The Los Angeles Times' Julian E. Barnes reports that the Air Force "is preparing to graduate its first pilots of unmanned drones from the elite U.S. Air Force Weapons School -- a version of the Navy's Top Gun program -- in a bid to elevate the skills and status of the officers who fly Predators, one of the military's fastest growing aircraft programs."
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
USAF deploys first “Project Liberty” platform
The United States Air Force is about to deploy the first of its new manned intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, designated “Project Liberty.”
The imminent deployment was highlighted during this week’s joint service Fire Support Seminar, hosted by the U.S. Army‘s Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
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The imminent deployment was highlighted during this week’s joint service Fire Support Seminar, hosted by the U.S. Army‘s Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
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French physicists claim breakthrough in ultra-fast data access
French physicists said on Sunday they had used ultra-fast lasers that could accelerate storage and retrieval of data on hard discs by up to 100,000 times, pointing the way to a new generation of IT wizardry.
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Raytheon Submits KillerBee UAS Bid to US Navy
Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) submitted its KillerBee unmanned aircraft system in response to the U.S. Navy's Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Tier II request for proposal.
The KillerBee UAS features a blended-wing aircraft body design. It also has systems for land or sea launch, recovery and ground control. The unique design of KillerBee enables growth for future payloads and additional mission capabilities.
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The KillerBee UAS features a blended-wing aircraft body design. It also has systems for land or sea launch, recovery and ground control. The unique design of KillerBee enables growth for future payloads and additional mission capabilities.
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NASA's Icy-Hot Rocket Engine
Rocket engines don't get much cooler than this. The Common Extensible Cryogenic Engine being developed for NASA burns a mixture of liquid oxygen (-297 degrees Fahrenheit) and liquid hydrogen (-423 degrees). Though the fuels are frosty, upon ignition they generate scorching steam (5,000 degrees) and plenty of thrust.
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The Mercedes ESF: Almost Death-Proof?
An experimental concept car from Mercedes-Benz turns turns the entire vehicle into an airbag using novel metal panels that inflate moments before impact.
The unimaginatively named ESF 2009 Experimental Safety Vehicle features gadgetry and safety features akin to a moon shot. Chassis components inflate to maximize impact resistance. An airbag under the car slows and supports the vehicle in a crash. Seats protect passengers like eggs in a carton. The list goes on.
“Safety is a central element of the Mercedes-Benz brand,” Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Daimler chairman and Mercedes CEO, said in a statement. “In this respect we have been setting the pace in the market for almost 70 years. The ESF 2009 shows that we still have plenty of ideas and the absolute will to lead the automobile industry in this field even in the future.”
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The unimaginatively named ESF 2009 Experimental Safety Vehicle features gadgetry and safety features akin to a moon shot. Chassis components inflate to maximize impact resistance. An airbag under the car slows and supports the vehicle in a crash. Seats protect passengers like eggs in a carton. The list goes on.
“Safety is a central element of the Mercedes-Benz brand,” Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Daimler chairman and Mercedes CEO, said in a statement. “In this respect we have been setting the pace in the market for almost 70 years. The ESF 2009 shows that we still have plenty of ideas and the absolute will to lead the automobile industry in this field even in the future.”
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Exotic Quasicrystal May Represent New Type of Mineral
A team of researchers says it has found in a Russian mineral sample the first natural example of a quasicrystal, an unusual material that displays some of the properties of a crystal but boasts a more intricate and complex structure. Since quasicrystals were characterized 25 years ago, numerous versions have been cooked up in the laboratory, but a natural example would indicate that nature's products are more diverse than previously thought.
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Cloaking Made Simpler, but Invisible Humans Not Yet a Reality
In recent years, optics researchers have come up with numerous concepts for invisibility cloaks—camouflaging that would effectively reroute light so as to conceal an object within. Most of those approaches have relied on so-called metamaterials, carefully engineered structures designed to have bizarre optical properties. But a team of researchers has now designed a much simpler cloaking apparatus that does away with the need for metamaterials entirely. Even if a Harry Potter–style invisibility cloak never materializes, the simplification of such extreme light manipulation may have more immediate applications in communications and computing.
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MC-12 Liberty: The Air Force’s New Eye in the Sky
The Air Force's newest intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft, the MC-12 took off yesterday for its first combat mission in Iraq.
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Engineers Take Cues from Beetles to Make a Super-Efficient Robo-Boat
Dolphins are elegant swimmers, but waterlily leaf beetle larvae take first place for the simplest stroke. The insect just arches its back to manipulate a basic physics principle that lets it glide across water. Now engineers have borrowed this technique to make a tiny boat that could autonomously patrol water reservoirs for months on just a watch battery.
The larva's efficiency relies on surface tension, the force that causes water molecules to stick together. By arching its body, the larva disrupts the water's tension in such a way that the bug moves forward. Sung Kwon Cho, an engineer at the University of Pittsburgh, decided to harness the tension, like the beetle does, to move an inch-long boat. But instead of making a bendable craft, Cho attached a Teflon-coated electrode to the plastic boat's stern.
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The larva's efficiency relies on surface tension, the force that causes water molecules to stick together. By arching its body, the larva disrupts the water's tension in such a way that the bug moves forward. Sung Kwon Cho, an engineer at the University of Pittsburgh, decided to harness the tension, like the beetle does, to move an inch-long boat. But instead of making a bendable craft, Cho attached a Teflon-coated electrode to the plastic boat's stern.
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Unmanned Sub Dives the Marianas Trench on a Hair-Thin Tether
Nereus becomes the third craft to explore the bottom of the Marianas Trench
On May 31, the unmanned submersible Nereus became only the third craft ever to reach the full depth of the Marianas Trench, 35,770 feet below sea level. Built by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the sub is a hybrid of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The Nereus runs on its own battery power, but researchers on a mother ship send it commands over a single hair-thin fiber-optic line that’s 25 miles long but weighs just 1.35 pounds.
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On May 31, the unmanned submersible Nereus became only the third craft ever to reach the full depth of the Marianas Trench, 35,770 feet below sea level. Built by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the sub is a hybrid of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). The Nereus runs on its own battery power, but researchers on a mother ship send it commands over a single hair-thin fiber-optic line that’s 25 miles long but weighs just 1.35 pounds.
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A Word With the Inventor of the Battlefield Snakebot and the Wall-Scaling Snailbot
Israeli roboticist Amir Shapiro looks to the animal kingdom to design robots that can go where humans can't
The Israel Defense Forces are preparing to deploy a camouflage-wearing, camera-toting robot snake. The spybot, which slithers through cracks and caves using principles of motion derived from those of actual snakes, is just one of roboticist Amir Shapiro's clever designs based on animal physiology. We visited Dr. Shapiro's lab at Ben Gurion University of the Negev to get a closer look.
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The Israel Defense Forces are preparing to deploy a camouflage-wearing, camera-toting robot snake. The spybot, which slithers through cracks and caves using principles of motion derived from those of actual snakes, is just one of roboticist Amir Shapiro's clever designs based on animal physiology. We visited Dr. Shapiro's lab at Ben Gurion University of the Negev to get a closer look.
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Ultrafast lasers shape up with femtoFit
The 2009 PhAST/LFW Innovation Award winner was BioPhotonic Solutions (East Lansing, MI) for femtoFit--a miniature pulse shaper that uses proven multiphoton intrapulse interference phase scan (MIIPS) technology to compress ultrafast laser pulses at their target; however, femtoFit is roughly one-third the price, twice as fast during automated pulse characterization, and 1/10th the volume of first-generation MIIPS systems (see "Phast/LFW award puts "innovation" first").
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A New Twist on Memristance
NIST researchers create flexible memory circuits that act like memristors
Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in Gaithersburg, Md., report in the July 2009 issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters that they have created a low-power, inexpensive flexible memory that has the properties of a memristor. Memristors can be used to make brainlike circuits and nanoelectronic memories, because they ”remember” the amount of current that has flowed through them, and that memory is reflected in the device’s resistance.
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Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in Gaithersburg, Md., report in the July 2009 issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters that they have created a low-power, inexpensive flexible memory that has the properties of a memristor. Memristors can be used to make brainlike circuits and nanoelectronic memories, because they ”remember” the amount of current that has flowed through them, and that memory is reflected in the device’s resistance.
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Wind tunnel tests set for open rotor engine technology
General Electric and NASA today announced details for a pending series of the first wind tunnel tests for open rotor technology since the late 1980s.
The tests will begin in the third quarter by re-enacting the 1980s-era tests using identical counter-rotating fan blades as used on the GE36, GE says.
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The tests will begin in the third quarter by re-enacting the 1980s-era tests using identical counter-rotating fan blades as used on the GE36, GE says.
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USAF to arm B-2A with massive bunker-buster bomb
The US Air Force today revealed plans to acquire a small arsenal of a new 13,600kg (30,000lb) penetrator bomb to deploy on Northrop Grumman B-2As in three years.
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Wide Area Augmentation Comes of Age
The FAA's Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), first commissioned in 2003 and now fully operational, is providing large-scale benefits for operators flying WAAS-equipped aircraft. The system provides the levels of accuracy, integrity, continuity and availability needed to transform GPS from a supplemental-means navigation system into a primary- or sole-means nav system. It's a key element in the FAA's master plan to transition from ground-based navaids to satellite navigation, thereby improving airspace system efficiency and reducing the agency's operating costs - or so it is hoped.
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Visibility from End to End
During the Internet boom, retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers began talking about a new kind of demand-driven supply chain. Rather than build product based on historical forecasts, load up a warehouse and then push it out to the marketplace, savvy supply chain managers would capture real-time demand from point of sale systems and cash registers and use the emerging supply chain planning and management tools to make things according to demand. Sell one, make one. If a company could really capture what its customers were buying, less excess inventory would pile up in warehouses.
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RAF Revisits Core Air-Launched Weapon
The Royal Air Force is recasting a key capability in its air-to-surface repertoire as it tries to secure cash for the initial elements of the program in the next funding round.
Known as Selective Precision Effects at Range (Spear), the project is being redrawn as a multistage rather than a two-tier effort, as previously envisioned. Weapons procured to meet elements of Spear will be carried by the Tornado GR4, Eurofighter Typhoon and the Joint Combat Aircraft (Lockheed Martin F-35B).
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Known as Selective Precision Effects at Range (Spear), the project is being redrawn as a multistage rather than a two-tier effort, as previously envisioned. Weapons procured to meet elements of Spear will be carried by the Tornado GR4, Eurofighter Typhoon and the Joint Combat Aircraft (Lockheed Martin F-35B).
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Boeing Studies Stealth Eagle Options
Boeing is studying the levels of radar cross-section (RCS) reduction possible with its F-15SE Silent Eagle in advance of licensing discussions with the U.S. government on possibly exporting the stealthy fighter.
“It’s not how low can you go, it’s how low are you allowed to go, and the U.S. government controls that,” says Brad Jones, Boeing program manager for F-15 future fighters. “We can get to different levels depending on the country.”
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“It’s not how low can you go, it’s how low are you allowed to go, and the U.S. government controls that,” says Brad Jones, Boeing program manager for F-15 future fighters. “We can get to different levels depending on the country.”
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Squad-sized ‘Super Units’ May Best Confront Hybrid Warfare, Leaders Say
The U.S. military is studying how to improve smaller-unit capabilities to better confront enemies who practice irregular or conventional warfare, or both, a senior U.S. military officer said here today.
The studies are part of U.S. Joint Forces Command’s National Program for Small Unit Excellence initiative, Army Maj. Gen. Jason K. Kamiya, chief of the Norfolk, Va.,-based command’s joint training directorate, and the commander of its Joint Warfighting Center, told reporters at a Pentagon roundtable meeting.
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The studies are part of U.S. Joint Forces Command’s National Program for Small Unit Excellence initiative, Army Maj. Gen. Jason K. Kamiya, chief of the Norfolk, Va.,-based command’s joint training directorate, and the commander of its Joint Warfighting Center, told reporters at a Pentagon roundtable meeting.
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