When international customers first signed up for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, they brought a love-at-first sight attitude to the table. But now that actual purchase decisions have to be made, a far more sober attitude prevails as a result of program delays, increased costs and budget realities. Anxiety still exists in many quarters but, one-by-one, the U.S. and Lockheed Martin are persuading partners to take the next big financial step and make purchase decisions, with the total foreign commitments now topping 100 fighters.
It is too early to tell if it just another case of engineering exuberance associated with hypersonics or something more substantive, but there is a palpable sense among French developers that high-speed missile and air vehicle concepts are ready for the development stage.
Getting Helicopter Development Right For The U.S. Army Getting Helicopter Development Right For The U.S. Army Getting Helicopter Development Right For The U.S. Army
Reviewed By Angus Batey 21ST CENTURY CYBERWARFARE BY WILLIAM T. HAGESTAD, 2nd IT Governance Publishing, 2012 348 pp., $119 In recent months, Bill Hagestad has become a familiar yet discomfiting figure on the cyberdefense conference circuit.
Over the next several years, more than a few big-ticket items in the Army's annual budget will reach major milestones—transitioning from new-build production to long-term sustainment accounts. Overall, 37 Army systems will make that switch, moving Army dollars away from the production line to the often more complicated—and very expensive—world of spare parts, upgrades and reset contracts.
The U.S. Navy plans carrier launch and recovery tests for its two X-47B unmanned combat air vehicles (UCAV) next year—but guiding UCAV on deck is a challenge. Work at MIT with gesture-recognition software could eventually enable personnel to direct UCAV via hand and body gestures as they do with manned aircraft. Doctoral candidate Yale Song is fine-tuning software he helped develop that recognizes gestures now in use by deck crews. Song uses a stereo camera to record body movements.
As missions expand for self-propelled unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), efforts intensify to find routes that shorten travel, minimize energy use and increase data acquisition. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers led by Prof. Pierre Lermusiaux developed an algorithm that plots optimal paths for swarms of UUVs. Previous efforts by other researchers were imprecise and did not fully integrate the complexity of ocean environments or the challenge of directing multiple vehicles in changing seas.
Tank: Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Location: U.K. Profile: Dedicated to the end of U.K.'s independent deterrent Apart from beer, one area where the U.K. outclasses the U.S. is in antinuclear-weapon activists. The U.S. has mostly gray-ponytailed, Chomsky-spouting relics, while the U.K. Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and activists are a fount of useful data on British nuclear weapon programs, and, by association, U.S. developments.
By the end of this month, the U.K. may have performed one of the biggest flip-flops in the history of defense acquisition. In early March, London media were almost unanimous in reporting that the British government would reverse its October 2010 decision to dump the short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (Stovl) F-35B variant of the Joint Strike Fighter in favor of the catapult-takeoff-but-arrested-landing (Catobar) F-35C. The volte-face was then predicted before Easter, but now no word is expected until after the holiday recess.
Passing time in London's Wallace Collection, the editor-in-chief saw these curious 17th century left-hand daggers (either side of the crossbow). Called “sword-breakers” the idea is to trap, twist and snap the opponent's weapon. The adage “if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough” apparently pre-dates air combat.
Elbit Systems' Large Area Display (formerly Cockpit NG) received an important endorsement last month when Boeing chose it to provide the advanced avionics systems for its fighter aircraft, including upgraded versions of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-15SE Silent Eagle. The system integrates tactical data, mission planning and flight information into an 11x19-in. complete situational picture responding to specific mission phases and pilot controls.
It has been decades since the U.S. Army had the chance to define a clean-sheet rotorcraft. But an opportunity is approaching as the service heads toward the multi-year demonstration of configurations and technologies for next-generation utility/attack rotorcraft that could replace today's Sikorsky UH-60s and Boeing AH-64s, beginning around 2030.
India expects to induct its first Scorpene submarine beginning in 2015, three years behind the original schedule. All six submarines will be in service by 2018 at a revised cost of $4.7 billion, Defense Minister A.K. Antony told Indian parliamentarians last month. First delivery was expected in December 2012, with subsequent subs a year apart, Antony said. The six are being built at Mazagon Dock (MDL) under technology- transfer agreements with France's DCNS.
Roadside attacks have been around almost as long as soldiers have marched down roads. Until 9/11, casualties from these attacks were less significant compared with the large numbers lost on battlefields to poisonous gas, machine guns and air assaults. But in today's often urbanized, counterinsurgency warfare, roadside attacks with homemade bombs and mines—collectively known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—are the principal cause of loss of life and limb among Western militaries in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Paul McLeary (Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Aberdeen, Md.)
The U.S. Army is not sugarcoating it: The armed service is about to go through deep, emotionally wrenching changes. Even as the smell of cordite still hangs in the Afghan air, the service's chiefs are busy planning the Army's postwar posture and equipment needs.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is urging Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to stop an arms deal with Russia as Syria smolders. The March letter asks the Pentagon chief to end all business with Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms firm, to protest its continuing sale of weapons to Syria. At stake is a deal worth up to $1 billion to supply Russian Mil Mi-17 helicopters and spare parts to the Afghan military. “U.S. taxpayers should not be put in a position where they are indirectly subsidizing the mass murder of Syrian civilians,” the senators wrote.
Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) is changing in the same way as warfare as a whole. Targets used to be easy to find and identify, though hard to kill, but now the reverse is usually true. ISR data used to be hard to get, which made the volumes manageable. Now, collection is cheap but meeting the demands of processing, exploitation and dissemination, or PED, is hard.
A bullet that seldom misses would be an asset in combat. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have developed a prototype self-guided round that is in effect a tiny missile, 4 in., long, with optical sensor, 8-bit CPU, guidance and control electronics, and steerable fins with electromagnetic actuators. The bullet flies at 2,400 fps.; range is 2,000 meters (1.24 mi.). The optical sensor detects a target illuminated by a laser in the rifle's optics. Fins maneuver the projectile to remain on target despite distance, crosswinds and other variables.
Harvard researchers have devised a technique for building microbots that was inspired by pop-up books. Pratheev Sreetharan and J. Peter Whitney, doctoral candidates, developed the method for the Harvard Monolithic Bee, or “Mobee,” a flying microbot that fits on a quarter and has mass of 90 mg. Making Mobees by hand is slow and difficult. The technique, called Printed Circuit MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems), is a layering process in which micro-machined materials are assembled, aligned and machined again into what will be 3-D shapes.
From the way that Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and other members of Congress grumbled when the Obama administration pulled 1,200 Army National Guard soldiers off the U.S.-Mexican border in February, you would think the White House threw open the gates and sent every uniformed U.S. service member home. “It defies logic that we would remove the National Guard from the border when the border is not secure,” Poe said. “If anything, we need more National Guard troops.”
Backing for the Assad regime in strife-torn Syria hinges on a centuries-old Russian ambition. From the Crimean War to “the great game” of the 1800s, the lack of a deep, warm-water port has cramped Russia's global desires.
It is an illusion to think that a $200M aircraft will have operating and support costs anywhere close to the $60M aircraft it is replacing. More expensive aircraft cost more to operate than less expensive ones, and it is often a proportional relationship. Partner nations may get a 'deal' on procurement as has been suggested, but will they be able to afford to operate the aircraft for 30 years?- —Talos IV on a post about Canada's commitment to the JSF
