Safety of combat military vehicles examined

A Queen's University Belfast academic is working on research that could help protect the lives of military based in Afghanistan.
Professor Wei Sha from Queen's School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering has been testing how safe vehicles with titanium alloys are when attacked by bullets or explosions.

Professor Sha's research examines the damage tolerance of the popular material titanium. It is the first research of its kind to reveal the reasons behind the deformation and damage of titanium alloys under strong impact or fast applied force.

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Researchers Develop “Brain-Reading” Methods to Uncover a Person’s Mental State

The brain perceives information before it reaches a person’s awareness. But until now, there was little way to determine what specific mental tasks were taking place prior to the point of conscious awareness.

Scientists at Rutgers University in Newark and the University of California, Los Angeles have developed a highly accurate way to peer into the brain to uncover a person’s mental state and what sort of information is being processed before it reaches awareness.

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Tech Smoothes Way to Cheaper Electronics

A new technique to produce ultra-smooth metal surfaces could secure a future of sensitive medical detectors, more efficient solar cells and faster computers, according to new research published today in the journal Science.

The key to this new technique is a five-minute epoxy that could actually be found at a local hardware store.

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Raytheon Awarded $16 M for Aegis Radar Contracts

The U.S. Navy has awarded Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) two contracts that extend the company's legacy of performance and support for the Aegis weapons system.Under the contracts, Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) will provide an AN/SPY-1 radar transmitter ordnance alteration kit to enhance the radar's processing performance and multi-mission capability. The company will also continue its performance-based logistics support, including spares and repairs for Aegis weapons systems used by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. Raytheon will also manage system repairs in support of foreign military sales.

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U.S. Suspends Delivery on GPS-Guided 155mm Shells

The U.S. Army has temporarily suspended delivery of Raytheon's GPS-guided, 155mm Excalibur artillery rounds due to problems with its Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), service officials said.

"The XM982 [Excalibur] round is required to operate in an environment that exceeds 15,000 times the force of gravity. There was an inherent lack of design robustness in the qualified IMU configuration which resulted in a failure rate of approximately five percent.

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Barracuda UAV Returns to the Air

EADS Defence & Security has resumed flight tests of its Barracuda UAV, following the loss of the first prototype. The Barracuda, dubbed "the largest UAV ever built in Europe" by the manufacturer, has been test-flown from CFB Goose Bay, Canada.

In the course of four flights, the Barracuda flew autonomously along preprogrammed routes over Newfoundland and Labrador. A data link to a ground station was maintained for flight safety purposes.

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Out of Whole Cloth: Tarian Rocket Protection

Working with Britain’s Ministry of Defense, a transatlantic firm named AmSafe has come up with a novel solution to anti-tank rockets: fabric panels mounted on the sides of trucks and armored vehicles.

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