India has made no secret of its hypersonic ambitions whether aimed at high-speed weapons, sub-orbital passenger transport or as a stepping stone to space. Now, key tests are set to begin for a technology demonstrator that could unlock some of these possibilities.
Unlike previous lightweight and compact weapons that proved highly suitable for guerrilla warfare techniques, the Iranian-made Fajr rockets supplied to Hamas in Gaza are significantly more devastating than earlier Grads and Qassams. Both the Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 carry a 90-kg (200-lb.) high-explosive warhead with massive fragmentation sheets made of steel balls that create extensive collateral damage. Analyses of attacks from 2006 to this year indicate the rockets could be equipped with a delay fuse to increase building penetration.
The first implementation directive for “Better Buying Power” (November 2010) by Ashton Carter, the then-undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics (USD/AT&L), concluded with the challenge, “Reduce Non-Productive Process and Bureaucracy.” Yet the memo added 16 tasks and reports. Similarly, “Better Buying Power 2.0” directs the defense acquisition workforce to “eliminate unproductive processes and bureaucracies.” The dictum institutes new processes while not detailing procedures, reports or reviews to be eliminated. The processes are addictive.
Russian researchers, long in the forefront of plasma control experimentation, are combining forces with U.S. military and European industrial counterparts to further exploit plasma's potential effect in hypersonic flight. The concept involves generating plasma by using an electrical discharge to create a shape or force which can act as a virtual actuator, a flow modifier or as an aid to combustion.
Chinese proliferation of weapons of mass destruction continues to be a U.S. and global concern, a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report says. “China has taken some steps to mollify U.S. and other foreign concerns about its role in weapons proliferation,” CRS says in a report released earlier this month. “Nonetheless, supplies from China have aggravated trends that result in ambiguous technical aid, more indigenous capabilities, longer-range missiles, and secondary (retransferred) proliferation.
Tel Aviv – Unlike previous lightweight and compact weapons that proved highly suitable for guerilla warfare techniques, the Iranian-made Fajr rockets currently supplied to Hamas in Gaza are significantly more devastating than earlier Grad and Qassams.
AWARENESS SYSTEMS: Exelis Inc. of Alexandria, Va., has been awarded a $93.2 million contract to provide the U.S. Navy with material and services to design, procure, install and maintain the Adaptive Persistent Awareness Systems, the Pentagon announced Nov. 20. The APAS is an integrated system that provides command, control, communication, computers and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and persistent awareness. The work will be performed in various naval facilities worldwide and is expected to be completed by November 2017.
NEW DELHI – India has delayed plans to loft Nirbhay, its first subsonic cruise missile, until early 2013. Nirbhay’s launch was to take place in November from Wheeler Island off the Odisha coast in eastern India. “It will now be done in January 2013,” a senior scientist at the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) says. He blamed the holdup on launcher modifications.
Jeffery L. Turner, the CEO who transformed Wichita-based Spirit AeroSystems from a former Boeing subsidiary into the industry’s largest independent airframe maker, will step down early in 2013. Turner, who is 60, was a VP and general manager for Boeing when the company sold his division in 2005 to Onex Corp., cutting lose its biggest division for manufacturing structural assemblies, including the entire 737 fuselage and the nose of the 787, that aircraft’s most complex composite section.
New Delhi – India’s state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) has opened an electronics facility in the southern state of Kerala to produce advanced avionics for aircraft and helicopters. The $12 million factory is located in the Kasaragod district and will make airborne special purpose systems such as mission computers, display processors, and radar computers for Sukhoi Su-30s , MiG-27s and Light Combat Aircraft.
WASHINGTON – Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Carderock received a patent earlier this month for its discovery and development of a new smart material called Galfenol. The new material could, among other things, lead to quieter machinery operations in submarines and other platforms. Galfenol is a magnetostrictive smart material that can be used in sensors, actuators and structural supports, the Navy says.
In the sometimes cutthroat world of defense contracts, a small mistake can cause a major headache. In this case, a wording error buried in a lengthy report on boost-phase missile defense caused reports to overstate the sustainment cost of the Army’s Patriot program by more than $11 billion, adding fuel to a long-simmering battle between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
During the 2006 conflict in southern Lebanon, about 25% of the Hezbollah-fired missiles struck populated areas in northern Israel. While Israeli security keeps a lid on where the latest Hamas and Jihadist missiles fired into southern Israel from Gaza are striking, the very few deaths reported in Israel – in the single digits so far – indicates that the first five batteries of the short-range Iron Dome missile defense system are being surprisingly efficient.
NEW DELHI – India’s defense research agency is preparing to test its ballistic interceptor missile this week, the country’s top scientist says. The Advanced Air Defense (AAD) interceptor, capable of destroying any hostile ballistic missile at low altitude, will blast off from Wheeler Island in India’s eastern state of Odisha, says Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) Director General V.K. Saraswat.
The performance of Iron Dome in Israel can only add to congressional support for co-production of the rocket-defense system in the U.S. In its version of the fiscal 2013 defense authorization bill, the House requires the U.S. Missile Defense Agency to establish an Iron Dome program office, calls on the MDA director to negotiate for data rights to the technology and to explore co-production of the system. The Senate has not yet passed its version of the bill , which also must be reconciled with the House version.
London – The U.K. Royal Air Force ( RAF ) will soon deploy the first of its upgraded Chinook helicopters to Afghanistan. Two Boeing CH-47 Chinook HC4s were ready to go at the RAF’s main transport base at Brize Norton on Nov. 19, and are likely to begin operational flying in theater from the main British base at Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, in December. The two aircraft will join the Joint Helicopter Force ( Afghanistan ) supporting the International Security and Assistance Force troops.
NEW YORK – The state-of-the-art in military energetics is HMX, a powerful material that is dense, thermodynamically stable and low in sensitivity — in other words, a devastating explosive that is safe to handle. Research by the University of Michigan and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) indicates that the explosiveness of HMX can be increased with no trade-off in sensitivity, by combining it with an energetic known as CL-20, which while powerful, is by itself too sensitive for use.
WASHINGTON – Over the next month, the White House and congressional leaders will continue the seesaw of negotiations to avert damage to the nation’s economy. If they fail to agree on how to handle expiring tax cuts and nearly $1 trillion in government budget cuts by January, the nation could fall back into a recession, the Congressional Budget Office has warned.
