Wi-Fi to Go, No Cafe Needed

Imagine if you could get online anywhere you liked — in a taxi, on the beach, in a hotel with disgustingly overpriced Wi-Fi — without messing around with cellular modems. What if you had a personal Wi-Fi bubble, a private hot spot, that followed you everywhere you go?

Incredibly, there is such a thing. It’s the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It’s a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot.

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Active RFID Tag integrates temperature sensing capability.

GAO Tek's Active RFID tag with temperature sensor (GAO127003) is specifically designed to collect and transmit temperature data in real time in addition to identification and location of items. It is commonly deployed in applications such as cold logistics or medicine transportation.

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Bell's HTR: Tiltwing + Rotors

Thanks to sharp-eyed Steve Trimble at the Quad-A show, and his The Dew Line blog, we now know about Bell Helicopter's Hybrid Tandem Rotor (HTR) concept.

According to Steve's interview with Bell's exec VP for government programs Robert Kennedy, the HTR could achieve a forward speed of 225kt, compared with around 170kt for a conventional helicopter and more than 300kt for the V-22 tiltrotor.

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LockMart Tests Systems On Desert Hawk III Unmanned Aircraft System

Lockheed Martin has successfully completed flight testing of a new signals intelligence (SIGINT) payload and a next generation wing design that will provide enhanced capabilities for the company's small Desert Hawk III (DHIII) Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS).

Lockheed Martin's current DHIII is an open architecture system that consists of three key components: a light-weight, hand-launched, rugged air vehicle with a number of snap-on payloads (Plug and PlayloadsTM); a portable ground station; and a remote video terminal.

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Captive Flight Test Moves NLOS-LS Closer To US Navy Live Fire Testing

NetFires has conducted the second captive flight test of the Non Line-of-Sight-Launch System Precision Attack Missile (PAM).

NLOS-LS provides the warfighter with immediate, precise and responsive fires on high-payoff targets with real-time target acquisition and battle effects. It is also one of the key Littoral Combat Ship mission modules.

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Americanized/Modernized Polish wz. 88 Tantal AK-74 5.45×39mm Tactical Rifle/Carbine

If you’d like a more traditional platform for the 5.45×39mm Russian cartridge, than the Smith & Wesson (S&W) M&P15R semi-auto AR-15 tactical carbine, the April 2009 issue of Special Weapons for Military & Police (SWMP) (Gun Buyer’s Annual #74) also has an article by Charlie Cutshaw on a Interarms Polish wz. 88 Tantal AK-74S semi-auto Kalashnikov AK-74-type 5.45mm tactical rifle/carbine that’s been upgraded with some distinctly American tactical rifle/carbine accessories to create an bring it “into the 21st century” and create an Americanized AK-74, if you will.

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RQ-4 Euro Hawk UAV Cleared for Takeoff

The Euro Hawk project aims to produce an RQ-4 with additional capabilities in signals intelligence collection (SIGINT), as well as its native ground surveillance capabilities. An MoU was signed in May 2006, followed by a firm system development contract in February 2007.

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Windows 7 Eases PC-To-PC File Transfers

Computer users who buy a new Windows 7 PC will have an easier time transferring files from their old machines thanks to improved file transfer tools included in Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s next operating system.

An enhanced version of Windows Easy Transfer, native to Windows 7, lets users port files, user accounts, and application settings from a Windows XP or Windows Vista system to a Windows 7-based PC in just a few steps, according to Microsoft officials.

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Amazon Kindle DX announced

ust as with the Kindle 2, Amazon posted the Kindle DX product page while the launch event was underway. Specs-wise, there's not much here we didn't know: the big changes are a larger 9.7-inch screen that rotates to landscape display, a PDF reader, and more storage space at 3.3GB. The big news is actually the flat $489 price tag, which seems on the high-side of realistic to us -- although the subsidy-pricing rumors weren't totally inaccurate, as the New York Times, Washington Post, and Boston Globe will offer subsidized on-contract Kindles to customers who can't get at-home delivery when the DX ships this summer.

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New Radios are Pushing Broadband to the Edge of the Battlefield

General Dynamics is developing the 'Handheld, Manpack and Small Form Fit' (HMS) radio under the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) to provide high bandwidth communications even at the lowest level of command, establishing wideband communication among tactical vehicles and with dismounted units on-the-move. The radio supports JTRS Wideband Networking Waveform and standard based 802.16 wireless networking technologies, facilitating the transfer of large amounts of information and for on-line collaboration between moving vehicles.

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'Digitized Combat Group' demonstrates Advantages of Integrated Sensors

Sagem Défense Sécurité demonstrated the capabilities of advanced 'sensor to shooter' capabilities, as part of the Phoenix demo, coinciding with a recent “Battlespace Digitization” exercise held by the French Army 2nd Armored Brigade. Utilizing representative demonstration systems including digitized vehicles and infantry combat suites, the Phoenix project has been developed with private funding by Sagem, with the support of France’s defense procurement agency, the DGA, and French Army.

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Guarding The Internet

The U.S. Navy has found its place in defending the Internet; underwater. That's where most of the planets Internet traffic spends most of its time, as it travels from continent to continent via fiber-optic cables. The navy proposes to undertake more aggressive operations to prevent terrorists, or hostile nations, from trying to cut these cables.

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Could Wolfram|Alpha Sway Google Regulators?

Wolfram|Alpha, a company whose product you have never used, may turn out to be Google’s best friend.

For those who haven’t heard yet, Wolfram|Alpha is a much-hyped, badly-named computational search engine that gives real answers to queries such as “internet users in Europe.” It pulls off the techie magic by using structured data sets, rather than messy web pages, as its index. Its demo has impressed quite a few tech journalists, including the originally skeptical Danny Sullivan, one of the crown princes of search engine journalism.

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Russian experts to investigate Su-30 jet crash in India

A group of Russian experts has arrived in India to look into the cause of a recent Su-30MKI fighter jet crash, a source in India's Defense Ministry told RIA Novosti on Friday.

An Indian Air Force Sukhoi-30MKI crashed on April 30 during a routine training flight near a village 170km from the town of Jaisalmer in the northeastern state of Rajasthan, killing one of its two pilots.

The source said 20 Russian experts arrived on Wednesday at the crash site to examine the wreckage of the plane. The incident was the first since the Su-30MKI was put into service with the Indian Air Force in 2002.

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Work Under Way on ‘Virtual Fence’

After three years of delays and false starts, construction began this week on a “virtual fence” aimed at stopping illegal immigration and smuggling along the border with Mexico.

The first phase of the $6.7 billion project — a network of towers rigged with cameras, sensors and communications equipment — will cover about 23 miles south of Tucson, in the busiest area for illegal crossing.

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Pentagon’s Black Budget Grows to More Than $50 Billion

The Pentagon wants to spend just over $50 billion on classified programs next year, newly-released Defense Department budget documents reveal. “That’s the largest-ever sum,” according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, a longtime black-budget seer — a three percent increase over last year’s total.

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U.S. Drops Research Into Fuel Cells for Cars

Cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, once hailed by President George W. Bush as a pollution-free solution for reducing the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, will not be practical over the next 10 to 20 years, the energy secretary said Thursday, and the government will cut off funds for the vehicles’ development.

Developing those cells and coming up with a way to transport the hydrogen is a big challenge, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in releasing energy-related details of the administration’s budget for the year beginning Oct. 1. Dr. Chu said the government preferred to focus on projects that would bear fruit more quickly.

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NASA set for dramatic shuttle rescue

As NASA prepares for its final service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, it's also preparing for something never attempted in the history of the shuttle program: a rescue operation so dramatic that Hollywood would be hard-pressed to come up with a more outlandish plot.

If the Hubble repair crew due for liftoff on Monday got into the deepest sort of orbital trouble, yet another shuttle would have to be launched into orbit as little as a week later. NASA hasn’t launched two piloted spacecraft so close together in more than 40 years. But that's just the first act of the drama.

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Boeing resurrects X-45C as 'Phantom Ray' testbed

The Boeing X-45C will finally get a chance to fly. The manufacturer today announced the new "Phantom Ray" testbed based on the unflown X-45C airframe will perform a series of 10 flights starting in 2010. A Boeing spokesman tells FlightGlobal.com that the Phantom Ray is not focused at any particular program or competition.

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DARPA KICKS OFF VULCAN ENGINE PROGRAM (PDF)

The Vulcan program is a propulsion system demonstration effort to design, build and ground-test an engine capable of accelerating a full-scale hypersonic vehicle from rest to Mach 4+. The Vulcan engine is critical to enabling full-scale hypersonic cruise vehicles for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, strike or other critical national missions. It can serve as the low-speed accelerator for hypersonic vehicles that use turbine-based combined-cycle engines or as a stand-alone engine for Mach 0-4+ strike and reconnaissance aircraft.

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Secret US robo whispercopters head to 'undisclosed location'

The US Special Operations Command - SOCOM, America's secret military elite - is to double its fleet of robot whispercopters in coming years, according to reports.

It has also been revealed that eight of the high tech droid kill-choppers will soon go operational as surveillance craft at "an undisclosed location" overseas.

The news comes from Flight International, reporting on an interview with Major Scott Beall of SOCOM. Major Beall is the secret supertroopers' programme manager for the Boeing A160T unmanned helicopter.

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Combined RFID-WIFI-GPS

"Being able to track the location of assets and inventory both indoors and in complex or large outdoor environments with a single device over Wi-Fi is a game-changing innovation," said Tuomo Rutanen, vice president of Business Development at Ekahau. "We are excited to be working with NavSync to bring to market a solution that will significantly enhance the usefulness of location tracking applications in a wide variety of industries - such as container yards, logistics depots and open pit mining operations - where Wi-Fi can be leveraged for connectivity and GPS satellite visibility is available."

The Wi-Fi-enabled GPS tag combines NavSync's NavTrac high performance GPS module with Ekahau's location protocol. Ekahau location protocol is available free of charge as part of the Located by Ekahau program, which enables adding positioning to Wi-Fi-compliant devices. In order to begin tracking those devices, users need to deploy Ekahau Positioning Engine (EPE) server software, which can be installed centrally or remotely to support several customer sites over IP networks from a single server location.

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WiGig Tempts With High-Speed Wireless Data Transfer

A new standard aims to offer gigabit-speed connectivity without the clutter of cables.

“What we are talking about here is the ability to download a 25 GB Blu-ray disc in under a minute,” says Mark Grodzinsky, chairman of the marketing workgroup at the Wireless Gigabit Alliance. “It’s not something you can do with Wi-Fi or any other standard right now.”

The Wireless Gigabit Alliance, a consortium of electronics companies, has established a specification for 60 gigahertz wireless technology that can offer users data transfer speeds ranging from 1 Gigabits per second to 6 Gbps. To put it simply, WiGig could be at least ten times faster than today’s Wi-Fi and it could be available to consumers by the end of next year.

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Viaspace to demo detection technology

U.S. company Viaspace Inc. (OTCBB:VSPC) announced plans to demonstrate its hazardous chemicals, explosives and toxic gases threat-detection technology.

Viaspace was awarded a Phase II contract by the U.S. Army to develop a new threat-detection technology as part of the Small Business Technology Transfer program. Viaspace said its Ionfinity subsidiary, working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, General Dynamics (NYSE:GD), Sionex and Imaginative Technologies, is set to conducted field demonstrations of the new sensor.

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Army orders PackBot tech from iRobot

BEDFORD, Mass., May 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army has placed an order for iRobot Corp.'s PackBot 510s as part of an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract.

Officials said the widely deployed PackBot technology is designed to detect and eliminate IED threats in combat zones while keeping soldiers at safe distances.

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Philips' 80-Story LED Lamp

An LED lamp's long life and sippy-cup approach to energy consumption makes it an appealing light source. But it's still a relatively nascent technology, primarily popping up in small-scale applications such as flashlights and vehicle turn signals.

Which is why the new Philips ColorReach Powercore LED light is so surprising—and could be a game-changer. It's the first LED architectural floodlight—that is, a lamp used to dramatically drench a building's nighttime facade with light and color—capable of lighting an entire skyscraper. A single 18.0 x 28.9-inch light array can reach the top of an 80-story tower.

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The Anti-Swimmer Torpedo

Thinking of going for a swim? Keep an eye out for the Reusable Unambiguous Swimmer Warning Vehicle, a torpedo that can hunt down any swimmer who poses a threat to U.S. waters. It circles around its victim, relays the exact GPS coordinates of the prey, and sounds an alarm.

According to DefenseTech.org, the torpedo is an experimental device is five feet long, moves at a stealth-like 8 knots, and could be equipped with defensive -- or offensive -- weapons to stop a terrorist attack.

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Rockwell Collins to show automatic recovery

Rockwell Collins has won a contract to show that it can use software algorithms to automatically stabilize an operational unmanned aircraft system (UAS) even after experiencing the sudden loss of 80% of its control surfaces on one side.

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Taiwan's SAM Network

he island of Taiwan sits less than 200 kilometers from the coast of the People's Republic of China. Faced with a potential threat consisting of over a thousand ballistic missiles and swarms of strike fighters, Taiwan's strategic SAM network is a significant element of the island's defense

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ILEE Produces LED Night Vision Torch

ILEE AG have produced a tactical LED torch with an IR filter which is comparable with similar Xenon lamp torches.

The tactical night vision torch has an IR LED light source which transmits the IR light only using an inbuilt filter. Traditionally a Xenon lamp is used for his purpose; however Xenon lamps are not reliably resistant to high shock conditions and have a failure rate which is clearly higher and inferior to the LED life expectancy.

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