The U.S. Air Force talked until recently of just a 100-aircraft fleet of new bombers, but advocates are calling for more. Dave Deptula, the retired three-star general who headed reconnaissance programs for the armed service during recent wars, says that it's easy to get to a 200-aircraft bomber fleet—with one 12-aircraft squadron for each of 10 air expeditionary forces, and other aircraft to support strategic deterrence and cover attrition and depot maintenance.
Home-grown “hacktivism”—network penetration by politically motivated groups or individuals—has long been recognized as an important element of what is routinely referred to in cybersecurity circles as Advanced Persistent Threat.
Personal location beacons are crucial gear when it comes to rescuing downed pilots or sailors at sea. Becker Avionics of Miramar, Fla., has developed a tiny locator for search-and-rescue operations that is designed to speed the location and recovery of personnel. The BD406/PBD406 beacon locator is 2 in. long and weighs a little more than 2 lb. It decodes 406-mhz signals to depths of 100 meters (330 ft.) along with transmitted GPS locations, and identifies a beacon's serial number. Becker says it costs less to procure and operate than competitive beacon locators.
Last August, a magnitude-5.9 earthquake shook Washington, toppling chimneys, cracking masonry and even damaging the National Cathedral and Washington Monument. In less than a minute, that same earthquake could be felt up the East Coast and in New York. But for many there and elsewhere, the first tipoff that something had hit the nation's capital was not the shockwave, but the massive outpouring on Twitter.
Engineers and physicists at Seattle-based Intellectual Ventures are now putting the screws into a prototype flat-panel beam-steering antenna that could potentially shave hundreds of thousands of dollars off expensive phased-array technologies and open the way to loss-less gigabyte-per-second wireless for everyday handheld mobile devices. It also promises more capability for those in uniform, as the military is always looking for a better, faster, more reliable way to communicate.
The U.S. government continues to hold up arms sales to Bahrain amid the kingdom's violent crackdown on political protesters. “More remains to be done on that,” said Victoria Nuland, a State Department official. “Assistance is still on pause.” The Pentagon last September notified Congress of a potential $53 million arms sales package for Bahrain, which included 44 Humvees and several hundred Tube-Launched Optically-Tracked Wire-Guided missiles.
The U.S. Army is about to select improved camouflage for soldiers' uniforms. But according to one of the finalists, far more advanced camouflage, offering potential for concealment bordering on invisibility, is just around the corner.
Elbit Systems has expanded its portfolio of UAS payloads with the recent launch of a hyperspectral offering for intelligence capabilities for the Hermes 450 and Hermes 900 UAS. From the company's Elop unit, the hyperspectral technology enables simultaneous imaging of the targeted region at hundreds of different wavelengths. The payload captures the spectral signature of the imaged materials, unique to every material in nature, like a fingerprint.
The issue of a 37-point agreement on security and defense on Feb. 17 confirmed that, despite public spats between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, the U.K. and France have been quietly but surely moving to ever-closer defense and industrial ties. The two countries are more serious about cooperation in defense matters than they arguably have ever been before.
Maps are clearly a vital tool for any military commander, but the days when a two-dimensional, printed representation of an area will suffice have long since passed. Dynamic mapping of the battlespace is not new, but 21st century technologies are revolutionizing the collection, dissemination and analysis of tactical intelligence.
Indian Foreign Minister Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna's visit to Israel in January marked the arrival of the highest-ranking Indian official there in 11 years, and is all the more significant as the Indian governing coalition is now headed by the Congress Party, a faction that traditionally has paid close attention to Muslim sensitivities.
Christina Mackenzie (St. Nazaire, France), Andy Nativi (Genoa), Bill Sweetman (Washington)
While the U.S. Navy wrestles with development and deployment of the fast and consequently expensive Littoral Combat Ship—and confronts the cost of building real missile defense into its next-generation combatants—the rest of the world is focusing on less glamorous craft that are reliable, practical and affordable.
When the U.S. Army's chief of staff, Gen. Ray Odierno, identified the service's top three acquisition priorities in January, two were new ground vehicles. At the time, it was not much of a surprise—even at the end of a decade in which the service fell in love with the Stryker vehicle and spent almost $50 billion to build more than 25,000 Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) variants.
So far Selex Galileo's foray into the training business has been mainly linked to a family of advanced flight simulators, but the U.S. arm of the Italian defense electronics company has just opened a new training facility, largely dedicated to U.S. and partner-nation special operations forces (SOF).
Filled with military deals harvested over the past few years, the Indian defense pie is getting bigger and sweeter, on land and in the air. But the country faces major hurdles in making those plans real. First, the good news: Over the next five years, India plans to renovate or replace its Soviet-era kit with $50 billion in new equipment, making Asia's third largest economy a lucrative market for foreign companies such as Boeing and Dassault.
The 30th anniversary of the successful re-taking of the British Overseas Territory, a Falklands Islands, has turned out to have a bit more resonance across the Atlantic than might have been expected. The issue of possible oil and mineral reserves near the islands, as well as valuable fish stocks, already had raised political tension with Argentina, which still claims the islands.
Tank: Stimson Center Location: Washington Profile: Cerebral think tank “devoted to international peace and security” with a strong non-proliferation focus. The Libya of Col. Moammar Gadhafi had acquired a stockpile of 20,000 man-portable air defense systems (Manpads) before last year's revolution—the largest of any country that does not make such weapons. So far, U.S. and NATO experts working with Libya's Transitional National Council (TNC) have recovered only 5,000 of them.
Rheinmetall and MBDA Deutschland are developing laser weapons for various applications. Both companies have demonstrated 10-kw lasers but recognize the need to increase power to at least 100 kw. The solution is the coupling of individual laser sources to achieve a level not possible with only one source.
On static display at February's Singapore air show were two U.S. fighters first developed under the Nixon administration. The only newer fighter was an F-35 mockup, which doesn't count. If you wanted anything newer, you looked for the Singapore air force's IAI-Elta Gulfstream airborne early warning aircraft or Elbit's Hermes 900 unmanned air vehicle, surrounded by sensor payloads covering the spectrum from visible light to VHF.
The U.K. Defense Ministry has launched the development of the Sea Ceptor ship-based short-range air defense system intended to equip the future Type 26 Global Combat Ship and also modernize the in-service Type 23 frigates. MBDA recently received a system-demonstration phase contract to work on the system, also called the Future Local Area Air Defense System. Sea Ceptor is being designed to destroy aircraft and supersonic anti-ship missiles, including saturation attacks. The Common Anti-Air Missile (CAMM) is to be the interceptor.
Israel Military Industries showed a new MPR-500 general purpose (GP) bomb at the Singapore air show last month. The MPR-500 was developed to improve the reliability and performance of MK 82 bombs used with laser and GPS guidance kits. IMI designed the MPR-500 to be functionally interchangeable with the MK 82 to keep it compatible with all aircraft types flying the bomb, as well as all MK 82 guidance kits, fuses and tools. A 250-kg-class weapon, the MPR-500 is supposed to offer better lethality, penetration and reliability than the 2,000-lb.
As a very good friend who is internationally acknowledged as a guru in weapon systems testing said many years ago: “Clearing weapons out of and off the JSF is going to be both interesting . . . and exciting!” Those who have never done such work have little, if any appreciation, of what it entails and the risks involved. That goes for all clearance work—including subsonic [aircraft], as well as supersonic. —Horde
The budgets for at least three air-launched, directed-energy weapons are being fully protected by the U.S. Air Force in fiscal 2013 budget plans, according to Jennifer Ricklin, chief technologist for the Air Force Research Laboratory. Plans for Army anti-electronics weapons are less developed, but basic research in associated disciplines continues, according to budget request presentations last month. Specifically, the Air Force is developing bombs and missiles to carry high-power microwave (HPM) warheads.
As the process of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) becomes more sophisticated, work is ongoing to design sensors that can be used with diverse platforms, especially small UAVs. Logos Technologies of Alexandria, Va., developed a system for ISR and accompanying software called Leaps—Lightweight Expeditionary Airborne Persistent Surveillance system—which, at 54 lb, is one-tenth the weight of its previous surveillance payload. Leaps gives a ground commander sole control of a persistent surveillance asset.
