Piezo power on the battlefield

Soldiers could one day power electronic devices such as personal radios using just their own movements on the battlefield.The technology is being developed through a two-year government-sponsored programme that aims to create kinetic-energy harvesting systems that can be worn by army personnel.

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How robot drones revolutionized the face of warfare

Barely an hour's drive from the casinos of Las Vegas, a group of unassuming buildings have become as important as the trenches were to WWI. The big difference? Today's warriors are fighting without getting in harm's way, using drones to attack targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There are now more than 7,000 UAVs ranging from the workhorse, the Predator, and its beefier, deadlier kin the Reaper, to army drones like the tiny hand-launched Raven and the larger Shadow.

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Is the ocean Florida's untapped energy source?

The answer to easing the energy crunch in one of the nation's most populous states could lie underwater.

Researchers at Florida Atlantic University are in the early stages of turning that idea into reality in the powerful Gulf Stream off the state's eastern shore.

"If you can take an engine and put it on the back of a boat or propel a ship through water, why not take a look at the strength of the Gulf Stream and determine if that can actually turn a device and create energy?

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Boyd Bushman Part 3

Boyd Bushman Part 2

Boyd Bushman Part 1

Boyd Bushman on Anti Gravity

Future Weapons: Mercury Round

Active Denial Microwave Weapons

Scramjets promise space travel for all

Advanced technology is also breathing fresh life into winged spacecraft. The buzz centres on a hypersonic engine known asa supersonic combustion ramjet, or scramjet. Despite the name, scramjets are very different to the turbojet engines that power commercial aircraft, not least because scramjet-powered vehicles must first be accelerated to Mach 4 or so using jet engines or rockets before their scramjets can work. This is because, unlike turbojets, scramjets do not use spinning blades to compress the air entering the engine. Instead, the high speed of the vehicle compresses the incoming air, which is then fed into a combustion chamber where the burning fuel creates an exhaust jetthat exits the engine faster than the air that entered.

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Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky

THE Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft.

The device is an extension of its controversialActive Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee.

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Electricity From Salty Water

A device that gleans usable energy from the mixing of salty and fresh waters has been developed by University of Milan-Bicocca physicist Doriano Brogioli. If scaled up, the technology could potentially power coastal homes, though some scientists caution that such an idea might not be realistic.

Extracting clean, fresh water from salty water requires energy. The reverse processmixing fresh water and salty waterreleases energy. Physicists began exploring the idea of extracting energy from mixing fresh and salty waters, a process known as salination, in the 1970s. They found that the energy released by the worlds freshwater rivers as they flowed into salty oceans was comparable to "each river in the world ending at its mouth in a waterfall 225 meters [739 feet] high," according to a 1974 research paper in the journal Science. But those who have chased the salination dream have collided with technological barriers.

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First Flapping, Two-Winged Aircraft Takes Flight

The world's first successful flight of a self-powered, rudderless, flapping aircraft has been achieved by engineers from AeroVironment.

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Raytheon to Give Tomahawk a New Edge

Raytheon scored a Navy contract worth more than $12.8 million to create a new warhead for the Tomahawk missile. Program officials with the company say the workhorse cruise missile will be fit with a warhead that can crack hardened targets and that could turn the Tomahawk into an intelligent ship-killer

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Air Force Drones: Are Fighter Pilots Obsolete?

If you think drone aircraft are all the rage at the U.S. Air Force, just wait a few years. The men in the Pentagon who look into the future believe UAVs --Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or pilotless planes -- are the future.

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High-Energy Laser Could Protect US Navy Ships From Small Attack Boats

The ultra-precision of high-energy lasers soon may be the pinpoint, measured response that will keep threats a safe distance from U.S. Navy ships.

Under a new Navy initiative called the Maritime Laser Demonstration, Northrop Grumman will apply its solid-state laser systems expertise and successes to demonstrate a laser weapon system to defeat a wide range of current threats.

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Proper Fit Of Massive Penetrator Weapon On B-2 Bomber Verified

Northrop Grumman has moved the U.S. Air Force a critical step closer to being able to drop a from the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. 30,000 pound penetrator weapon On April 28, an Air Force team, a Northrop Grumman-led aircraft contractor team and a Boeing-led weapon contractor team verified that the equipment required to integrate the new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) on the B-2 -- the hardware that holds the MOP inside the weapons bay, the weapon itself, and the hardware used by the aircrew to command and release the weapon -- will fit together properly inside the aircraft.

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Fujifilm unveils 3D Digital Camera

Japan’s Fujifilm unveiled a compact digital camera that can be used to shoot three-dimensional (3D) photos and movies that can be viewed without special glasses.

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UK Firm Aesir Showcases VTOL UAV Technology

A new range of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) technologies has been showcased at an industry conference in the UK. Developed by Aesir Ltd, the range includes a number of new UAV designs, all of which have VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) capabilities, in a similar way to current piloted military aircraft designs liked the British Aerospace Harrier and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

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Problems prevent US Arrow launch test

The missile that the Israeli Arrow defense system was supposed to intercept in a failed drill on Thursday was an advanced version of the Iranian Shihab ballistic missile, which does not yet exist but will have superior radar-evading capabilities.

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Bulava Designer Quits After Missile Failure

The country’s top missile designer resigned Wednesday after the failed test-launch of a naval ballistic missile last week weakened Moscow’s negotiating position with Washington over a new arms treaty.

“Yury Solomonov has submitted a letter asking that he be relieved from his duties as the general director and chief designer of the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology,” said Alexander Vorobyov, a spokesman for the Federal Space Agency, which oversees the top-secret institute.

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Cheap, Fast, Deadly: NETFIRES “Missiles in a Box”

The basic concept of NETFIRES (a Future Combat Systems program) is to develop a family of artillery-like precision attack missiles based upon a vertical launcher design. Yet the idea goes far beyond that simple description. The NETFIRES CLU box launcher is intended to be be fully autonomous, meaning it can be dropped off anywhere and operate on its own without a support vehicle. The launch unit includes power generation and control systems as well as a total of 15 missiles, each with a warhead similar in size and capability to a 155mm artillery shell.

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Aurora Supersonic Aircraft

X-43A Goes 7,000 MPH - Getting Ready for Mach 10

Electronic nose created to detect skin vapors

"The spectrum of the vapours emitted by human skin is dominated by fatty acids. These substances are not very volatile, but we have developed an 'electronic nose' able to detect them", Juan Fernández de la Mora, of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Yale University (United States) and co-author of a study recently published in the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, tells SINC.

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Fighting disease atom by atom

Researchers at Rice University and their international colleagues have for the first time described the atomic structure of the protein shell that carries the genetic code of hepatitis E (HEV). Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could mean that new ways to stop the virus may come in the not-too-distant future.

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Brain Surgery Using Sound Waves

A new ultrasound device, used in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allows neurosurgeons to precisely burn out small pieces of malfunctioning brain tissue without cutting the skin or opening the skull. A preliminary study from Switzerland involving nine patients with chronic pain shows that the technology can be used safely in humans. The researchers now aim to test it in patients with other disorders, such as Parkinson's disease.

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Terahertz Transistor Could Usher in Era of Cheap Surveillance Video Cameras

New terahertz-detecting technology could make "intimate" body-search-at-a-distance cameras as cheap and easy as conventional video shots.

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Astrobotic Technology Reveals Robot Design To Survive Moon's Extreme Heat

Astrobotic Technology, in Pittsburgh, is developing a lunar robot, which they hope to put on the moon sometime in 2011.

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Aurora Flies VTOL Excalibur

Aurora Flight Sciences has flown its Excalibur experimental vertical takeoff and landing unmanned combat aircraft. The subscale proof-of-principle aircraft made its first hover at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland on June 24 .

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