SLD 500 Counter Sniper Systems Delivered to the US Marines

CILAS is delivering two SLD 500 counter snipers systems to the US Marine Corps Systems Command (MCSC). The order was placed last December after several trial campaigns in various weather and distance conditions.

Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory (MCWL) intends to test in depth the capabilities of this system before using it to protect the US Forces engaged in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Iridium Awarded US Navy Contract for DTCS Development

Iridium Satellite LLC (Iridium) announces that the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren has awarded one of its subsidiaries a $21,688,808 indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity cost-type contract to support development and delivery of the Distributed Tactical Communications System (DTCS). DTCS is an extension of "Netted Iridium," the company's push-to-talk communications capability. DTCS will provide over-the-horizon, on-the-move, beyond line-of-sight netted voice and data communications over the Iridium network for the tactical warfighter.

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New Vehicles Square Up to the Challenge

Tougher vehicles to deal with the harsh Afghanistan terrain have been put to work on frontline operations.

The first batch of more than 300 new Mastiff 2 and Ridgback armoured vehicles are now in Afghanistan and operational with trained crews, giving troop commanders better capability for battlefield tasks.The vehicles have been given a number of upgrades including:

-- explosive attenuating seats to provide better protection to the soldier on impact;
-- improved armour;
-- improved axles and suspension to cope with the difficult terrain;
-- better thermal imaging for the drivers;
-- greater crew capacity.

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Boeing Team Delivers 1st Block II Super Hornet TOFT to US Navy

Boeing and teammate L-3 have delivered four Block II F/A-18E/F Super Hornet Tactical Operation Flight Trainers (TOFT) to the U.S. Navy and declared them "Ready for Training." Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana, Va., has two of the trainers, and two are located at NAS Lemoore, Calif."These are the first Block II TOFTs, the new generation of trainers," said Steven Dent, F/A-18 Training Systems manager for Boeing. "The Boeing/L-3 team is able to offer a high level of aircraft concurrency with these new devices."

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How 18th Century Technology Could Down an Airliner

While the mystery of what caused Air France Flight 447 to vanish into the Atlantic Ocean is far from solved, preliminary reports suggest equipment first developed in the 18th century may have contributed to the crash of one of the most sophisticated airliners ever built.

The Associated Press reports some investigators suspect airspeed indicators (ASI) on the Airbus A330-200 iced over, giving faulty readings that directed onboard flight computers to accelerate fast enough to shear off the rudder and vertical stabilizer.

The air speed indicators on the doomed plane included a Pitot tube, named for Henri Pitot, the French engineer who in 1732 created an instrument that could measure the velocity of a fluid.

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New Small Reactor Could Revitalize Power Industry

A major manufacturer of power-generation equipment announced plans today to build a small nuclear reactor that company officials touted as a "potential game changer for the global nuclear market."

Babcock & Wilcox Co.'s 125-megawatt reactor would be significantly smaller than the average 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor and is aimed at plugging a major "market gap," CEO Brandon Bethards said at a Washington press conference. The new reactor might come online as early as 2018.

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OPTICAL ASSEMBLIES: Light comes to the computer chip

Optical technology can break the bottleneck of density and power consumption inside computing systems. Equally compelling for semiconductor manufacturers, it is now able to fit into production processes and cost models.

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Rescue Robots (Audio)

In 2001, when the September 11th terrorist attacks caused the twin towers of the World Trade Center to come crashing down, rescue professionals from many parts of the country raced to New York City to help search for victims. Among them was Robin Murphy, a robotics expert whose efforts after 9/11 marked the birth of the new and still rapidly evolving field: rescue robotics.


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Low-Cost Low-Power Screen from Dream Jobber Jepsen

The screen, reviewers agreed, was revolutionary. Oh, sure, it could have been bigger, the resolution in color mode could have been better, but its low power consumption, visibility in bright light, and dual color and black and white modes were standouts.

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E3 2009: Project Natal hands-on preview

It was demoed during Microsoft’s keynote on Monday to an appreciative crowd. However, unlike many of the video games on display here at the expo, you won’t find Natal on the show floor.

We were one of a handful of journalists given the opportunity to put Natal through its paces. Although Milo, Peter Molyneux’s extraordinary virtual child game, was not part of the demo, what we did see of Natal was incredibly impressive.

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American plans precision altitude flight on NextGen demo

American Airlines plans to fly a more precise altitude on an 11 June flight as part of the launch of testing to prove efficiencies of aircraft equipped with avionics to support next generation (NextGen) air traffic control modernization.

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Dyed solar cells to improve endurance

The US Air Force Research Laboratory foresees dye-sensitised solar cells powering long-endurance unmanned air vehicles following scale-model ground and flight tests.

AFRL Researchers have found that solar cells made from carbon-based materials that use dyes and anti-reflection technology film have a higher specific power convergence efficiency.

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Raytheon Submits KillerBee® Unmanned Aircraft System Bid to U.S. 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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LockMart And USAF Mark Successful Sniper ATP Site Activations

Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Air Force have successfully completed Sniper Advanced Targeting Pod (ATP) A-10C site activations at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, AZ, and Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany.

Sniper ATP site activations involve pod installation, maintenance and aircrew training. Coordinated with the Air Force Precision Attack Systems Project Office and Air Combat Command, Sniper ATP site activation efforts ensure maintainers are prepared to fully support the system in theater and that aircrews are proficient with pod operations and capabilities.

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$363.1M to ITT for U.S. Army SINCGARS Radios

ITT Corp in Fort Wayne, IN won a $363.1 million 24-month-base-firm-fixed-price contract for the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS), system enhancements and logistics support. ITT will provide 58,000 RT-1523 SINCGARS radios [PDF], 34,800 vehicle adapter assemblies/Internet routers and 34,800 radio frequency amplifiers to the Army’s Communications-Electronics Command.

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JLENS: Co-ordinating Cruise Missile Defense - And More

Experiences in Operation Iraqi Freedom showed that even conventional cruise missiles could have important tactical uses in the hands of a determined enemy. Meanwhile, the proliferation of cruise missiles and associated components, combined with a falling technology curve for biological, chemical, or even nuclear agents, is creating longer-term hazards on a whole new scale. Intelligence agencies and analysts believe that the threat of U.S. cities coming under cruise missile attack from ships off the coast is real, sophisticated and evolving.

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Mining "Ice That Burns"

Newly discovered methane hydrate reserves deep in the ocean show promise for mining.

Trapped in molecular cages resembling ice, at the bottom of the ocean and in terrestrial permafrost all over the world, is a supply of natural gas that, by conservative estimates, is equivalent to twice the amount of energy contained in all other fossil fuels remaining in the earth's crust. The question has been whether or not this enormous reserve of energy, known as methane hydrates, existed in nature in a form that was worth pursuing, and whether or not the technology existed to harvest it.

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A Full-Color Screen That Bends

A new way to mass-produce flexible OLED displays could mean affordable commercial products.

Flexible, full-color video displays could be closer to market because of a new advance by researchers at Arizona State University's Flexible Display Center (FDC) and at Universal Display, in Ewing, NJ. The researchers have made bendy organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays employing processes and tools that are used to make today's flat-panel LCD screens. They demonstrated a new 4.1-inch video-quality display at the 2009 Society for Information Display conference last week.

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For Cheaper Solar, Fix the Inverters

If solar power is ever going to be a major source of electricity, researchers, engineers, installers, and solar panel array owners are going to have to pay closer attention to one essential component of the these systems--the inverter.

According to a study of solar arrays in actual operation, poorly designed or faulty inverters--devices that convert the DC power produced by solar panels to AC power that can be used in buildings or sent over the grid--can dramatically lower net power output. In one case, the inverters consumed hundreds of watts at night, decreasing overall power output by 40 percent. High temperatures caused inverter faults, and because the inverters had to be reset manually, about half the time when the sun was shining the array was producing no power.

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World's Smallest Microwave Oven Is USB Powered

The Beanzawave is special: It is powered by a laptop computer's USB port. So now you don't have to leave your computer even for a cup of coffee or a delicious bowl of piping hot Top Ramen.

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Think you have better way to get NASA to Moon? Speak up!

NASA is asking the public to give its advice to the future direction of U.S. manned space flight. Use its Web site to make your input while an independent panel is reviewing the manned activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The NASA media brief of June 5, 2009, NASA launches human spaceflight review Web site for public use, states, “NASA is inviting the public to make its voice heard as a panel of experts undertakes an independent review of planned U.S. human space flight activities.”

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ICANN gears up to offer huge range of new top level domains

ICANN CEO, Paul Twomey, told iTWire, "The BBC has used the term 'dot-almost-anything-goes' [to describe ICANN's plan for new generic top level domains] and we are not looking to classify TLDs...We are not putting in boundaries, but we are putting in grounds for objections...Governments have concerns about geopolitical names, intellectual property lawyers have concerns about brands. What happens if a name is confusingly similar to something else?"

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Human Ear Inspires Universal Radio Antenna

TV, radio, GPS, cell phones, wireless Internet, and other electronics all use different radio waves to receive and send information. Now scientists at MIT have created a tiny antenna capable of receiving any radio signal, based on the human ear.

The new universal radio could lead to better reception and a new class of electronics that can pick up any radio frequency.

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Missile Tests Maximize Warfighter Capabilities

Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Port Hueneme successfully conducted Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) engineering tests aboard USS Nimitz (CVN 68) near San Nicholas Island in the Pacific Ocean May 27.

Personnel from NSWC Port Hueneme served as test director and test conductor for the event.

The tests included two single missile scenarios and featured the first fleet firings of the new production configuration of ESSM from the new Open Architecture variant of the Ship Self Defense System (SSDS) on Nimitz.

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SoC promotes WiMAX adoption in mobile devices.

ApaceWave Technologies, a developer of high-performance OFDMA solutions for the global WiMAX industry, announces availability of its APW2050 Mobile Station System-on-a-Chip (SoC).

The APW2050 supports all 802.16e mobile WiMAX Wave 2 features, including MIMO Matrix A & B, and Beam Forming. It also supports advanced release-1.5 DL/UL AMC MIMO capability. Designed using a 65nm process in a 9x9 mm package, the APW2050 is amongst the smallest, most cost-effective, low-power mobile WiMAX baseband SoC available. It contains a high-performance PHY, MAC, embedded CPU, and intelligent power management to achieve very low total system power consumption. Supported by powerful mobile station software, the APW2050 enables high-performance WiMAX solutions for various devices such as laptop computers, mobile Internet devices, and CPEs.

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Water from thin air

Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology IGB have discovered a way of obtaining drinking water from air humidity.

Working alongside German company Logos Innovationen, the scientists have developed a system that uses a saline solution to absorb moisture from the air.

According to the team, this device could be useful in desert environments where there are significant quantities of water stored in the air.

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Lightwave Logic launches next-gen tech

U.S. company Lightwave Logic Inc. (OTCBB:LWLG) announced the launch of its new electro-optic technology designed to support military and aerospace applications.

Lightwave Logic has launched its next-generation Electro-Optic Material Platform. The telecommunications company announced it has begun the initial prototype of a phase modulator for its new platform as part of an effort to address evolving military and aerospace fiber-optics.

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Raytheon Demonstrates New Submarine Communications Technology for UK Royal Navy

Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) demonstrated the ability to communicate in real time with a submerged submarine at classified speeds and depths.

This capability, which addresses one of the most significant shortfalls in submarine communications, was exhibited for the United Kingdom's Royal Navy during an at-sea trial of Raytheon's Deep Siren Tactical Paging (DSTP) system.

The U.K. Ministry of Defence reported that Deep Siren demonstrated "the first step toward a transformational capability that will change the way we operate submarines in the future."

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Jay Leno’s 3D Printer Replaces Rusty Old Parts

NextEngine 3D scanner and Dimension 3D printer. These incredible devices allow you to make the form you need to create almost any part. The scanner can measure about 50,000 points per second at a density of 160,000 dots per inch (dpi) to create a highly detailed digital model. The 3D printer makes an exact copy of a part in plastic, which we then send out to create a mold. Some machines can even make a replacement part in cobalt-chrome with the direct laser sintering process. Just feed a plastic wire—for a steel part you use metal wire—into the appropriate laser cutter.

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Dread Zeppelin: The Army's New Surveillance Blimp

The Long Endurance Multi-INT Vehicle, or LEMV, is an impressive combination of endurance, carrying capacity, and speed (relatively speaking). The aircraft can be launched easily for missions with up to 3-weeks of continuous airtime carrying a 2,500 lb payload at altitudes of 20,000 ft. Larger payloads will lower the aircraft’s ceiling slightly.

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