DARPA awards phase II for RSN program

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Argon ST Inc. a phase II contract for continued work on the Robust Surface Navigation program.


U.S. company Argon was awarded the contract from the DARPA Strategic Technology Office following the company's successful completion of a phase I award. Under the approximately $6.5 million deal, Argon will continue development of algorithms to support a global positioning system for the RSN program.

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DARPA awards phase II for RSN program

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded Argon ST Inc. a phase II contract for continued work on the Robust Surface Navigation program.


U.S. company Argon was awarded the contract from the DARPA Strategic Technology Office following the company's successful completion of a phase I award. Under the approximately $6.5 million deal, Argon will continue development of algorithms to support a global positioning system for the RSN program.

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The New Onboard Systems Tell-All Know-It-Alls

In September 2007, Gulfstream announced PlaneConnect, a system option for PlaneView, the Honeywell Primus Epic avionics suite configured for Gulfstream, in which a central maintenance computer (CMC) begins to record fault codes or exceedances from aircraft components from the moment of weight-off-wheels, then automatically radios the information to the ground when the airplane begins a descent to its destination. By July 2008, about nine months after the initial announcement, some 10,000 downlinks had been received from 135 large-cabin aircraft (currently G350 through G550).

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Planning Begins for F136 Flight Tests

The General Electric/Rolls-Royce team developing the F136 alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has begun flight clearance work for the start of the test program in early 2011, despite being targeted for cancellation for the third time in the latest U.S. defense budget.

The GE-RR team met formally with Lockheed Martin, the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), the U.S. Air Force and Navy at Evendale, Ohio, for flight-clearance technical review meetings May 13-14. The meetings coincided with the resumption of tests on the F136 at GE’s Altitude Test Cell 43 in Evendale, following modifications to the bearing system.

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GD wins second order to integrate US Army “Prophet Enhanced” system into military vehicles

A team led by General Dynamics C4 Systems has received a new, $3 million delivery order from the U.S. Army to integrate the Prophet Enhanced tactical signals intelligence system into Medium Mine Protected Vehicles (MMPV). The order is in support of a Department of Defense requirement that is providing additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to the U.S. military. MMPVs equipped with the Prophet Enhanced system will be delivered to the U.S. Army in October 2009.

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Hitachi Announces Super-Powered Lithium Ion Battery

New Hitachi battery offers 1.7 times more power while being smaller and lighter than previous generations.’

One of the key areas of research for alternative power sources for vehicles is in batteries. As batteries become more powerful, smaller, and lighter, the range of electric and hybrid vehicles will increase making them more viable alternatives for drivers.

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Cute Pocket-Sized Robot Could Change Urban Warfare

Consumer- and military-robot manufacturer iRobot has made a little "cousin" of its famous Packbot that's small enough to fit in a pocket, weighs less than a pound, clambers almost anywhere and forms ad-hoc wireless networks with its kin.

It's been made under a Pentagon contract to develop "LANdroids," small, automatically networking communications and surveillance robots.

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Next-Gen Ultrasound

Micromachined transducer probes for ultrasound scanners should provide prenatal images that are even sharper than those new parents now get to see. The pictures, though, may never be as crisp as the one in this fanciful photo-illustration.

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Engine Defects Threaten Su-30 Fleet

Russian engineers have determined that the April 26th crash of one of the two prototypes of the Russian Su-35 fifth generation fighters, was an "engineering defect" in one of the two AL-41 engines. The engine failed during takeoff.

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Can "Terminators" Actually be our Salvation?

We might be able to design robotic soldiers that could be more ethical than human soldiers.

Asaro concludes that the use of autonomous technologies such as robot soldiers is neither “completely morally acceptable nor completely morally unacceptable” according to the just war theory formulated by Michael Walzer.

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Beaver-tailed robot mimics tree-climbing insects

Here's another offering from Boston Dynamics' zoomorphic line: the RiSE V3, a multi-legged, beaver-tailed robot that can skitter along the ground, shimmy up a pole, and then quietly cling there and stare at you.
The legs are powered by a pair of electric motors and equipped with small surgical needle micro-claws, which allow the unit to dig into and climb up textured, convex, cylindrical structures at a rate of 21 centimeters per second, or just under a half a mile an hour.

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High-Tech Response to Rocket Attacks

The NBS C-RAM is specifically designed to defeat the threat which rocket, artillery and mortar attacks pose to Bundeswehr units deployed in hazardous areas of operation. The Bundeswehr will be the world's first army to possess an effective defence against this kind of asymmetric threat, which is particularly prevalent in Afghanistan.

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EADS DS Supplies New Type of Ground Surveillance Radar

EADS Defence & Security (DS) will equip the German Armed Forces with a new kind of ground surveillance radar (BUR - Bodenuberwachungsradar) for detecting movements on the ground and at low altitudes with a precision unmatched in the world. As the company announced on Tuesday, Defence Electronics (DE), an integrated activity of DS, today handed over the first of two system demonstrators to the German Federal Office of Defence Technology and Procurement (BWB) for evaluation by the Bundeswehr's Technical Centres. The delivery of approximately 80 BUR systems is scheduled to start in 2012. They are intended to close the gap in capabilities of the German Armed Forces in the area of intelligence gathering and reconnaissance. A modified version of this radar destined for civil applications such as surveillance of border regions or industrial facilities is currently under development.

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AdvancedIO® Systems Announces expressXG(TM) Framework for Rapid High-Bandwidth Application Development

AdvancedIO® Systems, the leader in high-bandwidth connectivity solutions optimized for decision-critical applications, today announced the availability of expressXG(TM), an FPGA framework that accelerates customers' ability to tackle challenging system communication problems. The framework gives customers the tools to embed their own applications directly into AdvancedIO's 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) interfaces. The applications quickly benefit from the line-rate performance capability of FPGAs by leveraging AdvancedIO's expertise implementing Ethernet communications for demanding real-time systems.

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Searching for answers, Microsoft set to intro "Kumo" search engine

In the market for yet another way to navigate cyberspace? Just days after physicist Stephan Wolfram took his WolframAlpha "computational knowledge engine" live, word is that Microsoft next week will debut a revamped version of its flagging Live.com search engine, the No. 3 Web navigator behind Google and Yahoo.

Microsoft will take the wraps off of "Kumo"—the codename of its new, improved search engine—at the D: All Things Digital technology conference next week in Carlsbad, Calif., the Wall Street Journal reports.

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Getting your V6 to act like a V8, while saving gas

The history of engine improvements in the U.S. has tended primarily in one direction: raw horsepower. Engines have gotten bigger and more powerful over time—and that's certainly what automakers have used as a key selling point. But U.S. automaker Ford has decided to take turbo-charging and direct fuel injection in another direction: fuel efficiency.

Yesterday, Ford began production of what it's calling the EcoBoost engine: a new gasoline motor that employs turbo-charging, direct fuel injection, variable timing in the valves that control fuel and exhaust flow to make a smaller, lighter six-cylinder engine perform like an eight-cylinder engine*. When these technologies are combined, "you can now significantly downsize the engine," says mechanical engineer Dan Kapp, Ford's director for power train research. "The fuel efficiency comes from a much smaller displacement engine providing equal or, in most cases, superior performance to the engine you're replacing."

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Magnets help ants lead the way

Miniscule magnets found in ant antennae could help to explain why these insects seem to always know where they are going, according to researchers who suspect the magnets are a key component of a sophisticated, nature-made GPS system.

While human global positioning systems rely upon power-consuming receivers that pick up information from clunky, orbiting 3,000-4,000-pound satellites, the probable ant system weighs next to nothing, requires little body energy to operate and is Earth-friendly to the max.

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BAH Wins up to $28M to Support Navy Crypto Systems

Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), in San Diego, CA won a $16.9 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with a cost-plus-fixed-fee pricing arrangement to provide engineering, security engineering and technical support services for Navy cryptographic systems and solutions, and key management architectures and information systems. This 5-year contract includes 4 nine-month award terms which, if earned, would bring the cumulative value of this contract to $28 million.

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Air-Fueled Battery Could Last Up to 10 Times Longer

Researchers have developed a new type of air-fuelled battery that could make energy storage up to ten times longer. It could pave the way for a new generation of electric cars, mobile phones and laptops.

Researchers at the University of St Andrews said the new design has the potential to improve the performance of portable electronic products and give a major boost to the renewable energy industry. The batteries will enable a constant electrical output from sources such as wind or solar, which stop generating when the weather changes or night falls.

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What's Inside WD-40? Superlube's Secret Sauce

The recipe for this superlube has long been a closely guarded trade secret—until now. Wired sent a can to the lab and got the ingredients.

Mineral Oil Seriously. WD-40 is mostly a mix of baby oil, Vaseline, and the goop inside homemade lava lamps.

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A Laptop Cooled with Ionic Wind

Anyone who uses a laptop will be familiar with the whir that the fan makes as it kicks in when the processor's temperature reaches around 100 °F. As laptops and other electronics have gotten smaller and thinner, researchers have begun searching for alternative cooling methods, which add less bulk and are quieter.

One novel idea is to cool a system by using ions to push air molecules across a hot microprocessor, thereby creating a cooling breeze. So-called ionic-cooling systems have been demonstrated in research labs before, but now Tessera, an international chip-packaging company based in San Jose, CA, has demonstrated an ionic-cooling system integrated into a working laptop.

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Microsoft patents 'magic wand'

Newly released patent applications from Microsoft have sparked speculation that it is to unveil a Wii remote rival at the E3 expo in Los Angeles.

An application was filed in 2007 for a motion controller, dubbed Magic Wand, that interacts with "a collection of sensors".

Microsoft says it will not "comment on speculation" about a possible launch.

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Invention Awards: The Fastest Tank

Cue up the Ripsaw’s greatest hits on YouTube, and you can watch the unmanned tank tear across muddy fields at 60 mph, jump 50 feet, and crush birch trees. But right now, as its remote driver inches it back and forth for a photo shoot, it’s like watching Babe Ruth forced to bunt with the bases loaded. The Ripsaw, lurching and belching black puffs of smoke, somehow seems restles.

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Advanced Algorithms Enlisted To Fight Cyberwars

First Estonia. Then Georgia. Increasingly, the theoretical potential for cyberwar is becoming hard reality. One new report argues that the unchecked proliferation of cyber warfare weapons is comparable to that of nuclear warheads. At least one branch of the US military, United States Navy takes the threat seriously and monitors cyber threats on a daily basis.

To combat this growing threat Guidance Software announced on Monday a new proactive version of its classic digital forensic software, EnCase, already in use by government and law enforcement worldwide for conducting incident response investigations.

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Future Imagery Architecture [FIA] To Broad Area Surveillance Intelligence Capacity [BASIC]

The Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) is the NRO’s initiative to define, acquire and operate the next generation imagery satellite architecture. Working with NRO’s mission partner - NGA - and consumers of intelligence imagery products to implement user requirements, it will integrate into the US Imagery and Geospatial Information System (USIGS). FIA was intended to provide a cost-effective, best value imagery architecture comprised of more capable imagery satellites which are expected to be launched in this decade.

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US Army rethinks jets for Aerial Common Sensor

The US Army is considering shifting to turboprop aircraft for its next-generation aerial common sensor (ACS) fleet, potentially reversing a key focus of its acquisition strategy after a star-crossed, six-year pursuit of jets, according to industry sources.

The potential change has been disclosed during the last three weeks in private notices and informal discussions to several potential ACS suppliers, according to multiple industry sources.

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Elbit Systems Electrically Remotely Controlled Weapon Station Medium (ERCWS-M)

Elbit has introduced a new, lightweight, low-profile remotely operated weapon station designed for light vehicles. The system designated 'Electrically Remotely Controlled Weapon Station - Medium' (ERCWS-M) mounts a modular electro-oprtical payload, configurable to carry customer furnished EO sensors. The payload is mounted on an independent traverse and elevation gear, enabling the operator to decouple the weapon from the EO sensors, performing surveillance and reconnaissance activity while the gun is elevated 60 degrees up, without 'pointing' at specific targets. The EO payload can also perform limited lateral (traverse) movements to improve fire correction and compensation when firing an Automatic Grenade Launcher. Other weapons carried by the system include 7.62 and 12.7mm machine guns. All photos: Defense Update. The new system has already been selected for the new Austrial Armored Protected Vehicles procured in Italy.

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Gigabit Ethernet camera provides high resolution at fast frame rates

Toshiba Teli America has introduced its fastest, highest resolution Gigabit Ethernet machine-vision camera to date, the new CSGU15BC18. Capable of capturing 1600 x 1200 (UXGA) uncompressed monochrome images at 15 frames/s, the camera sets a new standard for its class.

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Next Wave Optics wins U.S. patent for MEMS-based optical engine

Next Wave Optics (San Jose, CA) has received a new U.S. patent for its single MEMS imager optical engine technology. Developed by New Wave Optics' CEO George Mihalakis, the engine is designed for use with microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based microdisplay units. It is made up of a collection stage module, an imaging stage module featuring polarization based imaging prism assemblage, and a polarizing illumination stage module featuring a special light integration tube that removes off-axis overfill loss.

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IMI to adapt I-TALD decoy for target applications

Israel Military Industries has launched the development of an air-launched manoeuvring target based on the design of its I-TALD decoy.

IMI chairman Avner Raz says the company will develop a line of advanced targets capable of simulating threat aircraft and missiles. These will also be equipped with payloads to simulate countermeasure systems, he adds.

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