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.
Russia's defense budget will grow 23% this year to $32.42 billion, with the bulk of the increase devoted to improving equipment for the armed forces and unspecified "large" sums allocated to research and development. Russian press reports quote Lyubov Kudelina, head of the defense ministry's finance department, saying that "over the past five years, the funds allocated to improving the technical equipment of the armed forces have almost tripled." Spending on this sector in 2007 will be $11.3 billion, 20% more than in 2006.
While many countries in Europe have conducted studies and research projects in theater ballistic missile defense, Germany and the Netherlands have the most experience with such operations, since both are long-standing users of Raytheon's Patriot missile system. Dutch Patriot forces deployed to help defend Israel against Iraqi Scud missile attacks during the 1991 Gulf War. They were also deployed--in the same context--in eastern Turkey in 1991 and again in 2003, when they were integrated in the U.S.-led air and missile defense network for Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The article "Evolution or Devolution" (DTI September/October 2006) misstated the name of one of the companies involved in the Future Rapid Effects System program. The company's correct name is Atkins Global.
As she cracked a bottle of champagne on the towering bow of the 418-ft.-long U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bertholf at the Northrop Grumman shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., on Nov. 11, Meryl Chertoff, wife of Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, intoned, "may God bless this ship and all who sail in her."
The Pentagon appears set to open up the market for active radio-frequency identification devices (RFID) to new suppliers. Producers of active RFID should be able to "demonstrate the availability of products meeting the technical specifications no later than Mar. 31, 2007," according to a request for information released by the Defense Dept. late last year. The request could open up a market currently dominated by Savi Technology, the primary supplier of military RFID since the first Gulf war.
Russia's KBP design bureau won't exhibit its new Pantzyr-S1 anti-aircraft system, designed for the UAE, at the IDEX-2007 trade show Feb. 18-22 in Abu Dhabi. However, the system will be in the Emirates during that period undergoing customer evaluation tests. KBP deputy chief designer Vladimir Obrazumov told DTI that Pantzyr, prior to its first deliveries at the end of 2007, will have two evaluation trials--from January to March and later during the hot season in July and August.
Although the legendary family of Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles continues to enjoy brisk sales, Russian manufacturers are ready with a new generation of infantry weapons that offers better accuracy than the classic Kalashnikov design.
Nice piece on the all electric ship initiatives (DTI November/December 2006). I know military hardware can be hardened against electromagnetic pulses (EMP) from nuclear blasts, but what about an entire ship? Is this possible?
At the bars and nightclubs in Beirut's hip Gemaya neighborhood, where young, educated Lebanese mix with foreign journalists, aid managers and even the occasional tourist, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon is the punch-line to a running joke of 28 years.
Italian troops redeployed from Iraq to southern Lebanon in September as part of the beefed-up United Nations Interim Force brought along British-made Wheelbarrow Mk. 8 Explosive Ordnance Disposal robots to help teams clearing Israeli ordnance left over from the summer war. The tracked robots--equipped with a single telescoping arm fitted with cameras and a claw--received high marks for reliability and user-friendliness, but aren't up to Lebanon's rough, hilly terrain, according to EOD Capt. George Colombo.
There was a sense of urgency in early December at the offices of MO-PA2, the temporary company formed by French shipbuilder DCN and electronics giant Thales to handle France's second full-deck aircraft carrier (PA2) project, as a design submission deadline of Dec. 25 loomed.
France has ensured its future among the world's most powerful navies by formalizing a financing deal that will stretch payments on its new nuclear-powered attack submarine through next year. French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie confirmed during the Euronaval show in Paris in October that the deal would be signed by year-end.
The U.S. Marine Corps has long dreamed of fielding a high-speed amphibious assault vehicle that morphs into a fully tracked armored infantry fighting vehicle. It may have taken a little longer than planned, but three decades of technology and engineering development have yielded a vehicle that, despite technical glitches, is finally approaching the finish line.
Iraq this year is expected to keep up its high pace of spending to upgrade its military forces, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler, director of the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency. Iraq budgeted about $1 billion of its own money in 2006 to buy new defense equipment, says Kohler, whose agency manages U.S. foreign military sales. He describes the process as more of a "re-equipping" than a modernization.
Just a year after being stood up, the U.S. Navy's new command for coastal and inland combat is outlining grand plans for a single self-sufficient battlegroup that will include construction battalions ("Seabees"), logistics troops, harbor patrol units, explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) teams and the service's three new riverine boat squadrons.
As new-generation anti-tank weapons proliferate globally, a number of countries are pressing forward with new defensive technologies designed to counter these threats. Italy is no exception. A new Italian-built active-protective system for armored vehicles could be fielded as early as next year, according to industry officials working on the technology.
In November, just days before the first U.S. military software-defined radio (SDR) production contract was awarded, the European Defense Agency (EDA) in Brussels launched a multinational research effort aimed at spurring industrial capabilities on its side of the Atlantic in the SDR arena. Called European Secure Software Radio (Essor), the European Union agency's initiative also is intended to maintain future military communications interoperability between U.S. forces and those of European NATO member nations.
San Diego-based Cubic Defense Applications has unveiled its transportable, "range-less" air combat training system at Naval Air Station Key West, Fla., and Luke AFB, Ariz., where the system is now operational. The P5 Combat Training System/Tactical Combat Training System allows joint and coalition forces to conduct air combat training without a fixed infrastructure. That means the system could be used in-theater as well as for pre-deployment training.
by Larry Kahaner, Wiley, 2006. $25.95. In reading Larry Kahaner's book on the AK-47 assault rifle, it's tempting to contrast the weapon's unassuming inventor with the father of the atomic bomb. In 1945, when the first atomic device was exploded at Alamogordo, N.M., Robert Oppenheimer famously stated: "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds."
Using the U.S. Air Force Milstar II satellite, a high-resolution radar image captured by the service's Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle can be transmitted in 12 min. The new Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites currently being built as a precursor to TSAT will be able to send that same image in 23 sec. Using TSAT, the estimated time to transmit the image will be less than a second.
