Raytheon's GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb II Completes Captive Flight Testing

Raytheon Company completed a series of captive carry flight tests of its proposed solution for the GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb II competition, demonstrating the weapon's form-factored seeker is ready for guided test shots.

"The test series demonstrated our form-factored tri-mode seeker and guidance receiver navigator are ready to enter the engineering and manufacturing development phase," said Harry Schulte, vice president of Raytheon Missile System's Air Warfare Systems' product line. "We have proved the technical readiness of a superior and affordable solution."

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Navy Reveals Details of Submarine-Based Drones

Between scientists warning of autonomous killer robots and a Predator drone killing Osama bin Laden's son, news about killer robots has been eating up a lot of bandwidth lately. But most of that press has focused on the Air Force's Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Well, the Air Force needs to make some room in the spotlight, because the Navy's getting in on the act, too.

In an oddly revealing interview, Rear Admiral Mark Kenny, the head of the Navy's irregular warfare operations, not only stated that the Navy's submarines have been equipped with unmanned vehicles, but even detailed which vehicles and how they are used.

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Laser-Powered Lightcraft "At the Cusp of Commercial Reality"

Future business travelers may literally ride a laser to work. The U.S. and Brazilian Air Forces are experimenting with Lightcraft technology that could become part of your daily commute, using plain old air to fuel 45-minute transcontinental jaunts.

The design uses a ground-based laser to beam the Lightcraft skyward on a series of blast waves. A parabolic mirror on the back of the craft would capture and focus the pulsing laser beam so that it heats air to 5 times the sun's temperature, creating mini-explosions that propel human passengers or cargo to any point on the planet in under an hour, or into orbit.

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Nextreme and Lockheed cooperate on next-generation thermal management

Nextreme Thermal Solutions (Durham, NC), provider of microscale thermal and power management products for the electronics industry (see "Thin-film thermoelectric technology makes optoelectronics 'cool'"), and Lockheed Martin (Bethesda, MD) entered into a cooperation agreement to develop new products based on Nextreme's thin-film thermoelectric materials. Lockheed Martin will use Nextreme's thin-film thermoelectric products and thermal and power management design services in solutions it is developing for government and civil applications. Lockheed Martin was recently in the news for its acquisition of Gyrocam Systems.

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Thinnest semiconductor laser holds promise for on-chip interconnects

Semiconductor lasers with thicknesses down to 80 nm have been built by researchers at Arizona State University (ASU; Tempe, AZ) and the Technical University of Eindhoven (Eindhoven, The Netherlands).1 The work opens up possibilities for using nanoscale lasers in optical integrated circuits to significantly improve the performance of computers and speed up Internet access.

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Fiber Lasers for Extreme Photons

The light sources powering the next-generation chipmaking technique, extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL), are too dim, according to industry experts. And that’s one of the main reasons why semiconductor manufacturers worry that the technology will not be ready to produce advanced chips a few years from now. But Almantas Galvanauskas, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, believes he has a way to boost their power by using a type of industrial laser called a fiber laser. He presented his research two weeks ago at the International Workshop on Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography, in Honolulu.

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Lockheed Martin Rolls Out the F-35C

The U.S. Navy's first stealth fighter, F-35C rolled-out in a ceremony at Lockheed Martin's Ft. Worth TX facility July 28, 2009. Following the ceremonial roll-out the first F-35C, designated CF-1, will undergo a series of ground tests before its first flight, scheduled for late 2009. The aircraft is the ninth F-35 test aircraft to join the F-35 test fleet.

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Space Elevator Contest Held Up

A technical issue with a helicopter cable system is forcing the Spaceward Foundation to postpone the Space Elevator Power Beaming Challenge Games originally scheduled for this summer at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.

The Spaceward Foundation, which conducts the competition as part of NASA's Centennial Challenges program, together with NASA, which is providing the $2 million prize money for this segment, said the problems cropped up during tests of the helicopter-mounted cable system last week.

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Future USAF Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Technology

Future United States Air Force UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) technology forms the subject of a recently-issued report covering the next four decades of envisaged US military airpower capabilities. The report - titled the 'Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047 - describes how UAVs are planned to figure within overall US military airborne capabilities, putting them into brand new contexts and giving them new roles such as air-to-air refuelling, the ability to operate in large scale air assaults and to operate autonomously, calling the shots in terms of deciding the decisive moment to unleash their weapons loads.

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Northrop Grumman Awarded Navy Contract to Study Air and Missile Defense Radar Concepts

Northrop Grumman Corporation has been awarded a $10 million firm-fixed price U.S. Navy contract to analyze and provide system concept studies for the Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR), a next generation radar system planned for the U.S. Navy's CG(X) and Future Surface Combatant platforms.

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In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable

The United States military has spent billions on hardware, like signal jamming technology, to detect and destroy what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, the roadside bombs that have proved to be the greatest threat in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, where Sergeant Tierney is training soldiers to foil bomb attacks.

Still, high-tech gear, while helping to reduce casualties, remains a mere supplement to the most sensitive detection system of all — the human brain. Troops on the ground, using only their senses and experience, are responsible for foiling many I.E.D. attacks, and, like Sergeant Tierney, they often cite a gut feeling or a hunch as their first clue.

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France Launches Minehunting UUV Effort

The Délégation Générale pour l'Armement (DGA), the French government's arms procurement office, has awarded a contract for an undisclosed amount to DCNS, ECA and Thales to study the use of unmanned underwater vehicles in mine countermeasures (MCM), DCNS said July 28.

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ASDS Mini-Sub Program Sinks, As Replacement Rises

In a program that began with great promise but soon spiraled out of control, Northrop Grumman has been building ASDS “Advanced SEAL delivery System” mini-subs as successors to the previous SDV (SEAL/Swimmer Delivery Vehicle) carried on US Benjamin Franklin class (SSBN-640) attack submarines.

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AEDC reaches major milestone with hypersonic engine testing

A 10-year effort to upgrade a high speed, high temperature, blow-down ground test facility at Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) culminated in a recent hypersonic Mach 6 test run on a state-of-the-art combined-cycle engine demonstrator.

"This test was significant," said Matthew Bond, test manager of AEDC's Aerodynamic and Propulsion Test Unit (APTU). "The Mach 6 run on June 24 was the first-ever scramjet propulsion test at AEDC.

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'Brain Carpet' Translates Thoughts Into Action

Instead of violently shoving a giant needle into the brain a la "The Matrix," Utah scientists are reading thoughts by carpeting the brain with microelectrodes.

This "modest advance," as the scientists describe it, could enable more precise control of prosthetic limbs or advance research in epilepsy and other diseases of the brain.

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Raytheon Ground Soldier Ensemble Achieves Initial Program Milestones

Raytheon Company's (NYSE: RTN) Ground Soldier Ensemble team completed two major program milestones and is moving to demonstrate networked tactical situational awareness and digital communications capabilities for the dismounted warfighter.

Raytheon's GSE team delivered to the U.S. Army the first open frame hardware on schedule in June, and earlier that month, held its first preliminary design review.

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Aluminum Blasted With X-Ray Laser Reveals New Transparent State of Matter

German researchers at the FLASH facility in Hamburg decided to roast a piece of aluminum foil with a 10-million-gigawatt X-ray laser. They heated the foil so hot that it became a new matter state: transparent aluminum. It's also believed to be the same state of matter that comprises the core of planets, such as Jupiter.

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DARPA Readies an Ultra-Fast Mini-Sub

The DARPA program, first announced in 2006, has finally reached the testing phase. Electric Boat, the company contracted to design the Underwater Express, is producing a quarter-scale model of the speedy sub, to be tested next year off the coast of Rhode Island.

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Blazepoint launches new Tactical Tablet PC

launched a new Tactical Tablet PC for military and commercial applications.
The new range of the ndura RUGGED® Tactical Tablet PC’s incorporate the Intel® Atom™ processor.

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A Quest for Batteries to Alter the Energy Equation

In a gleaming white factory here, Bob Peters was gently feeding sheets of chemical-coated foil one afternoon recently into a whirring machine that cut them into precise rectangles. It was an early step in building a new kind of battery, one smaller than a cereal box but with almost as much energy as the kind in a conventional automobile.

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Arrow 2 test failure a 'serious setback

The failure of an upgraded Arrow 2 missile interceptor in a test off the Californian coast was seen as a serious setback for Israel's main defense system at a time when Iran is accelerating its long-range ballistic missile program.

The Arrow test scheduled for July 22 was aborted on three occasions because of technical malfunctions, including communications glitches between the missile and its Israel-developed Green Pine radar, according to Israel and U.S. accounts.

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Nasa explains its Mars voyage strategies

Nasa has detailed how a hypothetical manned mission to Mars would work. But while that’s a dream, the agency is funding attempts to use private firms to cut the costs of space travel.

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Researchers develop 'brain-reading' methods

It is widely known that 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.

That has changed with the findings of scientists at Rutgers University in Newark and the University of California, Los Angeles who 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. With this new window into the brain, scientists now also are provided with the means of developing a more accurate model of the inner functions of the brain.

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US Firm Shown Television Running on Wireless Powe

US firm Witricity developed a system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires. He showed off a commercially available television using the system. This system could replace the miles of expensive power cables and billions of disposable batteries.

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Barcode replacement shown off

A replacement for the black and white stripes of the traditional barcode has been outlined by US researchers.

Bokodes, as they are known, can hold thousands of times more information than their striped cousins and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera.

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DOD Completes Large-Scale Tests of Mesh-Networking Tags

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) recently completed large-scale tests of mesh-network location-tracking asset tags from ARINC and Impeva Labs. The tests involved hundreds of battery-powered asset tags that formed secure local mesh networks spanning up to half a mile in length.

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Military spends $155M for the nucleus of future wireless networks

The central component to the military’s bulletproof IP wireless network strategy is now in place. Raytheon this week was awarded $24.4 million of what could end up being a $155 million contract to develop the key technology, known as MAINGATE, that will link disparate military wireless networks.

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U.S. company hopes to make fuel from sunlight, CO2

U.S. start-up Joule Biotechnologies hopes to make commercial amounts of motor fuel by feeding engineered organisms high concentrations of carbon dioxide and sunlight, its top executive said.

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Western Digital Rolls Out First 1TB Laptop HHD

It certainly didn't take long for somebody to roar past Toshiba's short-lived record of 500GB for the largest available laptop storage capacity, announced on May 14.

Western Digital on July 27 introduced two new laptop drives that knocked Toshiba's Portege R600-ST4203 solid-state laptop out of the No. 1 spot: the WD Scorpio Blue drives, available in both 750GB and 1TB capacities.

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New B-2 Radar Meets Mission Requirements

Northrop Grumman Corporation and the U.S. Air Force have successfully demonstrated that the new radar developed for the B-2 stealth bomber can fulfill the performance requirements for its required missions, both conventional and strategic.

Northrop Grumman is the Air Force's prime contractor for the B-2, the flagship of the nation's long range strike arsenal. The bomber is the nation's largest payload, longest range stealth bomber.

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