Next-Gen Ultrasound

Whereas the signal-processing and image-reconstruction techniques used in medical ultrasonography have made huge advances since this type of imaging became commonplace three decades ago, the business end of the apparatus—the transducer, which converts electrical impulses to sound waves and vice versa—has remained largely unchanged. So we found fertile ground when we began digging for ways to improve those transducers using tools from the microelectronics industry. You will soon find the fruits of those efforts at your local hospital. Indeed, this strategy promises to revolutionize ultrasound imaging within the next few years.

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25 Microchips That Shook the World

In microchip design, as in life, small things sometimes add up to big things. Dream up a clever microcircuit, get it sculpted in a sliver of silicon, and your little creation may unleash a technological revolution. It happened with the Intel 8088 microprocessor. And the Mostek MK4096 4-kilobit DRAM. And the Texas Instruments TMS32010 digital signal processor.

Among the many great chips that have emerged from fabs during the half-century reign of the integrated circuit, a small group stands out. Their designs proved so cutting-edge, so out of the box, so ahead of their time, that we are left groping for more technology clichés to describe them. Suffice it to say that they gave us the technology that made our brief, otherwise tedious existence in this universe worth living.

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U.S. May Monitor Pirates From Space

The U.S. is exploring the use of commercial satellites to enhance ship identification and communication for the battle against piracy.

Long before the U.S.-flagged container ship Maersk Alabama was attacked by Somali pirates this month, a sister vessel, the Maersk Iowa, was plying the sea lanes between the U.S. East Coast and the Indian Ocean, testing a device that combines the information obtained from shipboard radar and identification transponders to give authorities a better overview of who is on the water and what they are up to.

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CCUVS Deploys Robonic Unmanned Air Systems Launcher On First Operational Mission

The Canadian Centre for Unmanned Vehicle Systems (CCUVS) has announced it will be deploying the Robonic MC2555LLR unmanned air systems (UAS) launcher on its first operational mission since acquiring the launcher earlier this year.

The Robonic MC2555LLR launcher will be transported to Victoria, British Columbia, on 28 April and will be used to support the Canadian navy during exercise Trident Fury at the beginning of May. CCUVS is working closely with Meggitt Training Systems Canada (MTSC), the prime for providing the targets and control systems that the navy will use for ship defence training.

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Generating Energy From the Deep

LOCKHEED MARTIN is best known for building stealth fighters, satellites and other military equipment. But since late 2006 the company has taken on a different kind of enterprise — generating renewable power from the ocean.

The technology is still being developed in the laboratory, but if it succeeds on a large scale, it
could eventually become an important tool in the nation’s battle against global warming and dependency on foreign oil.

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Hypersonic ‘WaveRider’ poised for test flight

Hoping to bridge the gap between airplanes and rocketships, the U.S. military is preparing to test an experimental aircraft that can fly more than six times faster than the speed of sound on ordinary jet fuel.

Officially, it's known as the X-51, but folks like to call it the WaveRider because it stays airborne, in part, with lift generated by the shock waves of its own flight. The design stems from the goal of the program — to demonstrate an air-breathing, hypersonic, combustion ramjet engine, known as a scramjet.

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Raytheon affirms plans to launch family of Killer Bee UAVs

Raytheon says today it will continue to develop and sell new versions of the Killer Bee blended wing body unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) even after the design has been acquired and renamed by Northrop Grumman.

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JHMCS: Fighter Pilot “Look & Shoot” Helmets’ Upgrade, Ups & Downs

The Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System (JHMCS) projects visual targeting and aircraft performance information on the back of the helmet’s visor, including aircraft altitude, airspeed, gravitational pull, angle of attack, and weapons sighting, enabling the pilot to monitor this information without interrupting the field of view through the cockpit canopy. The system uses a magnetic transmitter unit fixed to the pilot’s seat and a magnetic field probe mounted on the helmet to define helmet pointing positioning. A Helmet Vehicle Interface (HVI) interacts with the aircraft system bus to provide signal generation for the helmet display. This provides significant improvement for close combat targeting and engagement.

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Thales’s Liberty multiband radio receives FCC approval

Thales Communications, Inc., a pioneer and global leader in the development, manufacture, and support of multiband, software-defined radio (SDR) equipment, announces that its Liberty multiband land mobile radio (LMR) has received U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) certification. Having successfully passed all required tests, the Liberty radio is the first FCC-approved multiband radio covering the entire public safety spectrum.

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NG delivers first operational B-2 bomber with new radar

Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has delivered to the U.S. Air Force the first operational B-2 Spirit stealth bomber to be equipped with a newly modernized radar. The aircraft was officially handed off to the Air Force on March 17 at Whiteman Air Force Base, the operational home of the B-2 fleet and the 509th Bomb Wing.

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Fastest Camera Ever Built Uses Lasers

cientists have made the fastest camera ever. It can take 6.1 million pictures in a single second, at a shutter speed of 440 trillionths of a second. Light itself moves just a fraction of a centimeter in that time.

The camera works by illuminating objects with a laser that emits a different infrared frequency for every single pixel, allowing them to custom-amplify a signal that would otherwise be too dim to see.

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G.E.’s Breakthrough Can Put 100 DVDs on a Disc

General Electric says it has achieved a breakthrough in digital storage technology that will allow standard-size discs to hold the equivalent of 100 DVDs.

The storage advance, which G.E. is announcing on Monday, is just a laboratory success at this stage. The new technology must be made to work in products that can be mass-produced at affordable prices.

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U.S. Steps Up Effort on Digital Defenses

When American forces in Iraq wanted to lure members of Al Qaeda into a trap, they hacked into one of the group’s computers and altered information that drove them into American gun sights.

When President George W. Bush ordered new ways to slow Iran’s progress toward a nuclear bomb last year, he approved a plan for an experimental covert program — its results still unclear — to bore into their computers and undermine the project.

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Canadians demonstrate brownout vision aid

AE and Neptec Design Group have successfully demonstrated a synthetic vision system that fuses real-time landscape captured by a Neptec-built light detection and ranging (Lidar) sensor with a CAE-built terrain database.

According to the companies, pilots flying a UH-1 test helicopter equipped with a prototype system were able to “see through” brownout conditions to “easily differentiate between rocks, bushes, sloping terrain, utility poles, ground vehicles and wires at distances greater than 200m.

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Boeing ponders “variably” manned aircraft

Boeing has filed for a US patent on an aircraft control system that could be configured for two, one or zero pilots. The no-pilot mode would receive input from a remotely located operator by way of wireless signals, patent application 20090105891 states.
The development echoes similar work that Sikorsky has said it is performing. Sikorsky president Jeff Pino has said the company will increasingly turn to fly-by-wire designs in part to allow the military to use helicopters for missions too dangerous for pilots or for situations where pilots are injured. "We envision a switch in the cockpit of all of our helicopters with indicators for 'No pilot', 'One pilot' and 'Two pilots'," Pino stated at the February 2008 Helicopter Association International Expo.

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Photron debuts world's-fastest camera

April 21, 2009--High-speed imaging systems manufacturer Photron (San Diego, CA) will demonstrate the newest member of its high-speed technology, the Fastcam SA5, at the 2009 NAB show (www.nabshow.com) in Las Vegas, April 18-23. This camera achieves an unprecedented 7500 frames per second with its megapixel resolution (1024 x 1000) CMOS sensor, with reduced resolution available at a speed of over 1 million frames per second. See the Laser Focus World VIDEO player or click this link for the latest video from Photron: Popcorn popping at 10,000 frames per second .

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Army ‘Multimode’ Raygun Tech Zaps, Crackles, Pops

The Army’s new ray gun research project combines the zap of a laser with the crackle of an electric shock and the pop of a high-power microwave pulse. Known as the Multimode Directed Energy Armament System, it offers a wide range of different effects against different targets. Defensively, it could knock out everything from improvised explosive devices to incoming rockets. As a weapon, its effects might range from Taser-like effects to a lethal lightning bolt — and it should be able to stop vehicles in their tracks.

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General Atomics unwraps new, Stealth(y) robot war-jet

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI), maker of the famous Predator and Reaper unmanned warplanes, has taken the wraps off a new and still more powerful kill-robot - the "Avenger". The company says that first flights have been conducted successfully this month.

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INTEGRATED SENSOR IS STRUCTURE PROGRAM BEGINS

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Palmdale, Calif., to develop the Integrated Sensor Is Structure (ISIS) phase 3 demonstration system. Raytheon Co., El Segundo, Calif., is a key team member.

DARPA’s ISIS program is developing a sensor of unprecedented proportions that is fully integrated into a stratospheric airship. ISIS will revolutionize theater-wide surveillance, tracking and fire-control, and enable engagement of hundreds of time-critical air and ground targets simultaneously in both urban and rural environments.

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Integrated Sensor is Structure (ISIS)

The goal of the ISIS program is to develop a stratospheric airship based autonomous unmanned sensor with years of persistence in surveillance and tracking of air and ground targets. It will have the capability to track the most advanced cruise missiles at 600 km and dismounted enemy combatants at 300 km.

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Raven Small UAV Demonstrates Persistent Surveillance Capability on a 30 Hour Mission

Attached to the forward echelons and operated by the troops, Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (SUAV) have become a common element of support to the fighting units, providing a broad range of services to the warfighter, from intelligence gathering and target acquisition to battle damage assessment and force protection. Indispensable as they are, SUAV have one clear drawback – short range and mission endurance. System developers are aiming at extending their mission endurance, by energy saving and use of more efficient power sources. A new concept utilizing multiple SUAVs on a single mission enables a unit to maintain persistent monitoring of a mission area over a long time.

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Tracking Internet Chatter Helps Spot Swine Flu Outbreak

Tech tools for tracking disease outbreaks have been useful for following the spread of swine flu and one startup even claims to have recognized the severity of the outbreak in Mexico before government public health officials.

Veratect, a Seattle-based biosurveillance startup, claims they alerted the Centers for Disease Control to the situation in Mexico — where health officials suspect swine flu has killed up to 149 people — on April 16, before even the Mexican health authorities declared a problem.

How’d they get ahead of the outbreak? By monitoring and analyzing the flow of social media traffic along with more official reports, the company’s CEO said.

“We started picking up the early indicators of social disruption, whether it shows up on blogs or Twitter,” said Bob Hart, the CEO of Veratect. “We can pick up the first indicators of behavioral changes.”

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Wave of success

Tests on Aquamarine Power’s Oyster wave energy converter have shown that the device can deliver electricity on a commercial scale after it produced and exported electricity to the grid.


The trials, which began in March and are scheduled to finish by the end of April, took place at the New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC), a facility in north-east England that acts as a testing platform for renewable energy technologies.

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The List: 57 Amazing Things You Didn't Know Your Tech Could Do!

Here are all 57 of the tips and tricks we've pulled together for PCs, laptops, smartphones, cameras, the Web and more.

Here's our guide to the many pieces that make up "57 Amazing Things You Didn't Know Your Tech Could Do."
Following are links to all six stories. In them you'll learn how to do astounding things with PCs and networking; smartphones; digital cameras and photos; Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Search; iPods, iTunes, and other digital music players; and TiVo, Wii, and Xbox 360 controllers.

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Sukhoi confirms SU-35 prototype crash

Sukhoi has confirmed the company’s third prototype for the Su-35 programme crashed at Komsomolsk-on-Amur during high-speed ground tests.

Test pilot Yevgeni Frolov escaped uninjured after ejecting, a Sukhoi statement says.
A “commission of inquiry” has been launched to investigate the crash, says the company.
Sukhoi recently added the third test prototype to accelerate the flight test schedule. So far, the first two aircraft have completed more than 100 flights.

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Chinese Navy Requires Supercruising Fighter

A supercruising combat aircraft is a high priority of the Chinese navy, the country’s top admiral says in a revealing official interview that gives strong clues of perceived shortcomings and future directions for the maritime force.

Adm. Wu Shengli also says China must step up work on precision missiles that can overcome enemy defenses, and the nation should move faster in developing large combat surface ships—probably meaning the aircraft carrier program that looks increasingly imminent (AW&ST Jan. 5, p. 22).

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DARPA looking for mind-controlrepair brainplug tech

Famed military maverick mad science outfit DARPA has launched a new bid to keep America's tech edge sufficiently sanguinary. This time the killer boffins want nothing less than an accurate computer simulation of a living humanoid brain - which they may use for purposes benign or sinister.

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Little Black Box Streams HD Content Like a Flash Flood

Practically every device in my house (save for the counter-top fryer) doubles as a media streamer, blasting movies, music or even photos from one side of the house to some screen on the other. The SageTV HD Theater is different, though: It's smaller, cheaper, quieter and in some ways more versatile than most media streaming appliances. At roughly 7 inches wide and 6 inches deep, the HD Theater is smaller than a teacup poodle in a trash compactor. In fact, it's so small that it might even have trouble standing up to its own remote, if the two ever came to blows. Once the HD Theater was patched into my 42-inch plasma, it became clear that it's really two devices in one. Its first function is as an extender for viewing media stored on a computer. Like the HD100 Media Extender reviewed last year, the crux of this function is SageTV's included DVR software. Getting the software installed and converting my favorite home theater PC into a de facto media server was a cinch. Surfing through my networked media was easy enough using SageTV's plain (but customizable) interface, and even full 1080p playback was both brisk and clear. Also, since the HD Theater supports a ton of audio and video formats, it had no problems even when I threw it some tough file formats (MKV anyone?).

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Self-healing concrete

A concrete material developed at the University of Michigan has the ability to heal itself when it cracks. Its developers claim that just a handful of rainy days would be enough to mend a damaged bridge made of the new substance. The new material heals itself because it has been designed to bend and crack in narrow hairlines rather than break and split in wide gaps, as traditional concrete does.

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Stronger silk

Spider silk is tougher and lighter than steel - German scientists have added tiny amounts of metal to spider silk to make it even stronger and more elastic.

The technique could lead to the development of super-tough textiles, surgical thread or artificial tissues such as bones or tendons, the researchers claim.

To make the silk, the researchers borrowed a trick from nature with the goal of further enhancing its properties.

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Small Satellites Provide Low-Cost Entree

Satellite reconnaissance that delivers timely intelligence and strategic communications has become an essential part of national security for many nations, providing early warning of hostile attacks and extending command and control throughout areas of operation.

Most nations, particularly small countries, lack the resources, technology and money to create and maintain constellations of orbiting satellites. Smaller, less-costly satellites weighing 500 kg. (1,100 lb.) or less are emerging as practical options. In recent years, large countries, including the U.S. (see p. 36), as well as small ones have recognized the benefits of these platforms.

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Heavy Artillery Testing in The Netherlands

In March, a select group of customers and decision-makers reported to TNO (the Dutch Institute for Applied Scientific Research) in Ypenburg (the Netherlands).

They had taken up the invitation from TenCate Advanced Armour to attend a test of protective solutions, in which the heavy artillery was deployed. The result was impressive and the meeting a success.

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The US Navy’s Dual Band Radars

The US Navy’s newest light cruiser and aircraft carrier designs offer a wide array of new technologies. One is the Dual-Band Radar (DBR) system, which can be scaled up or down for installation in the new DDG-1000 Zumwalt Class “destroyers”, and the CVN-21 Gerald R. Ford Class aircraft carriers.

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Alternatives to a space weapons treaty

Today, no accepted definition of a space weapon exists. Case in point: Recently, Space.com quoted a senior Pentagon official as saying, "There are no space weapons programs being funded by the U.S. Air Force." This statement was immediately criticized by many within the space arms control community as hypocritical and false. They cited the ongoing development of ground-based missile defense assets as evidence, along with dual-use space programs such as XSS-11 and MiTex and doctrinal statements of the importance of "space dominance."

Some experts consider a space weapon to be an object or device in orbit that is used to strike targets on the ground. Others consider a space weapon to be an object or device that can strike other targets in space. Still others consider a space weapon to be anything that can attack, degrade, or destroy satellites--whether from space, the ground, or air. These diverse definitions have frozen the international arms control debate over space weapons for decades.

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Sounding the Nuclear Alarm

The U.S. will not have a credible arsenal unless Washington acts soon to replace aging warheads.

Gen. Chilton pulls out a prop to illustrate his point: a glass bulb about two inches high. "This is a component of a V-61" nuclear warhead, he says. It was in "one of our gravity weapons" -- a weapon from the 1950s and '60s that is still in the U.S. arsenal. He pauses to look around the Journal's conference table. "I remember what these things were for. I bet you don't. It's a vacuum tube. My father used to take these out of the television set in the 1950s and '60s down to the local supermarket to test them and replace them."

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Lockheed Martin Provides U.S. Strategic Command With Enhanced Mission Planning Capability

Collaborative Mission Planning Tool Delivered

Omaha, Neb., April 23rd, 2009 -- Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has enhanced the U.S. Strategic Command’s ability to plan operations that support their critical mission areas, which include strategic deterrence, space and cyberspace. The delivery of the portal-based Integrated Strategic Planning and Analysis Network (ISPAN) Collaborative Information Environment (CIE), gives commanders a faster moving decision environment and an accelerated operations tempo, providing parallel - not sequential - planning and decision making capabilities.

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Boeing Airborne Laser Team Begins Weapon System Flight Tests

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., April 24, 2009 -- The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA], industry teammates and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency have begun Airborne Laser (ABL) flight tests with the entire weapon system integrated aboard the ABL aircraft.
ABL, a heavily modified Boeing 747-400F aircraft, completed its functional check flight April 21 from Edwards Air Force Base with the beam control/fire control system and the high-energy laser onboard, confirming the aircraft is airworthy, ready for more airborne tests, and on track for its missile-intercept demonstration this year.

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Fly like a Fly

The common housefly executes exquisitely precise and complex aerobatics with less computational might than an electric toaster.

The common housefly is an extremely maneuverable flyer, the best of any species, insect or otherwise. What's more, its flight control commands originate from only a few hundred neurons in its brain, far less computational might than you'd find in your toaster.

yet the fly can outmaneuver any human-built craft at low speeds. Buzzing annoyingly across a room, a housefly reaches speeds of up to 10 kilometers per hour at twice the acceleration of gravity. When turning, it is even more impressive: the fly can execute six full turns per second, reaching its top angular speed in just two-hundredths of a second. It can fly straight up, down, or backward, and somersault to land upside down on a ceiling. If it hits a window or a wall sideways, which it often does, the fly will lose lift and begin to fall. But its wings keep beating, and within a few microseconds, the fly recovers its lift and can move off in the opposite direction.

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A Match Made in Packets - Coming soon: cellular handsets that can use a Wi-Fi network

Wi-Fi married to a cellphone would surely be a union made in heaven—a wedding of cellular's ubiquity to the high data rates of local-area networking. It would minimize expensive cellular minutes, replacing them with free or cheap Wi-Fi time. Often, too, it would yield a higher-quality call, because cellular coverage is usually weakest where Wi-Fi excels—inside homes, stores, and offices. Walking inside while in the middle of a cellphone conversation, you wouldn't even notice as your handset switched seamlessly to Wi-Fi; and when you went back out, it would revert to the mobile network just as unobtrusively.

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Quirks of RFID Memory Make for Cheap Security Scheme

18 March 2009—Radio frequency identification (RFID) chips are everywhere today: in credit cards, driver’s licenses, and passports, and stuck to pallets of inventory for big retailers like Wal-Mart. Yet some RFID tags—especially the smallest and cheapest—still have no means to prevent them from yielding up their data to any passerby with an RFID reader.

However, a soon-to-be-published report from a team of American computer scientists proposes a new RFID security measure that works by using the memory circuits already in many RFID chips.

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Blades Have The Edge - Superslim machines are fomenting a quiet revolution in the server room

Blades, for most information technology departments, offer huge improvements over conventional, rack-mounted units. This compact, slim computer (hence the name "blade") is typically based on the same Intel or AMD processors and Windows or Linux operating systems as most other servers, but it consumes a lot less power and takes up a lot less room.

Blades fit into enclosures that hold several units, usually vertically and side by side, like books on a shelf. To replace a bad blade, a technician need only pop it out of its enclosure and put in a new one. And blades are equipped with management programs that let staff easily set them up for specific applications or arrange them in special configurations.

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Bright idea for nanosensors

The transmission of light can be affected by the suspension of metal particles in a clear medium, an effect that has been used for centuries in making red stained glass using gold dust. Researchers are now exploiting this property to construct nanosensors that could be used to detect explosives or toxins, or identify infections.

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Chiral palladium

A research team led by Gadi Rothenberg, professor of heterogeneous catalysis and sustainable chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, has made the first ever chiral palladium metal.

Metals are not chiral because they have neither. However, Prof Rothenberg and Dr Laura Duran Pachon managed to imprint palladium metal crystals with a chiral organic template. The entire template was then removed, leaving a chiral cavity in the palladium metal.

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USAF chief says "light strike" fighter could be needed

The US Air Force's top officer said today that a "light strike" platform optimized for the irregular warfare mission could be added to the service's inventory of manned fighters.

Such an aircraft could serve both as a basic trainer for the USAF and "partner" air forces, and as an attack platform in operations against terrorists and insurgents, said Gen Norton Schwartz, USAF chief of staff.

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A Laser Phalanx?

According to Peppe, a Laser Phalanx solution would offer an effective range about 3 times that of the existing M61A1 20mm gun, along with lower life-cycle costs.
A laser-based Phalanx system certainly sounds interesting. Nevertheless, there are a number of hurdles to cross and tests to pass before it can be considered a true advance over the current set of slug-throwing “last chance” systems out there.

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Microwaves could defuse bombs from afar

THE next weapon in the US army's arsenal could be a laser-guided microwave blaster designed to destroy explosives.
The weapon, called the Multimode Directed Energy Armament System, uses a high-power laser to ionise the air, creating a plasma channel that acts as a waveguide for the stream of microwaves. The device could destroy the electronic fuse of an explosive device or missile, such as a roadside bomb, or immobilise a vehicle by disabling its ignition system.

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Pentagon seeks military role for space tourism technology

As commercial spaceflight draws closer to reality, the US Department of Defense is officially interested.

The National Security Space Office (NSSO) has invited companies such as Armadillo Aerospace, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and Xcor to a conference from 24-26 February in San Antonio, Texas to discuss how suborbital technology could be applied to military needs.

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Air-Mechanized Fighting Vehicle

An example of how the vehicle will be most commonly be utilized is as follows: one to four vehicles (depending on variant and transport size) will be loaded onto a transport with 0-8 men in each vehicle (depending on variant) and flown into a potential war zone. Once over the battlefield, the vehicles will be ejected from the rear of the transport and will utilize their aerodynamic bodies and a deployable Para foil to precisely land at predetermined landing zones. Or in the case of standoff variants, it will utilize its control surfaces ounce released to silently glide into the war zone and will land softly utilizing retro rockets. If carrying troops, they will then immediately dismount and operate on foot while the vehicle becomes an unmanned ground vehicle and provides supporting fire and long range ground mobility when needed. As the design progresses and lifting and propulsion systems are integrated, the vehicle will fly itself into a war zone. Upon landing wings or rotors would fold towards the body so that they will not be damaged or hinder the movement of the vehicle on the ground. If carrying troops, the troops would dismount and be supported by the vehicle. When redeployment becomes necessary they will board the vehicle and fly to the next landing zone.

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What Weapons Want: Q&A With DARPA's Microsystems Master, Greg Kovacs

In 2008, Tony Tether, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), tapped Stanford M.D. and electrical engineer Gregory T.A. Kovacs to lead DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office (MTO). The MTO funds engineering in five general areas: electronics, photonics, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), computer architectures, and algorithms. But as Kovacs has repeatedly said, the role of DARPA is more about integrating these units into interdisciplinary projects. Take, for example, the Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program. Researchers funded under that program are tasked with the creation of moths or other insects that have electronic controls and energy-harvesting devices implanted inside them, making them self-powered remote-controlled spies.

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Portable E-Bomb to Be Tested

15 April 2009—This week at an arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., defense researchers are testing a new high-power microwave (HPM) bomb—one that creates an electromagnetic pulse capable of disabling electronics, vehicles, guided missiles, and communications while leaving people and structures unharmed. The tests mark the first time such a device has been shrunk to dimensions that could make it portable enough to fit in a missile or carried in a Humvee or unmanned aerial vehicle.

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New book teaches U.S. Army how to face 21st century challenges

WASHINGTON, April 22 (UPI) -- Don Vandergriff has published another book, which is good news for all who care about the future of the U.S. Army. "Manning the Future Legions of the United States: Finding and Developing Tomorrow's Centurions" brings together many strands of Army reform to create a comprehensive and intelligent reform program.
The book begins by describing the four generations of modern war, which together establish the context in which we can see both where the U.S. Army is -- in the second generation -- and what it needs to prepare to fight fourth-generation war.

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Flexible, Printable Supercapacitor Built

22 April 2009—The field of printable electronics has taken off in recent years, with researchers touting prototype wearable sensors, smart packaging labels, and even solar cells made with printing technology. However, little advancement has been made in developing printable, flexible energy-storage devices, such as supercapacitors and batteries.
Now researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, Los Angeles, have built a flexible supercapacitor out of printable carbon nanotubes and polymer gel electrolyte. Their results were detailed this month in Nano Letters.

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Bugbots, Pentagon's Hi-Tech Insects

A $37 million U.S. Army research program to develop mechanical crawling, jumping and flying bugs for intelligence gathering, electronic jamming and data manipulation against enemies


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Invisibility cloak

Engineers working at Waltham, Massachusetts-based Fractal Antenna claim to have developed a device based on metamaterials that acts like an invisibility cloak for microwave radiation.
Built from belts of circuit boards festooned with fractal resonators, the device effectively 'slips' the microwaves around the cloaked object so the object is effectively invisible.

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Plasma thruster

A ‘plasma thruster’ will be developed for launch into space within the next four years, as part of a prototype satellite.

It will be the first time in seven years that a piece of Australian hardware will be sent into space and the first time a satellite with a plasma engine will be tested.

It is to be developed as a result of a three-way collaboration between the SP3 Group, EADS-Astrium and the University of Surrey that was formally established in March this year.

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Raytheon wins $19 million contract from USA for detection of land mines and tunnels.

Raytheon Company has received a $19 million contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for development and demonstration of technology to detect and locate buried land mines and tunnels. n Raytheon's plan, a laser radar vibration sensor, or ladar vibrometer, would reveal hidden targets by measuring ground-surface vibrations and use electronic instructions for calculation and processing known as algorithms to interpret the information. The technology demonstrator would integrate the vibrometer with acoustic and seismic sources for field-testing on a moving vehicle.

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Lockheed Martin Wins Role On U.S. Army Battle Command System Management Contract

Company to Develop Capabilities that Enable Fused, Real-Time Pictures of the Battlespace
Tinton Falls, N.J., April 22nd, 2009 -- Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] is one of six companies selected by the U.S. Army to compete for future task orders across the Battle Command Family of Products, an indefinite-delivery-indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract. Lockheed Martin will compete for task orders within the contract ceiling of $777M. All task orders must be initiated within the contract’s five-year period of performance.

The Battle Command Family of Products IDIQ contract vehicle will be used by the Army to obtain command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) services, products and solutions for the next five years. The Battle Command IDIQ development contract is managed by Project Manager Battle Command, based in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

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Redefining Warfare's Electromagnetic Spectrum

In the electronic context, information warfare comprises two major branches – radiation warfare (RW) and data warfare (DW)." that are like yin and yang.

DW essentially involves obtaining control over opponents' processing, analysis and decision-making infrastructure in order to make it act in your interests rather than theirs. DW can range from infecting computers via well-known techniques such as internet-borne viruses, to inserting disinformation into a radio data stream through highly classified techniques with specialised equipment.


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Army Speeds Testing of Robotic Systems

Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., April 20, 2009) -- The U.S. Army has traditionally acquired weapon systems through a process that can take several years, but the ongoing fight in Afghanistan and Iraq has shortened the time frame considerably.Robotic systems that can save lives on the battlefield are getting into Soldiers' hands more rapidly than ever before, and the Army Developmental Test Command is transforming its business practices to support that effort.

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AEDC celebrating hypersonic engine first firing

4/15/2009 - ARNOLD AIR FORCE BASE, Tenn. -- Officials at the U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) are heralding a successful first freejet test on a dual mode, combined ram/scramjet hypersonic engine in the center's Aerodynamic and Propulsion Test Unit (APTU), a major milestone on two fronts.

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Metal Storm Completes 3GL Endurance Test

Metal Storm completed an endurance firing test launching 200 of its 40mm STORM40 ammunitions using its 3GL grenade launcher. Following the successful test, the company expects to begin production of the 3GL in 2010.

According to Dr Lee Finniear, CEO of Metal Storm Ltd., this feature provides users a critical advantage in an opening of an engagement; "in the first few seconds a squad equipped with 3GLs can unleash three times the number of 40mm grenades on the enemy. Whether in a planned attack, or in response to an ambush by the enemy, this firepower can be the decisive element in winning the firefight and saving our soldiers lives.” Finniear said.

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TenCate's Add-On Armour Offers Soldiers Greater Protection

Danish engineers have developed a new add-on armour solution that effectively defeats explosive-formed projectiles generated from roadside bombs that often kill soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The armour is called Armourtex BM and designed for mounting on the outside of armoured vehicles, where it effectively protects the vehicle interior, which typically holds up to 10 soldiers. Moreover, the material has another indisputable advantage: It weighs much less than the steel plates that are the traditional form of armour protection.

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Moldova's 'Twitter Revolutionary' Goes into Hiding

Natalia Morar, the Moldovan activist who used Twitter and text messaging to organize anti-government demonstrations, has apparently gone into hiding after authorities pressed charges against her for "organizing mass unrest."

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Manpackable Laser Weapons on the Way for U.S. Military’s Future Soldiers?

It’s being reported that Northrop Grumman has successfully developed a seven-laser-chain 105.5 kW solid-state laser called “Firestrike” that’s scalable up to 120 kW by adding an eigth chain. Firestrike’s scalable “building-block” approach was apparently the answer to the long-sought weapon-level power question.answer to the long-sought weapon-level power question.

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US Navy unveils superconductor 'cloaking device' destroyer

US Navy boffins say they have made a significant breakthrough in countermeasures against sea mines - by using superconductors to nullify the magnetic signature of an American destroyer.
The Office of Naval Research (ONR) says that high-temperature superconductor (HTS) "degaussing" coils fitted to the destroyer USS Higgins were first turned up to full earlier this month in trials off San Diego, and worked successfully.

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Flying-rifle robocopter: Hovering sniper backup for US troops

The goal of ARSS, as stated by the Army, is to produce a system "having the ability to accurately engage single point man sized targets with an airborne UAV ... [giving] the ground based soldier the ability to have a high-point survivable sniper at their disposal when needed. An airborne UAV can rapidly achieve lookdown angles and viewpoints required for sniper engagements, while controlled from the troop on the ground."

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RATTLRS - Revolutionary Approach To Time-critical Long Range Strike

Revolutionary Approach To Time-critical Long Range Strike (RATTLRS) represents a new supersonic cruise missile concept, enabling warfighters to rapidly launch precision attacks against time-critical targets, from ranges of hundreds of kilometers. When planning RATTLERS missions, users will be able to adjust fuel consumption, speed and range to address a particular mission objective. Unlike current cruise missiles, depending on a lengthy and complex mission planning process, RATTLRS will feature much faster mission preparation, taking only few minutes. Missiles will be able to strike a target after flying a distance of hundreds of kilometers, within 30 minutes from target detection.

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Atomic clock accuracy boosted

PORTLAND, Ore. — A strontium-based timekeeper providing up to 50 percent better accuracy could serve as the next-generation atomic clock.
By controlling collisions between neutral strontium atoms, the new atomic clock is said to be accurate to within one second in 300 million years, according to its inventor, Jun Ye of a joint institute formed by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

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Northrop Grumman Urges ABM Focus On Early Engagement And Flexibility

The U.S. government can get the most from valuable missile defense dollars by focusing on early intercept of hostile ballistic missiles through mobile and flexible defenses, according to Northrop Grumman.

"A mobile, early intercept system stands to make the existing layer of defense much stronger while also being more affordable for taxpayers in the long run"

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Seeking New BMD Strategies - Part One

The new administration of President Barack Obama has the opportunity to develop a new strategy for missile defenses, one consonant with current strategic realities and their own inclinations with respect to foreign and security policies. It needs to think creatively about the role of missile defenses in support of plans for global denuclearization

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Avenger - A new, Stealthy Combat Predator

UAV manufacturer General Atomics began flight testing of a larger, stealthier UAV dubbed as the 'Avenger'. Formerly known as 'Predator C', the new jet powered UAV made its first flights Apr. 4, 2009. The UAV's shape reflects the designer's goal to reduce the aircraft electromagnetic and thermal signature. It is powered by a single Pratt & Whitney Canada PW545B engine feeding from the curved dorsal intake, reducing radar reflections from the turbine blades. The exhaust is partly shielded by the V-tail which also reduces the aircraft thermal signature while serpentine exhaust eliminates radar reflections from inside the engine. The Avenger is designed to fly a 20 hour mission. The Avenger is designed to operate at altitude up to 60,000 ft and cruising speed of 400 knots.

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Net-Centric Warfare Is Changing the Battlefield Environment

Net-centric warfare is not just about technology; it is an emerging theory of war and the next art and science of warfare to be exploited. Net-centric warfare involves a cultural change in relationships that includes networking over the Internet among large groups of people. America's armed forces are now creating and executing plans using capabilities that were not available 12 years ago during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq when the military advantage still came from numbers of platforms and people in the battlespace. Today, our nation's military forces, armed with superior technology, gain power from information, access, and speed.

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A New “Open Rotor” Jet Engine That Could Reduce Fuel Consumption

NASA and GE Aviation are testing a new “open rotor” jet engine with a different design that puts the fan blades on the outside of the engine. The jet fuel consumption will be reduced by more than 30 percent.

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A Steam-Fired Jet Engine for Boats?

A Company Develops a Jet Engine for Boats Fired by Steam

A separate boiler heats water to generate steam, which is pushed at about four times normal atmospheric pressure through a hollow tube submerged in the water.
When the steam hits the water, it immediately condenses to 1,600th of its previous volume. The resulting effect is a dramatic drop in pressure — essentially a vacuum — that sucks water from the front to the back of the tube and thus produces thrust to move.

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Tiny Weapons, Jet Engines in Killer Drone Upgrades

Today's killer drone is a slow-flying, easy-to-spot turboprop plane that drops relatively-crude munitions on its targets. Tomorrow's killer drone could be a stealthy jet, firing off missiles "the size of a loaf of French bread."

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ALE-55 Towed Fighter Decoys for US Navy, Australia

“Raytheon’s ALE-50 ‘Little Buddy’ Decoys” covered a towed system that serves with F-16 Falcon/Viper, F/A-18 Hornet family, and B-1B Lancer heavy bomber aircraft. A related system is made by competitor BAE, whose AN/ALE-55 (V) consists of an electronic frequency converter (EFC) and a fiber optic towed decoy. It works together with an aircraft’s onboard electronic warfare (EW) equipment, throughout the ECM cycle of Suppression (harder to acquire or track), Deception (active jamming techniques aimed at launchers); and Seduction (active jamming aimed at the missile, and being a decoying target if all else fails).

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Raytheon Lands Army Contract To Improve Battlefield Networked Communications

"The Enhanced Position Location Reporting System Extended Frequency, or EPLRS-XF, radio gives the warfighter high-speed, on-the-move video and data exchange capabilities for a broad range of applications," said Jerry Powlen, vice president, Network Centric Systems' Integrated Communications Systems.

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Russian industry looks beyond PAK-FA

By
Stephen Trimble on April 11, 2009 9:24 PM

Alexey Federov, the head of the United Aircraft Corporation, which is sort of like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman combined, has recently disclosed interest in building a "lightweight" fifth-generation fighter after completing the PAK-FA.

PAK-FA was understood to be Russia's answer to both the F-22 and the F-35

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Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM) 'Kill Weapon' Flummoxes U.S. Navy

China’s development of an advanced long-range anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) "kill weapon" that can reportedly target, track, and destroy U.S. surface ships, including aircraft carriers, in a single strike without being nuclear tipped, due to its size. This makes the ASBM "kill weapon" the first ballistic misssile to be successfully developed specifically to attack surface ships. According to a U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) report, the missile has range of 2000 kilometers (2000km) (approximately 1,240 miles) and can reach an aircraft carrier or any other surface ship within 12 minutes at that range.

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Boeing Awarded US Navy Contract to Develop Free Electron Laser

Boeing has been awarded a U.S. Navy contract valued at up to $163 million, with an initial task order of $6.9 million, to develop the Free Electron Laser (FEL) weapon system, which will transform naval warfare in the next decade by providing an ultra-precise, speed-of-light capability and unlimited magazine depth to defend ships against new, challenging threats, such as hyper-velocity cruise missiles.

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Skunk Works reveals composite cargo X-plane

The most important thing about Skunk Works' latest X-plane -- the Advanced Composite Cargo Aircraft (ACCA) -- is its raw material. The fact that ACCA is a cargo aircraft is secondary. The modified Fairchild Dornier 328Jet is really a flying laboratory for a new type of out-of-autoclave composite material, which is specifically called MTM45-1.

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http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/the-dewline/2009/04/photo-skunk-works-reveals-comp.html