the multi-billion-dollar competition.
BY JAMES SUROWIECKI Anchor Books, 2004, 305 pp., paperback, $14.00 Surowiecki's findings jibe with trends in open-source intel and distributed ops--and help explain why democracies succeed and markets solve problems well. The U.S. Navy asked salvagers, mathematicians and hydrologists independently to guess a sunken submarine's location. None pinpointed it, but the aggregate of their guesses nailed the spot. Same for state fair visitors guessing a cow's weight and investigators looking into the cause of the space shuttle Challenger accident.
Britain's Royal Air Force is making its first major overseas deployment of a Eurofighter Typhoon squadron in April. Eight F-2 jets of 3 Squadron will go to Moron Air Base in Spain, home of the first Eurofighter unit of the Spanish air force. The deployment is a milestone in the process of transitioning the squadron to operational readiness. With 13 aircraft and 16 pilots, 3 Squadron is on schedule to be declared operational by NATO in air-to-air operations by the end of the year. In July 2008, the unit expects to be declared operational in air-to-ground operations.
Turkey is seeking bids for the construction of six stealth submarines. The vessels, which will patrol the Aegean Sea, the eastern and central Mediterranean, and the Black Sea, will utilize sonar-absorbing material for stealth. Specifications include a hull capable of withstanding a 100-kg. (220-lb.) explosion of TNT 12 meters (39 ft.) from the vessel, the ability to stay submerged for 50 days and an air-free propulsion system.
In 2000, it seemed like much of the debate in the U.S. over ballistic missile defense largely focused on systems that could protect against intercontinental threats, so-called national missile defense. Yet seven years later, the proliferation of intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the Middle East places increasing amounts of European territory at risk, while in Asia, North Korea's recent nuclear tests have sparked renewed concerns among its neighbors, and even talk of Japan's interest in nuclear weapons.
Maxim Pyadushkin's article on the AK-47 (DTI January/February, p. 23) was misleading in some ways. The AK-47 Kalashnikov was not developed by the Russians. It was based on the MP-44, a German assault rifle from the last two years of World War II. Mikhail Kalashnikov copied the best assault rifle at the time. He did not develop it.
Darpa seeks to enhance the capabilities of persistent surveillance by combining one of aviation's oldest technologies, the airship, with the latest in electronic detection, the world's largest active electronically scanned array radar. The program behind this, ISIS (Integrated Sensor Is Structure), aims to develop technologies that allow one platform to provide continuous ground and aerial radar scanning for up to 10 years.
A convoy from the New York National Guard's 42nd Infantry Div. was idling on a road outside Baquba in north-central Iraq on Jan. 29, 2005, when a pickup truck speeded toward it. Soldiers flashed their trucks' headlights to warn off the vehicle, but the driver either didn't notice or didn't understand what the signal meant. Fearing a suicide attack, the Americans opened fire with .50-caliber machine guns.
This former British Army general's studied call for sweeping military reform draws on his 40 years of service in Western Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East. "War no longer exists," he declares, referring to industrial conflicts with industrial armies attacking industrial targets - a mode of conflict that expired when nuclear weapons made such warfare tantamount to suicide.
The next step in unmanned flight may be ambitious, but also tiny. The U.S. Defense Dept. is looking at ways to build a drone that would weigh not much more than a few coins and be about the size of a hummingbird. Once built, the tiny vehicles could be an ideal way to allow the military to collect intelligence from otherwise inaccessible areas.
Production is underway on one of the more controversial weapons to enter the U.S. arsenal in recent years--an alternative to conventional land mines called Spider. Proponents say the device reduces the threat posed by such explosives to noncombatants. Critics, however, maintain that Spider is exactly what supporters say it isn't --a land mine, albeit a high-tech version, that can be just as deadly to civilians.
