Aircraft and ships from the U.S. and Chinese navy plan to cap off a Hawaii port visit by the Asian leader’s vessels this week with a joint search-and-rescue (SAR) exercise. The port visit and exercise underscore the commitment made by both countries to bolster their naval relationships as the U.S. refocuses on the Asia-Pacific region and China continues to flex its military maritime muscle.
SYRIAN QUESTIONS: The thorny question of U.S. military action in Syria could have wide-ranging implications for defense investors, according to Capital Alpha Partners analyst Byron Callan. “Broader opposition to U.S. military involvement in Syria could lead investors to conclude that [defense] budgets will be cut by levels mandated in the Budget Control Act,” he says of the 2011 law that introduced sequestration cuts. “Events in the coming two weeks could conclusively fracture the simplistic notion that Republicans always support higher defense spending than Democrats.
A team including Aurora Flight Sciences is proposing unmanned flights of the company’s Centaur optionally piloted aircraft (OPA) over the Alaskan tundra in 2014, following the completion of manned flights to measure greenhouse-gas released from thawing permafrost. On Aug. 30, the company-operated aircraft completed a month-long campaign led by Harvard University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Div.
Advanced Russian-supplied anti-ship missiles in Syria will be a force to be reckoned with, a prominent defense analyst says, and could make the U.S. rethink maritime strategy in the region. U.S. Navy officials declined to speak about anything involving operations in the tense area—and shied away especially from any military topic involving Russia—but the service’s contention throughout the years is that its ships are equipped to handle any threat they face.
TIANJIN, China — Avicopter is developing a technology demonstrator for a high-speed helicopter, adopting a compound configuration that combines coaxial rigid rotors and nose-mounted counter-rotating propellers.
Lockheed Martin has conducted the first flight test of a prototype anti-ship weapon based on its stealthy AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range (Jassm-ER). The flight was conducted on Aug. 27 under the joint Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and Office of Naval Research (ONR) Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) program.
With the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) calling for the Pentagon to delay contract awards for the Ford-class CVN-79 aircraft carrier because of programmatic “shortfalls,” the U.S. Navy is defending the program to build the improved ships.
MINESWEEPER: The U.S. Navy successfully completed Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle (RMMV) launch handling and recovery testing at sea aboard Littoral Combat Ship USS Independence Aug. 27. The test validated design improvements in the RMMV, its recovery equipment and the ship’s twin boom extensible crane, according to the Navy. The test also demonstrated the crew’s ability to communicate with two off-board RMMVs simultaneously. The RMMV is one of the linchpins of the LCS mine countermeasures package.
Surrey NanoSystems of Newhaven, England, has developed what it calls the “world's blackest material.” Formulated primarily as a coating for optical instruments in space, the material, which derives its properties from a special carbon nanotube formulation and structure, is for applications that will benefit from its extreme light-absorption properties (more than 99%) across visible, ultraviolet and infrared (IR) spectra. This last is especially important because the structures of previous black materials were not large enough for optimal IR absorption.
The U.S. Navy is experimenting with a network of unmanned vehicles in the air, on the ocean and undersea to provide near-continuous data on atmospheric anomalies that affect radar, communications and weapons performance. The most recent experiment was during Trident Warrior 2013, a fleet exercise off the U.S. East Coast. ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) from the Office of Naval Research deployed with undersea and surface robots to detect and measure fluxes and turbulence created by the interaction of air and sea, along with atmospheric “ducts” that trap energy.
Fire protection is an essential requirement in the design of military platforms. The need has increased in recent years with the growing use of combustible materials such as composites and high-power-density batteries.
Naval mine countermeasures (MCM) operations are an all-or-nothing bet: Either they are done well or ships are destroyed. “Mine warfare is either not important, or the most important thing in your life,” says U.S. Navy Rear Adm. (select) John Ailes, in charge of integrating the Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) with mission-module packages. The LCS will be the Navy's front-line MCM vessel, and right now mine warfare is one of the most important concerns in Ailes's life.
Correction: The U.S. Army is not canceling the XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement system (AW&ST Aug. 5/12, p. DT20). Funding for the weapon has been cut by Congress, but development is ongoing by the Army.
The Israeli defense industry is being buffeted—some might say battered—by winds of change. In this case, it is a perfect storm of budget cutbacks by many countries, including Israel, that are shrinking defense expenditures concurrently with the winding down of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Future Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) looks far different than typical U.S. Navy ships. But its capabilities are game-changing. Leveraging float-on/float-off technology and a reconfigurable mission deck, the MLP provides a seagoing pier when access to on-shore bases and support are unavailable. Platform modules support a vehicle staging area, vehicle transfer ramp, mooring fenders and three LCAC (landing craft, air-cushioned) lanes.
Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) may soon achieve substantially longer battery life as a result of research by students in an engineering systems design course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory. Capitalizing on the high-energy density of aluminum, the students found that dissolving the metal into gallium and then reacting it with seawater generates a level of hydrogen gas and heat that exceeds the energy storage density of lithium-ion batteries.
