The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) was seeking a partner for its project to find a faster, cheaper way to design and build military ground vehicles when the Pentagon dropped a bomb on the Marine Corps last year.
When you think of European robotics, Nexter does not jump to mind as a major player. But during this month's Eurosatory show in Paris, the French manufacturer of the VBCI and Aravis armored vehicles and the Leclerc battle tank, among others, plans to change that mindset.
After almost two decades in the making, NATO has finally awarded a contract to field an Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS) system. The alliance has signed a $1.7 billion contract to acquire five Northrop Grumman Global Hawk Block 40s to address an operational shortfall first identified during the 1991 Persian Gulf war and validated during last year's Libya air campaign. An initial operational capability is due to be reached in 2016. The deal was signed during the meeting of NATO members' heads of government summit in Chicago last month.
After years of complaints about the U.S. having no cyber-attack plans, policies, weapons or legal guidance, the White House and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) are both announcing new initiatives. Plan X is a broad program being launched by Darpa to create cyber-attack schemes, define their operational employment and deflect counterattacks. The program is expected to put $110 million into research over the next five years to support offensive military operations.
Just as the U.S. Navy is preparing for production of improved Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), members of Congress are again taking aim at the program. The impetus for the renewed congressional attacks on the LCS program can be found in a recent spate of troubling press and watchdog group reports, including a recent guided tour by Aviation Week of USS Freedom (LCS-1) while it was in drydock that revealed far more severe problems than had been previously acknowledged publicly by the Navy or prime contractor Lockheed Martin.
The roar of jets being launched from aircraft carriers may be iconic, but the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) is looking for ways of reducing the noise generated by tactical aircraft, to protect the hearing of sailors involved with flight-deck operations. ONR's ongoing Jet Noise Reduction project, jointly funded by NASA, recently awarded more than $4 million in grants to six universities and two companies for development of noise-reduction technologies, as well as measurement and prediction tools and noise-source models.
MALMEN AIR BASE, Sweden — India will build a stealthier version of its Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), but in the near term it is getting ready to build the Mk. 2 version of the aircraft, with the goal of reaching operational clearance in 2016.
Bill Sweetman (Washington), Michael Fabey (Washington), Christina Mackenzie (Paris)
“A revolution in air defense” is what Rafael Executive Vice President Lova Drori calls current trends in protecting ground and sea targets from all kinds of air-delivered threats
The U.S. Air Force may have stopped work on its Blue Devil 2 surveillance airship, but the U.S. Army says Northrop Grumman is making progress in assembling its hybrid-airship Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV). Without giving a date for the first flight, originally expected in mid-2011, Army Space & Missile Defense Command (SMDC) says “the team is assembling the airship and integrating motors and electronics onto and into the vehicle.
As more users adopt cloud-based computing networks to achieve bandwidth efficiency, hardware reduction and other benefits, issues arise over the ability to access different operating systems in the cloud, host multiple domains, assure data resilience and, importantly, maintain security. Three companies have partnered to develop a system that they say is innovative in that it provides a secure, scalable, redundant platform for cloud networks in sensitive environments, including tactical military use.
The German Bundeswehr in April ordered $6.4 million in direct methanol fuel cells to be delivered by the end of the year. About the size of a hardback book and weighing 3.5 lb., the cells can be kept running in the field by swapping out small fuel tanks, promising longer operating life for connected devices and less weight than batteries.
Shifting winds pose a hazard to soldiers and first responders who confront toxic threats, whether chemical, nuclear or smoke and fumes. Software in development by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) predicts the flow of plumes based on weather and terrain over areas of varying size to increase the safe deployment of personnel. Called L-REAC (Local-Rapid Evaluation of Atmospheric Conditions), the program models such factors as wind, air pressure, temperature and humidity, terrain data and building dimensions.
Click here to view the pdf 2013 Markup: House Appropriators Add Money For Advanced Video Sensors 2013 Markup: House Appropriators Add Money For Advanced Video Sensors Description Request HASC HAC
On April 22, a barrage of Hellfire missiles killed a senior Al Qaeda commander and two operatives along the border of Marib and Al Jawf provinces in northern Yemen. It is believed to be among the first of many strikes executed since Washington authorized the targeting of militants based on “signature” patterns of behavior, such as transporting weapons or gathering at known militant compounds. Under previous policy, the identity of a militant in the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had to be established before placing him on a kill list.
UAVs do not fly in commercial airspace or over populated areas for good reasons: They have no sense-and-avoidance systems to prevent mid-air collisions, and there is no way to make safe emergency landings a regular event. “In most cases they just drop,” says Luis Alvarez of the Australian Research Center for Aerospace Automation. Researchers there and at partner Queensland University of Technology are developing onboard systems to address these problems.
The Pentagon is set to expand a pilot program that shares information about cyberthreats among agencies and private companies. The defense industrial base Cyber Security/Information Assurance Program involves companies providing information to the Defense Department about cybersecurity incidents, such as an attempted hack or a computer virus, and the Pentagon providing companies with unclassified and classified cybersecurity information. The pilot program, which has been going on for four years, currently involves 36 companies.
The increased use of UAVs and light aircraft is spurring development of smaller precision-attack weapons, designed to better meet payload limitations of the manned, light-strike aircraft and UAVs. Such weapons also will open new tactical dimensions for light rotorcraft, for which there is increasing demand, especially by a growing corps of special operations forces. So far, most available light scout helicopters considered for armed missions are underpowerd and lack payload capacity and only a new generation of light precison-attack weapons can fill this critical gap.
REORG PLAN: Hawker Beechcraft is facing a June 30 deadline to file its reorganization plan and disclosure statement, and is expected to confirm its reorganization by November. The Wichita airframer is hoping to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by the end of the year under new ownership through a restructuring plan that would eliminate $2.5 billion of the company’s debt and $125 million in annual interest expenses. Last year the company lost the U.S.
Last month, the U.S. chief of naval operations, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, wrote that his Navy should support the U.S. Air Force's plan to develop a new bomber. This followed the endorsement by his opposite number, USAF Gen. Norton Schwartz, of the Navy's plan for more nuclear attack submarines. In other news, the Pentagon turned bright orange, floated in the air and started drifting with the breeze in the direction of Tyson's Corner, Va.
General Bertrand Ract-Madoux French Army Chief of Staff Age: 59 Birthplace: Saumur, France Education: Graduate of the Saint-Cyr academy for army officers; and alumnus of the Institut des Hauts Etudes de Defense National and the Centre des Hautes Etudes Militaires war college.
A flawless radome is vital to the integrity of aircraft communications. If the assembly, usually fabricated of polymer composite several centimeters (1 cm is 0.4 in.) thick, retains defects such as air bubbles, water droplets or contaminants during manufacture, cracks may develop that degrade moisture resistance, affecting signal integrity. At last month's Control exposition in Stuttgart, Germany, the Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques of Kaiserslauten, Germany, displayed a prototype testing system that detects such flaws.
