CLIMATE changelog » Technosphere » DARPArama
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DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 10:57am

Russia approves mass production of cutting-edge Bulava missile

07/08/2007 18:47 MOSCOW. (Military commentator Viktor Yuzbashev for RIA Novosti)

Russia has moved to a higher level in the design of strategic sea-based nuclear systems.

Admiral Vladimir Masorin, commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy, said the Bulava-M (SS-NX-30), a naval derivative of the land-based missile Topol (SS-27), had been approved for mass production.

It will be supplied to the new fourth-generation Project 955 Borey-class strategic submarines. Three such submarines, the Yury Dolgoruky, the Vladimir Monomakh and the Alexander Nevsky, are being built at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Region (north of European Russia).

The Yury Dolgoruky, the first of the series, will have 12 Bulava missiles. It was commissioned in the presence of First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is in charge of Russia's defense-related sectors, and other eminent guests in April 2007.

Development has not been smooth. At first, the Miass bureau designed the D-19M Bark (SS-NX-28) submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM), but it turned out to be too big for the subs, and flight tests later exposed other drawbacks. Russia cancelled the project in 1998, when the missile was almost ready, because of rising costs and technical difficulties.

The task was then sent to the Moscow-based Heat Technology Institute, which had developed the ground-based Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Four of the first six flight tests of the Bulava-M (where "M" stands for morskoi, or naval) were a failure. Masorin said the recent test in late July was successful, but independent experts are not so sure. According to them, one of the three warheads of the missile did not reach its destination.

This did not deter the designers of the Bulava and their superiors. Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Space Agency, which is responsible for designing and supplying strategic missiles to the armed forces, said the Bulava could be delivered to the navy after 12-14 tests.

He referred to the experience of the United States, where the Trident II naval missile was delivered to the navy after 19 ground tests and nine launches from a submarine.

Admiral Masorin said the trial period of the Bulava would end in 2008 after two more tests this year. One of the trials will determine the missile's maximum range. It is not clear where that particular missile will land, but it will clearly be beyond the Kura range on the Kamchatka Peninsular in Russia's Far East. On the other hand, it could be aimed at the range, but launched not from the White Sea, as usual, but from some other sea.

According to the Western press, the three-stage solid-fuel Bulava-M missile will be one of the lightest in its class. Weighing only 30 metric tons, it was initially named Bulava-30. It has an effective range of 8,000 kilometers (4,972 miles) and will carry four to ten warheads.

Some experts claim that such a light missile could not carry ten warheads. Others argue that modern nuclear technology and composite materials allow engineers to build smaller and lighter nuclear warheads that will be as effective as their larger counterparts.

The Bulava will most likely be built to carry ten warheads, as its combat effectiveness would not be sufficient otherwise. The Yury Dolgoruky, the first of the Borey-class submarines, will have 12 missile launchers, but the two later subs, the Vladimir Monomakh and the Alexander Nevsky, will have 16 launchers.

If the designers' plans materialize, the three new submarines will carry 44 Bulava missiles with 440 nuclear warheads, an impressive contribution to strategic nuclear deterrence stipulated in Russia's military doctrine.

The results of trials of the Bulava, as well as its parameters, flight telemetry, technical characteristics and the companies involved in its construction and production, are confidential information for everyone but the United States. Washington receives information on missile technology in accordance with the START-1 treaty on strategic reductions.

So, this information is secret only to the Russian military and its designers, as well as Russian taxpayers, who are paying for the missile designed to protect them. Why?

The Bulava, as well as the Yury Dolgoruky and other submarines of its class, has become hostage to the political ambitions of some high-ranking Russian officials. They promised that a cutting-edge submarine would be built and armed with the latest missiles capable of evading any air defense systems, both existing and future ones, by the end of 2008. They have repeated this promise often and loudly enough to give the Russian public and Western politicians hearing problems. Failure to keep their word could cost them their high positions and ruin their hopes of climbing to the country's top post. This is why the Bulava has been put into production before the design stage was completed, and this is why they have again promised that the new sub will be delivered to the navy already armed with the new SLBM.

However, Masorin also hinted that not all of the new missile would go into production now, but only its blocks and stages that have proved their reliability during tests. When the trials of the Bulava-M are over and the missile receives the certificate of the state acceptance committee, they will be assembled at the Votkinsk machine tool works and supplied to the three new subs, as well as to the Dmitry Donskoi, a Project 941 Akula-class (Typhoon-class) submarine, which has been upgraded to a fourth generation submarine.

It carries 20 missile launchers, and if it is armed with the Bulava-M SLBMs, this will increase Russia's naval nuclear deterrence potential by 200 warheads.

Only, that is, if the Bulava-M missile survives the political race.

http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20070807/70536185.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 12:34pm

DARPA Chief: Titanium is the Next Internet
By Noah Shachtman August 08, 2007 | 8:44:12 AM

The Pentagon's way-out research arm has been responsible -- at least in part -- for everything from night vision to Predator drones to our favorite series of tubes. So what does DARPA chief Tony Tether see as the agency's next set of "game changers?" The answers he gave the three thousand military officers, Pentagon-funded scientists, and defense contractors gathered here at the DARPATech conference might surprise you:

* Military grade titanium at $3.50 a pound, instead of $35 a pound.

* High quality military jet fuel processed from crops grown in the U.S.

* A machine capable of rapidly translating foreign language speech and text as well, if not better than, experienced linguists

* Aircraft that can autonomously refuel and remain airborne for very long periods, perhaps as long as five years, or more.

* A prosthetic to replace an arm lost in combat, so capable, that the soldier could learn to play Dixieland on the piano.

* A computer that can process at a rate faster than one Billion Million Instructions per Second.

When I first started using computers, admittedly a very long time ago, the fastest computer could process at a rate of only one hundred thousand instructions per second. The new computers will be 10 billion times faster than what I had to work with. This new capability will dramatically reduce the time it takes to design, test, and bring an idea to reality, giving us a great strategic and tactical advantage over the rest of the world.

And it's not like Tether has given up on tying computers together. "The key to success in future military operations is the network," he said. "The network [will] become the most vital and critical capability for our forces, exceeding even that of the platforms it supports.I was with the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan last year. From what I saw and heard, I believe even more in the power of networks."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/darpas-next-int.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 12:36pm

Ready-To-Order World for Battlefield Training
By Noah Shachtman August 08, 2007 | 11:00:00 AM

The military has been using games to get its troops ready for battle since World War II. But mostly, when the soldiers have plugged in to train up, they do so in generic simulated environments – “whereveristans,” if you will. And it takes forever to build those pixilated places.

But the folks at Total Immersion Software have a different approach in mind: digital battlefields that look just like the ones soldiers are about to hit, and can be whipped up in a few hours. They call it RealWorld.

John Main, a former DARPA program manager turned Total Immersion executive, paints a picture of a small special forces team, about to be dropped into Somalia -- to capture a terrorist leader, maybe. It takes just six hours to code a digital Mogadishu, down to the street, down to the building, down to the individual room where the target sleeps. On the plane ride over, the snake eaters rehearse their sntch-and-grab before they do it, for real.

At least, that's the idea. Some day. Maybe. For now, Main's new colleague, Mike Day, will settle for a 72-hour build time -- and only an simulated "target structure" that's heavily detailed. Even that three-day lead-time would be a pretty serious jump, though. And it definitely beats "whereveristan."

The way to pull it off, Day thinks, is to let the troops design their own pixilated rehearsal spaces. To give the soldiers a set of software tools to they can drag-and-drop together satellite images, ground photos, and drone footage to make a pixilated battlefield. Think of it like Second Life, but for war.

With a pair of hoops in his left earlobe and a graying goatee, Mark Day doesn’t look much like the corporate suits, scruffy-bearded professors, and crew-cut officers hanging around the DARPATech conference in Anaheim. That’s because he’s a game designer by trade, not a military scientist; he produced a couple of installments of the Wing Commander franchise for Electronic Arts, then started his own gaming company.

Today, he's still putting together games, But now, it's for the government. He's using a version of the Gamebryo engine -- which forms the heart of everything from Civ IV to Morrowind -- to put together Real World for DARPA. "I still treat it as a game -- otherwise it gets too scary-serious," he says. Still, "after being responsible for supposedly corrupting the youth of the world for so long, it's nice to do something with actual meaning."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/the-military-ha.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 12:39pm

Fishes' Fins for DARPA's Swimmers
By Sharon Weinberger August 08, 2007 | 3:02:56 PM



DARPA is trying out all kinds of tricks to give humans the powers of animals. Take this fin-like gadget, Powerswim. It's a "human-powered swimming device" that could be used by combat or reconnaissance divers:

This program explores a new concept in swimming propulsion that uses the same oscillating foil approach to swimming that is exhibited by many fish and aquatic birds. This propulsion approach is more than 85-percent efficient in conversion of human motions to forward propulsion. Typical recreational swim fins are no more than 10-percent efficient in their conversion of human exertion to propulsive power. This dramatic improvement in swimming efficiency will enable subsurface swimmers to move up to two-and-a-half times faster than is currently possible, thus improving swimmer performance, safety, and range.

Apparently, combat swimmers can only go about 4.5 miles before fatigue sets in; the biologically-inspired "oscillating foil" could double that distance. The company building the Powerswim, DEKA, is the same company that developed the Segway.

Writing over at Ares (and thanks for the photo, too!), Bill Sweetman notes that getting Navy SEALS to adopt this technology may not be that easy.

"They're used to working hard, and if it doesn't hurt they don't think they're doing the job - but then we say, 'when have you ever swum above two knots?'." Another defense source observes: "SEALs are like Catholic school - if it doesn't hurt it's not good for you."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/darpas-bionic-s.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 12:43pm

Natural Cures DARPA Doesn't Want You To Know About
By Sharon Weinberger August 08, 2007 | 3:12:32 PM

Can dietary supplements make you healthier? A lot of doctors are skeptical. But DARPA gave it a try with a product called Q-Chews, and DARPA Director Tony Tether even sent some to Gordon England, the Deputy Defense Secretary. England held up the chewable supplements up during a live video telecon played today at DARPATech.



DARPA funded trials on Q-Chews, which are claimed to "reduce the risk of respiratory viral illness after extreme physical stress; help maintain mental focus; and increase muscle power." The DARPA-funded study was led by Dr. David Nieman, "a professor in Appalachian State University’s Department of Health, Leisure and Exercise Science."

According to a press release, this research was funded by a $1.1 million contract provided to Appalachian State University. This was apparently the largest contract in the university's history.

According to the company:

Prolonged physical exertion is known to damage muscles, weaken the immune system and reduce mental focus. Scientific tests funded by DARPA have shown that taking this patented formula daily for 3-6 weeks actually reduced the incidence of respiratory infections and mental fatigue. Other controlled clinical trials have shown that daily quercetin intake increase muscle power during high intensity exercise and stress. Q-Chews contain a patented formula of QU995 Quercetin (>99.5% pure) plus Vitamin C and Vitamin B3 to increase Quercetin absorption. Quercetin is a natural flavonoid extracted from plants, renowned for its ultra-concentrated antioxidant properties. Until recently, QU995 was reserved exclusively for testing by the US Military. Q-Chews are natural, delicious-tasting chews that are convenient to use and safe at the recommended dose.

What did DARPA conclude about Q-Chews? It's not clear, but the company notes their claims "have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration" and that their "product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/natural-cures-d.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 12:50pm

DARPA Vision: "Unblinking" Spy Drones, Veggie-Powered Killer Bots
By Noah Shachtman August 08, 2007 | 4:00:00 PM



The Pentagon's far-out science division wants an unmanned, "unblinking eye from above" to watch over an area for "weeks, months, even years." And if that doesn't do the surveillance trick, veggie-eating killer robots on the ground will pick up the slack. You may now break out the tinfoil hats.

Today's Global Hawk reconnaissance drones can stay in the air for up to 40 hours. DARPA program manager Wade Pulliam would like to increase that by 1,000 times, or more -- getting a robotic surveillance plan that can stay in the air for 5 years, or 44,000 hours, straight. The project is called "Vulture." And it won't be easy, Pulliam admits. After all, the Global Hawk goes through a "major service cycle" every 400 to 600 hours. How could Vulture stay in the air that long without that kind of maintenance? And while we're at it, what about the fuel that thing will need?

Maybe the thing will have to be built like a satellite, he mused -- with lots of redundant subsystems. Maybe there will be some sort of automatic, in-flight refueling and servicing. Maybe the "system [will] incorporat[e] modular pieces which fly home when a fault is detected," a Vulture briefing guesses. But it'll all be worth it, Pulliam promises, to have an "unblinking view circling indefinitely just 12 miles above [a] target." Not even a team of satellites could scope foes out so well, he insists. And unlike satellites, the Vulture might be able to "strike" targets, too, according to the briefing, which depicts the drone has a kind of modified version of AeroVironment's hydrogen-powered, long-loitering planes.



The Vulture won't be the only machine that stares at enemies, if Pulliam has his way. He's like to see teams of autonomous, camouflaged ground vehicles, "slowly working their way into position" and then "lying in wait to strike when ordered."

Of course, these killer 'bots can't exactly be refueled -- it'd blow their cover. So maybe the machine could power up by "consuming organic material from the surrounding environment." Or perhaps a drone overhead could beam some power down to the groundling.

Either way, the idea is to not allow potential foes "an inch of space, not allow them a moment's rest, not allow them to have an easy breath."

I have a feeling a few others may have respiratory troubles, if Pulliam's plans pan out.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/the-pentagons-f.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 12:55pm

Robo-Cars Picked for Pentagon Driving Test
By Noah Shachtman August 09, 2007 | 1:27:45 PM

36 teams are moving on to the semi-finals of the Urban Challenge, the Pentagon's contest to see if robotic cars can move their way through cities.

That includes all five teams that completed 2005's Grand Challenge driverless rally across the desert. But only one in the quintet is among the top five semi-finalists: New Orleans' Team Gray. The group of insurance company programmers shocked the robotics world -- and overcame the destruction of their workshop by Hurricance Katrina -- by beating out vehicles built by leading computer-science researchers and backed by defense contractors to complete the Grand Challenge's 150-mile course. Since then, the firm has pulled some employees from the insurance side of the business, allowing them to focus on the company's new venture: robotic cars.

The Urban Challenge is set for November 3, at an urban military training in Victorville, California. And it will be a different sort of contest than 2005's challenge. To qualify for winning, the robo-cars will have to complete a 60-mile fuel resupply mission in under six hours -- avoiding moving obstacles, merging into oncoming traffic, and obeying California's driving laws. But the eventual $2 million victor will be picked by a panel of judges -- not judged strictly on time.

At today's DARPATech conference, agency director Tony Tether said that prize is "in danger of being passed out." He recently saw a robot approach an intersection, he said. Then the driverless vehicle waited for other cars to pass, flipped on its turning signal, and drove away.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/36-teams-are-mo.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 12:58pm

Drone Dog's Big Walk
By Noah Shachtman August 09, 2007 | 2:30:00 PM



Getting a four-legged robot to haul 150 pounds, pick its way across rocky fields, and leap into the air like a steeplechasing show horse was just the start. The next step for BigDog, the alarming life-like robo-quadruped, is to follow a soldier on a five-mile hike across rough terrain.

The original idea behind BigDog was to have it tag along with a human master in any environment -- carrying the soldier's gear up mountains, down stairs, through forest trails. "To have the mobility to go where no existing vehicle could," Marc Raibert, the robot's chief designer, tells DANGER ROOM. But despite the machine's often-jaw-dropping ability to roam -- check out how it takes a kick to the flank -- that goal hasn't been met. "We're still not beating ATVs [all-terrain vehicles] yet."

But the hike Raibert has in mind, no ATV could handle. The slopes are too steep, too rocky. Then there are all of those trees to squeeze in between.

To get it done, though, the BigDog is going to have to be a whole lot more rugged than it is today. Raibert has a new contract from DARPA worth up to $40 million to get the robot ready.

He has other machines on display here at DARPATech, the conference thrown by the Pentagon's blue-sky research division arm, too. One 'bot, RISE, uses hundreds of tiny, spring-loaded metallic spines in each of its feet to stick to walls -- and climb up them. A tail allows RISE to press against the wall as it's moving up, and push over the ledge, when it's at the top. Another, Little Dog, picks its way across rocky fields, learning from experience.

The climb will be challenging for toy-sized 'bot. But it's nothing compared to what the bigger pick of the litter is going to face.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/getting-a-four-.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 1:02pm

Ionatron: The Smackdown
By Sharon Weinberger August 09, 2007 | 4:20:06 PM

Can life get any worse for Ionatron, the cash-burning lightning-weapon maker that still enjoys a small, but determined band of hard-core groupies? There's been shady deals, canceled contracts, an investor lawsuit and alleged insider trading. Now, the Motley Fool is calling Ionatron a "$220 million-dollar pipe dream on a fast track to zero."



Their message to investors: "Get out while you still can." The Motley Fool also takes a deep swipe at the management:

To me, Ionatron's 8-K filings with the SEC read like a case study of management self-enrichment. While not bothering to place a copy of last quarter's earnings release in the files (perhaps management didn't consider an "earnings" release material because there were no earnings?), Ionatron did inform us of a pay raise for COO/CFO Kenneth Wallace (salary: $210,000 per year), and of executive VPs Joseph Hayden and Stephen McCahon's plans to sell stock under 10b-5-1 plans.

Well, today, Ionatron held its quarterly conference call, and the Motley Fool noted that the company had cut costs, which is sorta good news, but also bad news, because the costs it cut were from R&D, and that's not so hot: "With few sales, and no profits, Ionatron remains an R&D shop. Not just its future, but its very reason for existence, is tied to its research of directed energy weapons technology. As such, I consider cutting costs by cutting R&D spending nothing less than a mortgaging of Ionatron's future."

Hey, this is great news for DANGER ROOM, 'cause it means Ionatron will be around a bit longer, providing us with a never-ending source of entertaining material (and hate mail).

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/ionatron-the-sm.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 1:05pm


Stealth Goes to Sea
Posted by David A. Fulghum at 8/9/2007 9:15 AM

Northrop Grumman is starting to reveal details of its X-47B unmanned combat aircraft demonstrator. Despite protestations by company officials that they only wanted to talk about the $635.8 million, 6-year project to demonstrate launches and recoveries at sea, they soon turned to the operational potential of its X-47B unmanned combat aircraft design. However, negotiations on the funding profiles continue and could involve $1.2 billion in all, says Rick Ludwig, Northrop Grumman’s director of business development.



The flying wing design will offer “wide-band, low observable” protection against “all radar bands,” says Scott Winship, Northrop Grumman’s UCAS-D program manager. That means maintaining stealth in the presence of both high frequency (anti-aircraft radars and ground-to-air or air-to-air missiles) and low frequency (long-range search radars) emitters, a capability that earlier stealth designs didn’t have.

Because there is no man, mission endurance is expected to reach 50-100 hr. And since the UCAS is going to be up there so long, the company is adapting the two weapons bays to carry twelve precision-guided, 250-lb. small diameter bombs instead of two 2,000 lb. joint direct attack munitions. That way the aircraft can strike more targets during a mission and take advantage of its long-loiter capability. Bombs could be targeted by teams on the ground no matter how far the aircraft is from its launch site, Beard says.



As to new missions, company planners are looking at installing a 600-gal. fuel tank in each weapons bay so that it can serve as a tanker. That option has brought cheers from the F/A-18 Hornet community that since the retirement of the Navy’s S-3s has had to serve as aerial refuelers for the carrier-based community. See more details in Monday’s Aviation Week & Space Technology.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/def....a-983bc8 260bb5

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 10, 2007, 1:12pm

Exclusive: DARPA's New Tools for Net Defenders, Cyber-Snoops (Updated)
By Noah Shachtman August 10, 2007 | 9:41:00 AM

It’s getting harder and harder for the Pentagon’s cyber defenders to protect military networks – and for federal snoops to peek in on our e-mail. DARPA, the Pentagon’s way-out research arm, has an idea for how to keep up: use the laws of heat flow to monitor network traffic. It's part of a bigger push to make sure net protectors and digital surveillance type can keep up with the rising tide of e-mail, web-surfing, and other online activities.



We all know about Moore’s Law – that computer processors will double in strength and speed every 18 months. But network traffic is growing even faster, at nearly double the rate. Every decade, the amount of packets expands a thousand-fold.

That’s a major worry for the Pentagon, and its cybersecurity pros. All that increased traffic means more bits to scan for viruses and other malicious code. If today’s trends keep up, DARPA program manager Brian Hearing tells DANGER ROOM, “we’d use the majority of DOD [Department of Defense] computers to monitor network traffic. Which won’t happen, obviously. So our ability to detect will drop.”

So Hearing is launching a new program, "Scalable Network Monitoring," that aims to detect 99% of the bad code in a torrent of traffic, a hundred gigabits per second (GPS) -- with only a single false alarm per day. He's leading a meeting in Virginia next week, to kickstart the effort.

Old-school cyber-monitoring at the Pentagon meant comparing each packet to known viruses and the like as it passes from the Internet to the Defense Department’s classified networks. But that only works against known malicious code. And it is a bear to process.

But the Navy has been pioneering an approach, called "Therminator," which might be able to do the job a little better. It's one of a number of potential new net-defense tools that DARPA would like to see in action. The idea is to monitor the flow of traffic, rather than the individual packets. To treat it like to movement of temperature -- thermodynamics -- rather than the travels of ones and zeros. "If, all of a sudden, we see a big flow to China, we know there's a problem," Hearing says.

The approach could make it simpler to find a data leak, or a backdoor inserted into a Pentagon computer. And it'll invariably make it easier to monitor what the rest of us do online, too. Clearly, it's not a coincidence that NSA bigwigs will be speaking at Hearing's get-together next week.

Testing out these new network-monitoring tools will mean building all-new malicious code, too. Could those new cyber-attacks be turned over to the NSA, too -- maybe to cyber-bomb a foe? "No comment," says Hearing.

UPDATE: The Scalable Network Monitoring request for proposals in now online: http://www.fbo.gov/spg/ODA/DARPA/CMO/BAA07-52/Attachments.html

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/we-all-know-abo.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by deborah on Aug 10, 2007, 11:08pm

Delightful thread.

I am deeply inspired by the marvelous accomplishments being documented herein and very impressed with the large sums of money involved.

We have cardboard boxes in bank lobbies here in Boston this week with signs on them asking for donations of school supplies for children whose parents can't afford to buy them.

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 17, 2007, 10:02am

HMS Daring eases through first sea trials

By Thomas Harding on HMS Daring
Last Updated: 10:58am BST 16/08/2007

A warship that can defend the entire city of London from missile and aircraft attack successfully completed its first Royal Navy sea trial yesterday.

HMS Daring: Type-45 destroyer


The £1 billion HMS Daring will become the most advanced warship in the world when it enters service with the Navy in 2009.

The Type-45 destroyer, which is already exceeding targets, will now start taking on board Aster missiles, which are capable of knocking down a cricket ball-sized object travelling at three times the speed of sound.

It is also the most eco-friendly ship ever produced for the Royal Navy, with a unique electric propulsion system that can ferry it from New York and back without refuelling.

The most powerful front-line warship since the Second World War has missiles capable of striking the most advanced "intelligent" anti-ship missiles that can travel at Mach 4.

Daring is crowned by a huge 30-metre high Samson radar that can track more than 1,000 targets at once.

The system is so powerful it can monitor all take-offs and landings from every major European airport within 200 miles of Portsmouth.

The ship can engage 12 air targets and will carry Harpoon anti-ship missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles.

Officers claim that if it was stationed in the River Thames, its weapon system would be able to single-handedly destroy any incoming airborne attack on Greater London.
During four weeks of sea trials, Daring has achieved 31.5 knots - exceeding a target of 28 knots.

During final trials off the Western Isles yesterday Daring went through her paces smoothly, watched by the defence minister, Bob Ainsworth.

From a standing start she reached 29 knots in just 70 seconds and can come to a dead halt within 800 yards.

She can turn full circle within three ship lengths and has stealth technology that reduces the radar signature to that of a fishing boat.

"She's a beautiful ship to drive, like a souped-up Bentley with very smooth handling," said Lt-Cdr Phil Harper, the ship's navigator

It can also take 60 Special Forces troops, a large Chinook or Apache attack helicopters as well as Merlin anti-submarine helicopters.

The ship left American visitors to the yard on the Clyde "shaken and shocked", according to BAE Systems, its builders.

In the next 10 years, as many as eight T45s could be built, mainly to defend the two large aircraft carriers that were ordered last month.

T45 Destroyer factfile

Ordered: 2000

Cost: £1 billion.

Official launch: Feb 1, 2006, by the Countess of Wessex.

Expected in service: 2009.

Built by: BAE Systems, Scotstoun, River Clyde

Crew comforts: First warship to include email facilities and iPod charging points.

Size: The height of Nelson’s column. The ship’s 20,000 power cables stretch 400 miles.

Engine: unique eco-friendly electric propulsion system can accelerate ship to 29 knots in just 70 seconds.

Equipment: can take a large Chinook or Apache attack helicopters as well as Merlin anti-submarine helicopters.

Motto: Splendide audax (Finely daring).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/15/nwarship115.xml

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Aug 21, 2007, 12:48pm

The latest Soviet Air Defense system apparently:

S-400 SA-20 Triumf

The Triumf S-400 is a new generation of air defense and theater anti-missile weapon developed by the Almaz Central Design Bureau as an evolution of the S-300PMU [SA-10] family. This new system is intended to detect and destroy airborne targets at a distance of up to 400 km (2- 2.5 times greater than the previous S-300PMU system). The Triumf system includes radars capable of detecting low-signature targets. And the anti-missile capability of the system has been increased to the limits established by the ABM Treaty demarcation agreements -- it can intercept targets with velocities of up to 4.8 km/sec, corresponding to a ballistic missile range of 3,500 km.

The system was developed through the cooperation of the Almaz Central Design Bureau, Fakel Machine Building Design Bureau, Novosibirsk Scientific Research Institute of Instruments, St. Petersburg Design Bureau of Special Machine Building and other enterprises.

The Fakel Machine Building Design Bureau has developed two new missiles for Triumf.

* The "big" missile [designation otherwise unknown] has a range of up to 400 km and will be able to engage "over- the-horizon [OTH]" targets using a new seeker head developed by Almaz Central Design Bureau. This seeker can operate in both a semiactive and active mode, with the seeker switched to a search mode on ground command and homing on targets independently. Targets for this missile include airborne early warning and control aircraft as well as jammers.

* The 9M96 missile is designed to destroy aircraft and air- delivered weapons at ranges in excess of 120 km. The missile is small-- considerably lighter than the ZUR 48N6Ye used in the S-300PMU1 systems and the Favorit. The missile is equipped with an active homing head and has an estimated single shot kill probability of 0.9 for manned aircraft and 0.8 for unmanned maneuvering aircraft. a gas-dynamic control system enables the 9M96 missile to maneuver at altitudes of up to 35 km at forces of over 20g, which permits engagment of non- strategic ballistic missiles. A mockup of the missile was set up at an Athens arms exhibition in October 1998. One 9M96 modification will become the basic long-range weapon of Air Force combat aircraft, and may become the standardized missile for air defense SAM systems, ship-launched air defense missile systems, and fighter aircraft.

These new missiles can be accomodated on the existing SAM system launchers of the S-300PMU family. A container with four 9M96's can be installed in place of one container with the 5V55 or 48N6 missiles, and thus the the standard launcher intended for four 48N6Ye missiles can accommodate up to 16 9M96Ye missiles. Triumf provides for the greatest possible continuity with systems of the S-300PMU family (PMU1, PMU2), making it possible to smoothly change over to the production of the new generation system. It will include the previous control complex, though supporting not six but eight SAM systems, as well as multifunctional radar systems illumination and guidance, launchers, and associated autonomous detection and target indication systems.

The state tests of the S-400 system reportedly began in 1999, with the initial test on 12 February 1999. As of May 1999 the testing of S-400 air defense system was reportedly nearing completion at Kapustin Yar, with the first systems of this kind to be delivered to the Moscow Air Force and Air Defense District in the fourth quarter of 1999. However, as of August 1999 government testing of the S-400 was slated to begin at the end of 1999, with the first system complex slated for delivery in late 2000. The sources of the apparent one-year delay in the program are unclear, though they may involve some combination of technical and financial problems with this program. Russian air defense troops conducted a test of the new anti-aircraft missile system S-400 on 07 April 2000. At that time, Air Force Commander Anatoly Kornukov said that serial production of the new system would begin in June 2000. Kornukov said air defense troops would get one S-400 launcher system by the end of 2000, but it would be armed with missiles of the available S-300 system.

On condition of normal funding, radars with an acquisition range of 500-600 km should become operational by 2002-2003. However, other sources report that while it was ordered by the Defence Ministry, the military has nothing to pay for it with, so it is unclear when the Russian military will get this new weapon.

The Russian Air Force is studying a reduction in the number of types of air defense weapons, and it is possible that Triumf will become the only system being developed, providing defense both in the close-range and mid-range as well long-range zones.

Specifications
Contractor Almaz Central Design Bureau
Fakel Machine Building Design Bureau
Entered Service
Total length
Diameter
Wingspan
Weight
Warhead Weight
Propulsion
Maximum Speed
Maximum effective range 120 km 9M96 missile
400 km "big" missile
Guidance mode
Single-shot hit probability




Sources and Resources

* "Innovation: There Will Be No 'Desert Storm' Over Russia: 'Triumf' System Will Be a Worthy Response to Foreign Aircraft Development" by Sergey Sokut, Moscow Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye No 6 (129) 19-25 Feb 99 p 6 [Sokut: Implications of S-400 'Triumf' SAM : FBIS-SOV-1999-0305 : 05 Mar 1999]

* "Sensation: 'Almaz' Prepares 'Triumf': New Generation of Anti-Aircraft Missile System Created in Russia," by Andrey Viktorovich Fomin, editor in chief of the Russian-English journal Air Fleet, Moscow Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye 5-11 Feb 99 No 4 p 1 [New 'Triumf' Air Defense System Noted : FBIS-SOV-1999-0222 : 05 Feb 1999]

* "New Missile" By Yevgeniy Nikitin Moscow ITAR-TASS 1202 GMT 20 Aug 99 [Russia Boasts Most Sophisticated Anti-Aircraft System : FBIS-SOV-1999-0821 : 20 Aug 1999]

* Moscow NTV 1800 GMT 10 Apr 99 [Russian Missile Designers Laud Products : FBIS-SOV-1999-0410 : 10 Apr 1999]

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/russia/airdef/s-400.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 3, 2007, 8:44pm

Oops, another top secret exposed



A screen grab of Microsoft's Virtual Earth showing the Ohio class ballistic missile submarine in dry dock near Bangor in Washington state. Inset: 2003 photo of USS Virginia in contstruction showing the propellor covered.

More specifically:



Stephen Hutcheon
September 4, 2007 - 10:48AM

A man looking for a new home on an online mapping service has stumbled across an aerial image of a US nuclear-powered submarine in dry dock showing a part of the vessel that wasn't meant to be seen.

The image - which appears on Microsoft's Virtual Earth mapping service - is of the seven-bladed propeller used on an Ohio class ballistic missile submarine.

The vessel was being worked on at a dry dock at the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Washington State, in the north-west of the United States. The base is part of Bangor's Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific which houses the largest nuclear weapons arsenal.

Propeller designs have been closely guarded secrets since the days of the Cold War. It is still common for them to be draped with tarps or removed and covered when a submarine is out of the water.

The propeller design is an integral part of a submarine's ability to remain undetected during operations, ensuring that it can patrol the seas in stealth without giving its position away to surface ships.

The find has triggered a debate over whether online mapping services offered by the likes of Google and Microsoft should be allowed to snap and publish images of sensitive US military installations.

Reporting the discovery, the Navy Times newspaper quoted military analyst Nathan Hughes as saying that exposing the propeller was a major blunder that had compromised "sensitive naval technology".

The paper quotes a Pentagon public affairs officer as saying that the Defence Department does not have a policy - or the legal authority - to demand the removal or blurring of commerical aerial or satellite photography.

The discovery was made by Dan Twohig, a deck officer on a ferry service in Washington State. He made the discovery in early July when he was looking at real estate near Seattle using Virtual Earth, a mapping service similar to Google Maps and Earth.

Twohig lives in North Bend in Washington State. Situated about 50km east of Seattle, it was the setting for David Lynch's landmark TV series Twin Peaks in the early 1990s. Twohig was looking for a place closer to his work.

He subsequently posted the find on his blog, MonsterMaritime, and the story found its way into mainstream media late last month.

"You can also use the zoom in and out keys and move around the Bangor Sub Base taking a close up look at the bunkers and magazines where they keep the nuclear weapons," he wrote in his blog. "You would think the US government would keep better tabs on this stuff."

Twohig's discovery was made around about the same time that Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, spotted an aerial image of China's new Jin-class nuclear-powered submarine on Google Earth.

The Chinese sub, which is capable of firing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the US mainland, was snapped at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base south of the city of Dalian - a facility named in honour of the late paramount Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping who died 10 years ago.

An article written by Paul Forsythe Johnston, Curator of Maritime History at the National Museum of American History, and posted on the museum's website, explains the significance of submarine propeller design and the "tip vortex flowfields" the propeller creates.

"Once [the propellers] reach a certain speed, the blades begin to create a partial vacuum, which results in air bubbles," he writes.

"This is a state known as cavitation. Bubbles are noisy, and submarine propellers are designed and shaped to reduce cavitation and exploit other relevant laws of physics as much as possible and still maintain useful speeds."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/oops-anot....8783202402.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 5, 2007, 2:48am

Tsar Bomba, nicknamed 'Big Ivan'
By
Feb 27, 2007, 09:56

Tsar Bomba, nicknamed 'Big Ivan' by its makers, was the largest nuclear bomb ever built. With a yield of 50 megatons, it was 4000 times more powerful then the bomb that devastated Hiroshima.

This video shows various important aspects of the bomb, including its development at Arzamas-16, the secret Soviet nuclear weapons research facility and its transportation to the Tu-95 bomber, which was painted white for the test to reflect the heat of the blast. Several different views of the explosion are also shown, including several filmed from the air and ground alike. The last few shots are of the ground zero several days after the test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiyUSv2Z07A

http://www.nationalufocenter.com/artman/publish/article_131.php

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 5, 2007, 6:55am

China Developing Scramjet Propulsion

Sep 2, 2007

By Craig Covault

China is starting to ramp up its scramjet propulsion work—an initiative that will benefit high-speed missile programs while also helping the country to develop advanced aerospace materials, greater computational capabilities and a cadre of young engineers who have matured as a result of cutting-edge engine and aerodynamic challenges.

Building on its ramjet experience, China is embracing the much more difficult task of developing Mach 5 air vehicle concepts in which propulsion and aerodynamics are highly coupled.

As part of this effort, an integrated scramjet model is about to begin testing at up to Mach 5.6 in a new wind tunnel in Beijing.

In addition to the technology and engineering experience to be gained, the mid-term military payoff is likely to be more advanced high-speed tactical and medium-range Chinese missiles, especially for antiship warfare that could threaten U.S. aircraft carriers in the Pacific or operating in support of Taiwan.

“China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the U.S. and field disruptive military technologies that could, over time, offset traditional U.S. military advantages,” the 2006 Pentagon Quadrennial Review said about overall Chinese military technology initiatives.

And over the next several decades, the scramjet work could eventually provide China with a tactical hypersonic global-strike capability beyond the country’s strategic ballistic missile force. The U.S. has similar goals for its own growing scramjet program.

The Chinese allowed a peek into multiple aspects of their scramjet efforts at the recent American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Joint Propulsion Conference in Cincinnati. Chinese engineers from several research facilities presented about a dozen papers on their scramjet developments, as well as details on the new wind tunnel.

At the same forum, their papers revealed new rocket propulsion research, including work on hybrid systems that use a combination of propellants easier to handle and store than most propellants in wider use today. New insight also was offered on Chinese solid rocket motor technology work, important for both missile and space launch applications.

The Cincinnati meeting differed from a traditional U.S. industry gathering, because nearly a dozen engineers from Iran also submitted papers on Iranian solid and liquid rocket technologies. The Iranian engineers are based at the Sharif University of Technology and the KNT Technical University, both in Tehran. They apparently did not deliver the papers in person. However, as participants, the Iranians have access to all of the highly detailed U.S. aircraft and rocket propulsion presentations made at the conference.

A scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) flies at Mach 5 or faster using hydrogen fuel and oxygen out of the air for oxidizer. The engine must combine an advanced ramjet that changes configuration to swallow supersonic flow above about Mach 4.

Advanced ramjet technologies are also important for scramjet development, and the Chinese have been active in this area for decades.

Ironically, one the more interesting historical papers presented at the forum was a detailed description of how the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed combined top-secret ramjet propulsion technologies with segmented solid rocket boosters for the Mach 3 D-21B reconnaissance drones that were launched by modified SR-71s and B-52Hs in the late 1960s (see center photo). The D-21B was specifically developed to gather intelligence over China.

This was the first time details on the segmented rocket booster portion of the D-21B program have been presented publicly, says Robert Geisler of Geisler Industries, who led the analysis with retired Pratt & Whitney and ATK Tactical Propulsion engineers. Segmented boosters use individual circular sections like space shuttle solid rocket motors.

China already has such segmented solid rocket motor and ramjet capabilities today, but scramjets are a much greater challenge.

Although nowhere nearly as advanced as U.S. scramjet work, Chinese activities in this discipline will give the Defense Dept. additional impetus to argue for strong, ongoing U.S. hypersonic propulsion funding. Diverse U.S. technology programs are already underway to support development of the X-51 scramjet test vehicle (AW&ST July 23, p. 23).

As part of the Chinese effort, the engineers say new analytical centers are also being developed. For example, a Hypersonic Propulsion Test Facility has been built to support the scramjet program, according to Xinyu Chang, a senior researcher at the Laboratory of High-Temperature Gas Dynamics in Beijing, where the HPTF is located. Gas Dynamics lab research is specifically oriented to “the development of hypersonic flight vehicles, both aeronautics-and space-related,” according to data from the facility.

Broad studies there are “devoted to the fundamentals of hypersonic and high-temperature gas dynamics including detonation phenomena, supersonic combustion, chemical reactions, shock-wave/vortex interactions and thermal-chemical flow characteristics.” The lab helps lead several Chinese technology programs for scramjet propulsion. This includes basic hypersonic vehicle designs that could mate with a scramjet engine, as well as computational fluid dynamics work to assess the challenge of coupled ramjet/scramjet inlet flow fields at the front of the vehicle.

Scramjet ignition technology and work on cooling the internal walls of a scramjet are also being assessed, the Chinese say. Computer modeling of scramjet combustion instability is also being modeled.

“At the present time, the emphasis on rocket-based combined cycle [RBCC] scramjet research has gradually transferred from research and performance studies to some ground experiments and structures design,” says Wang Houqing, a researcher at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xian. NPU is one of China’s top aerospace research centers.

“A copper model scramjet is ready for testing” in the new Gas Dynamics Laboratory facility, says Xinyu.

“The facility is to provide high enthalpy [thermal dynamic] model scramjet testing,” he says.

The facility uses a hydrogen/air and oxygen replenishment combustion heater with a flow rate of 3.5 kg./sec., with temperature capabilities up to 2,000K. It can generate test velocities up to Mach 5.6, according to Xinyu.

Many different scramjet combustor configurations have been tested so far, he says. But the new facility will allow complete scramjet engine model configurations to be evaluated instead of just the combustor alone.

Other Chinese scramjet research presented at Cincinnati included:

•Aerodynamic performance of Chinese waverider designs integrated with an inlet. “Simulation studies were conducted to investigate forebody-inlet-isolator performance in an airframe-scramjet integrated hypersonic vehicle,” according to Liu Zhenxia, also at NPU.

•Multicode computational fluid dynamics runs for coupled ramjet/scramjet inlet flowfields. This work models the transition from “ram” to “scram” propulsion. The research is underway at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

•Research of gas discharge coefficients. This work is being conducted at the College of Aerospace and Materials Engineering at the National University of Defense Technology in Changsha.

•Cross-section design of a controllable hypersonic inlet. The research is being done at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

•Scramjet combustion mode translation studies. This work is also part of the scramjet effort at the National University of Defense Technology.

•Hydrogen injection and scramjet ignition testing. The research is being done in the Defense Technology university.

•Thermal and structures studies. NPU is performing heat transfer analysis and overall scramjet thermal structure design, including analysis of different materials used in the scramjet concepts.

•Numerical simulation of combustion instability. This work is also being pursued in Xian.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/s....et%20Propulsion

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 7, 2007, 2:13am

Psycho Paintballs & Drug Drones
By David Hambling August 23, 2007 | 7:32:00 AM



Paintballs laced with mind-altering drugs and drug-spraying robots sound like something for The Joker rather than the Marine Corps. But these are two of the more promising new methods for administering nonlethal chemical weapons (sorry, calmatives) being developed by the Pentagon, according to the latest report from the Bradford Nonlethal Weapons Research Project .

Initial experiments with the sort of darts used to tranquilise animals were unsuccessful. But it might be possible to get a drug through the skin via a more subtle approach, using the solvent DMSO:

They drew their inspiration from drug skin patches, for example nicotine patches for nicotine withdrawal, and Fentanyl patches for severe burns, where the drug is combined with a solvent for delivery through the skin (transdermal)...

Subsequently they tested a delivery system concept comprising a felt pad soaked with DMSO and fired from an air rifle. They found that a drug/DMSO mixture could be delivered in this way and that the material would penetrate thin clothing but thick clothing would be a sufficient countermeasure…. However they proposed that future developments should consider smaller fully encapsulated ‘paintball’ type projectiles containing the drug and solvent mixture.

There are already two nonlethal paintball weapons in use, Pepperball (which fires pepper spray in paintball form) and the FN303 or Individual Serviceman Non-Lethal System (pictured) used by the US Army, which could use this type of ammo. The report also mentions of the idea of a "drug filled rubber bullet" – much like the laughing bullets I described recently.

For larger targets such as a crowd, there are a number of new projectiles under development for carrying chemical agents (sorry, calmatives), including 81mm mortar and 155mm howitzer rounds. But if firing artillery into a city might be excessive, how about using an unmanned air vehicle:

a computer-controlled unmanned powered Para foil (UPP) equipped with a payload that dispenses liquid spray while in flight. Developed for the Marine Corps Non-Lethal Directorate, the system is intended to provide non-lethal crowd control options for the U.S. military.… Using computer-assisted flight modes and the camera image, a remote operator can direct the UPP over a target at low altitude and release the spray.

..a bit like Saddam's drone-based 'anthrax airforce' , but much it leaves you stoned rather than dying.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/psycho-paintbal.html#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 9, 2007, 10:18am

British Army deploys new weapon based on mass-killing technology
John Byrne
Published: Thursday August 23, 2007

A new 'super-weapon' being supplied to British soldiers in Afghanistan employs technology based on the "thermobaric" principle which uses heat and pressure to kill people targeted across a wide air by sucking the air out of lungs and rupturing internal organs.



The so-called "enhanced blast" weapon uses similar technology used in the US "bunker busting" bombs and the devastating bombs dropped by the Russians to destroy the Chechen capital, Grozny.

Such weapons are brutally effective because they first disperse a gas or chemical agent which is lit at a second stage, allowing the blast to fill the spaces of a building or the crevices of a cave. When the US military deployed a version of these weapons in 2005, DefenseTech wrote an article titled, "Marines Quiet About Brutal New Weapon."

According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency, which released a study on thermobaric weapons in 1993, "The [blast] kill mechanism against living targets is unique--and unpleasant.... What kills is the pressure wave, and more importantly, the subsequent rarefaction [vacuum], which ruptures the lungs.… If the fuel deflagrates but does not detonate, victims will be severely burned and will probably also inhale the burning fuel. Since the most common FAE fuels, ethylene oxide and propylene oxide, are highly toxic, undetonated FAE should prove as lethal to personnel caught within the cloud as most chemical agents."

A second DIA study said, "shock and pressure waves cause minimal damage to brain tissue... it is possible that victims of FAEs are not rendered unconscious by the blast, but instead suffer for several seconds or minutes while they suffocate."

"The effect of an FAE explosion within confined spaces is immense," said a CIA study of the weapons. "Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness."

British defense officials told the UK Guardian that British bombs were "different."

"They are optimized to create blast [rather than heat]", one said, speaking on the standard condition of anonymity in Britain. The official added that it would be misleading to call them "thermobaric."

Officials told the Guardian the new weapon was classified as a soldier launched "light anti-structure munition" and that the bombs would be more effective because "even when they hit the damage is limited to a confined area."

"The continuing issue of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has enormous importance in the battle for hearts and minds," said Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell in the article. "If these weapons contribute to the deaths of civilians then a primary purpose of the British deployment is going to be made yet more difficult."

According to Campbell, the deployment of the weapons was not announced to Parliament.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/British_Army_deploys_new_weapon_based_0823.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 10, 2007, 11:48pm

Source: Louisiana Tech University
Date: September 11, 2007

Recognition, Identification And Tracking Systems Under Development To Assist Air Force

Two Louisiana Tech faculty members, Dr. Sumeet Dua, an assistant professor of computer science, and Dr. Rastko Selmic, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, are using their skills and technical knowledge to help the U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense with sensor networks and tracking capabilities.

Dua's project, called Automated Target Detection and Tracking, or ATR, involves the development of fast and accurate computer algorithms for the automated recognition, identification, classification and tracking of targets of interest.

"Algorithms can be applied to national defense in a variety of ways, including missions involving air-to-ground, ground-to-ground, surface-to-surface and air-to-air scenarios," Dua said. "The algorithm is unique in its ability to use a system-level approach to define both a target's signatures and movement. It uses sophisticated data-mining techniques, a class of computer science algorithms used to discover embedded, hidden patterns and anomalies in data which are previously unknown but very useful."

The targets are received using remote sensors such as cameras and radars. Software then determines their positions and features with rotational and translational variations. Dua said the algorithm uses patterns to get a unique target's signature information.

"The algorithm is novel in its ability to take a system-level approach to achieve reinforced concurrent learning of both the target's signatures and movement in a single run of the software program," he said.

The algorithms can be used in metropolitan areas to identify humans in irregular terrains and to identify and log the suspicious movement of vehicles of interest, Dua said.

"We give monthly reporting to the Air Force, which is different from regular projects," he said. "We usually report to them once every six weeks. It's very good feedback we get back from them."

Selmic's group study deals with research of deployment and control of wireless sensor networks. Supported by the Air Force Research Laboratory, Selmic and his group are trying to discover how to perfectly position and deploy a large number of sensors to cover one particular area while still providing extensive coverage of a specific target.

"The technology will help the Air Force to solve sensor network deployment problem -- where and how to deploy thousands of small wireless sensor nodes in order to cover the area of interest, and still being able to efficiently track targets of interest," Selmic said.

The results of the research will affect many applications such as chemical agent monitoring, weather and hurricanes tracking and monitoring and explosive detection at the battlefield, Selmic said. The project also aims to develop unmanned air vehicle sensor nodes and a wireless sensor network test bed for the Air Force.

"The sensor network test bed idea stems from an application in chemical agent monitoring," Selmic said. "Louisiana Tech's sensor network test bed currently includes static chemical sensor nodes and several mobile nodes flying on blimps. Blimp control will be implemented at the sensor network base station which will provide a feedback to the network based on a real-time simulation."

As part of this effort with the Air Force, Selmic and his undergraduate student, Thomas Goodwin, an electrical engineering student from Mexica, Texas, have been invited for a fellowship with the Air Force Research Lab in Dayton, Ohio, to work on computational fluid dynamic simulations and related sensor placements.

"In order to maximize detection of explosive, for instance, it is necessary to consider air flow in closed environment," Selmic said. "Small UAVs can provide additional air flow, thus increasing the chance of explosive or pollutant detection. The technology will be considered for future improvised explosive devices detection methods, but is also applicable to civilian application such as anthrax detection in indoor environments and others."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070910152630.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 11, 2007, 7:32pm

Russia tests 'world's most powerful vacuum bomb'

September 12, 2007 - 6:13AM


The test of the huge vacuum bomb is shown in this undated television image shown by Russian Channel One. Inset, the bomb before the blast.

Russia said today it had tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb.

"Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon," Alexander Rukshin, deputy head of Russia's armed force chief of staff, told Russia's ORT First Channel television.

"You will now see it in action, the bomb which has no match in the world is being tested at a military site," the report said. It showed a Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber dropping the bomb over a testing ground. A large explosion followed.

A vacuum bomb, or fuel-air explosive, causes widespread devastation.

A typical bomb of that type is dropped or fired, the first explosive charge bursts open the container at a predetermined height and disperses the fuel in a cloud that mixes with oxygen.

A second charge ignites the cloud, which can engulf objects or buildings.

"At the same time, I want to stress that the action of this weapon does not contaminate the environment, in contrast to a nuclear one."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/this-bi....9276752243.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by deborah on Sept 11, 2007, 9:09pm


Quote:

Russia tests 'world's most powerful vacuum bomb' September 12, 2007 - 6:13AM The test of the huge vacuum bomb is shown in this undated television image shown by Russian Channel One. Inset, the bomb before the blast. television. Russia said today it had tested the world's most powerful vacuum bomb. "Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon," Alexander Rukshin, deputy head of Russia's armed force chief of staff, told Russia's ORT First Channel television. "You will now see it in action, the bomb which has no match in the world is being tested at a military site," the report said. It showed a Tupolev Tu-160 strategic bomber dropping the bomb over a testing ground. A large explosion followed. A vacuum bomb, or fuel-air explosive, causes widespread devastation. A typical bomb of that type is dropped or fired, the first explosive charge bursts open the container at a predetermined height and disperses the fuel in a cloud that mixes with oxygen. A second charge ignites the cloud, which can engulf objects or buildings. "At the same time, I want to stress that the action of this weapon does not contaminate the environment, in contrast to a nuclear one." http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/this-bi....9276752243.html

An environmentally-friendly bomb!

Quelle Gloire!!

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 13, 2007, 5:23am

Weapons without barrels or bullets
By Tim Weber
Business editor, BBC News website

Make no mistake: Defence Systems & Equipment International (DSEI), held in the huge Excel Centre in London's docklands, is an arms fair.

Armoured fighting vehicles tower over visitors; most gleaming, some proudly muddy as if straight from the training range.

Stands are bristling with weapons - from lightweight submachine guns to long-barrelled sniper rifles.

And there are plenty of uniformed men (and a few women), some in combat gear, most in their parade-ground best with plenty of gold decorating their shoulders.

High-ranking Chinese officers crowd around the finest that UK arms firm BAE system has to offer, Sony camera at the ready.

Fewer weapons

But there are much fewer weapons on display than on previous shows - fewer guns and bombs, less military hardware.

It's not that DSEI - held every two years - has become smaller; indeed, the organisers say that it has grown by 20% and is the biggest show yet.

Rather, the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown that most armies are not equipped to fight clever and ruthless insurgents that have little regard for civilian casualties.

The 'e-soldier'

There still is some old-style posturing. Italian gun make Beretta shows off a new assault rifle to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries - in best Apocalypse Now-style.

However, were it not for the camouflage decorations, many exhibition booths at DSEI would not look out of place at an electronics fair.

Communications equipment, sensors, microprocessors, software packages and rugged laptops are arrayed to help modern armies compensate for what they are least likely to get more of: manpower.

Visiting DSEI allows to catch glimpses of a new warrior in the making, the "e-soldier", as Matt Howchin of UK microtechnology firm C-Mac calls it.

E-soldiers still carry a gun, but their uniforms and helmets are laced with electronics, monitoring both their own vital signs and their environment, relaying the information up the chain of command.

Helmet cam

Some of this technology is battle-ready, but still looks a bit cumbersome.

French defence firm Thales shows a soldier's battle gear that is supposed to block some of the remote control signals that are used to set off insurgents' bombs.

And at the ITT stand, a soldier - thick wires protruding behind his neck - sports a helmet cam and headphone set wired up to a Spearnet data radio.

The set-up - effectively a high-resolution webcam - allows the commander back at headquarters to get a real-time look at the battlefield.

Software packages could integrate all this information from the battlefield with systems like General Dynamics' Urban Istar programme.

This combines a powerful scanning system with a database that would allow troops engaged in urban warfare not only to detect hidden insurgents, but to understand the structure and weak points of a building without entering it.

Ultimately, this is about smarter fighting, "not with the bullet, but with better command and control systems," says Peter Felstead, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly.

The suicide bomber belt

The new wars have brought new threats.

One stand at DSEI shows a mannequin kitted out with a suicide bomber's explosives belt.

The pyrotechnic belt is a training device for armies and police forces, developed by Isle of Man-based Milpolice Equipment.

The belt allows the wearer to mimic the triggers used by real suicide bombers - and helps soldiers prepare for the threat.

The firm also makes IED simulators - the notorious Improvised Explosive Devices, or roadside bombs, that have caused so many casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So how does the company keep up with the constantly changing techniques used by the insurgents?

"We have good contacts in the intelligence services," says managing director Stephen Blakely with a wry smile.

The race for better armour

While training is useful, protection is better.

"Force protection is where the big bucks are at the moment," says Jane's Peter Felstead.

John Rutledge at American Defense Systems Inc, a maker of heavy armour, speaks of full order books - and an arms race against the increasingly powerful devices used by Iraqi insurgents.

"We are using ever more exotic materials to protect the troops", he says; "getting real-time intelligence" helps the firm to stay ahead of the latest insurgent tactics.

At previous arms fairs, armies were looking to "up-armour" their existing vehicles, like light Land Rovers and Humvee trucks. Now the focus has shifted to new vehicles that are heavily armoured by design.

US firm International Truck and Engine is rushing out more than 1,900 Maxxpro trucks to the US Marine Corps, troop carriers that are designed to withstand mine blasts and roadside bombs on the Iraq battlefield.

Look, no driver

Oshkosh - which provides all the US army's heavy trucks - has put mirrors below a truck that show the heavy armour plating protecting the driver's cabin.

Everywhere there are stands displaying the latest in blast-proof glass or ceramics, so that vehicle makers can achieve the protection level armies are calling for.

After all, says German army Colonel Udo Kalbfleisch, "without giving soldiers proper protection you can't motivate them" and points to a video showing the heavily armoured Dingo that protects German soldiers on patrol in Afghanistan.

The more radical solution, however, is to take the driver out of the truck.

Oshkosh is working on control systems for unmanned vehicles.

Long supply convoys could have just a few real drivers. The other trucks would be steered by sophisticated electronics that work both in all-terrain and urban environments.

"I can easily foresee a future where we can achieve a 75% reduction of troops at risk," says Joaquin Salas at Oshkosh. "We are in discussions with the military to see when they might want to test this capability."

All this comes at a hefty cost. There is a trade-off between better armour and tight budgets, says John Rutledge, and it just "doesn't add up".

Already the cost of troop protection has started to cut into other procurement programmes, say industry insiders.

Lifesaver bottles

Battlefield innovation comes in many guises.

Pour dirty polluted water into the Lifesaver Systems bottle, pump a couple of times, and out comes perfectly drinkable water - without the use of chlorine or iodine. It's a solution that works not just for soldiers but disaster areas as well.

UK firm Chemviron Carbon tries to find customers for its ultra-lightweight chemical weapons protection fabric. Buyers so far have been the Swedish army and some special forces, and the company is now talking to police forces.

"When you think about it, the most likely [chemical] attack won't be on troops, but in a metropolitan environment," says Chemviron's Paul Graham.

C-Mac's stand doesn't sport any guns or camouflage at all.

The UK firm makes ceramic-based chip modules that work under extreme conditions - in fighter jets, tanks and rockets.



The tiny electronics components don't look much. But they can help win wars.

How Urban Istar scans and maps a building


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/6990690.stm

Published: 2007/09/12 23:08:31 GMT

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 15, 2007, 12:07am

So much for Russian tech:

Advanced Russian Air Defense Missile Cannot Protect Syrian and Iranian Skies

DEBKAfile Exclusive Military Report

September 7, 2007, 1:16 PM (GMT+02:00)


Russian-made Pantsyr S1 fire control and radar systems


DEBKAfile’s military experts conclude from the way Damascus described the episode Wednesday, Sept. 6, that the Pantsyr-S1E missiles, purchased from Russia to repel air assailants, failed to down the Israeli jets accused of penetrating northern Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean the night before.

The new Pantsyr missiles therefore leave Syrian and Iranian airspace vulnerable to hostile intrusion.

The Israeli plane or planes were described by a Syrian military spokesman as “forced to leave by Syrian air defense fire after dropping ammunition over deserted areas without causing casualties.” He warned “the Israeli enemy against repeating its aggressive action” and said his government reserved the right to respond in an appropriate manner.

Western intelligence circles stress that information on Russian missile consignments to Syria or Iran is vital to any US calculation of whether to attack Iran over its nuclear program. They assume that the “absolute jamming immunity” which the Russian manufactures promised for the improved Pantsyr missiles was immobilized by superior electronic capabilities exercised by the jets before they were “forced to leave.”

Syria took delivery in mid-August of 10 batteries of sophisticated Russian Pantsyr-S1E Air Defense Missile fire control systems with advanced radar, those sources report. They have just been installed in Syria.

Understanding that the Pantsyr-S1E had failed in its mission to bring down trespassing aircraft, Moscow hastened Thursday, Sept 6, to officially deny selling these systems to Syria or Iran and called on Israel to respect international law. This was diplomatic-speak for a warning against attacking the Russian-made missiles batteries stations where Russian instructors are working alongside Syrian teams.

Western intelligence circles maintain that it is vital for the US and Israel to establish the location and gauge the effectiveness of Pantsyr-S1E air defenses in Syrian and Iranian hands, as well as discovering how many each received.

They estimate that at least three or four batteries of the first batch of ten were shipped to Iran to boost its air defense arsenal; another 50 are thought to be on the way, of which Syria will keep 36.

The purported Israeli air force flights over the Pantsyr-S1E site established that the new Russian missiles, activated for the first time in the Middle East, are effective and dangerous but can be disarmed. Western military sources attribute to those Israeli or other air force planes superior electronics for jamming the Russian missile systems, but stress nonetheless that they were extremely lucky to get away unharmed, or at worst, with damage minor enough for a safe return to base.

The courage, daring and operational skills of the air crews must have been exceptional. They would have needed to spend enough time in hostile Syrian air space to execute several passes at varying altitudes under fire in order to test the Pantsyr-S1E responses. Their success demonstrated to Damascus and Tehran that their expensive new Russian anti-air system leaves them vulnerable.

Washington like Jerusalem withheld comment in the immediate aftermath of the episode. After its original disclosure, Damascus too is holding silent. Western intelligence sources believe the Syrians in consultation with the Russians and Tehran are weighing action to gain further media mileage from the incident. They may decide to exhibit some of the “ammunition” dropped by the Israeli aircraft as proof of Israel’s contempt for international law. A military response may come next.

Pantsir-S1 or Panzir (“Shell" in English) is a short-range, mobile air defense system, combining two 30mm anti-aircraft guns and 12 surface-to-air missiles which can fire on the move. It can simultaneously engage two separate targets at 12 targets per minute, ranging from fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, ballistic and cruise missiles, precision-guided munitions and unmanned air vehicles. It can also engage light-armored ground targets.

The Pantsyr S1 short-range air defense system is designed to provide point defense of key military and industrial facilities and air defense support for military units during air and ground operations.

The integrated missile and gun armament creates an uninterrupted engagement zone of 18 to 20 km in range and of up to 10 km in altitude. Immunity to jamming is promised via a common multimode and multi-spectral radar and optical control system. The combined missile and artillery capability makes the Russian system the most advanced air defense system in the world. Syria and Iran believe it provides the best possible protection against American or Israeli air and missile attack. Stationed in al Hamma, at the meeting point of the Syrian-Jordanian and Israeli borders, the missile’s detection range of 30 km takes in all of Israel’s northern air force bases.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1301

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 17, 2007, 11:19am

Air Force's Mini-Drone Swarm

By David Hambling September 17, 2007

The expansion of the US fleet of unmanned aircraft stepped up a gear with the delivery last month of the first batch of Battlefield Air Targeting Micro Air Vehicles (BATMAV).


Wasp 2

The central piece of hardware for BATMAV is Aerovironment's WASP, a one-pound, hand-launched UAV already deployed by the US military. But instead of just being a means for ground troops to see what's on the other side of the hill, BATMAV is envisioned as a new 'node in the information network' providing real-time information which can be distributed over a tactical network.

According to Flight International,

The new capability is predicated on sensor imagery from Batmav aircraft being able to be forwarded to other assets via a tactical radio linked to the UAV ground control station. Batmav is the first major micro air vehicle acquisition competition run by a Western defence force, with its outcome expected to have a major influence on similar requirements being planned by other US service arms as well as among NATO forces.

Solicitation documents released on 31 July say data from the mini UAV will be able to be "injected into command and control centres, airborne mission aircraft or artillery via digital links in a special tactics machine-to-machine targeting process to greatly reduce the targeting time". Each individual system is to comprise two air vehicles, a ground control station, interchangeable payloads, a carry case and field operators support kit.

Key uses of BATMAV will include directing airstrikes and carrying out bomb damage assessment in the immediate aftermath of strikes.

Each system will comprise a control unit, communications system and two WASP UAVs –- the UAV element being described as 'expendable'. The cost is quoted as $49k per system, and with a total budget of up to $45m over five years, the BATMAV program will see vast numbers of micro-drones buzzing around the battlefield.

(Footnote: One thing these WASPs won't be doing just yet is actual swarming -- they will be acting as individuals. But stay tuned.)

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/air-force-buys-.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 17, 2007, 11:58am

US Has 14 Ton Super Bomb - Bigger Than Russian V-Bomb
9-16-7

WASHINGTON (RIA Novosti) -- The U.S. has a 14-ton super bomb more destructive than the vacuum bomb just tested by Russia, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

The statement was made by retired Lt. General McInerney, chairman of the Iran Policy Committee, and former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

McInerney said the U.S. has "a new massive ordnance penetrator that's 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates ... Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can't penetrate."

He also said the new Russian bomb was not a "penetrator."

http://en.rian.ru/world/20070913/78518873-print.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by deborah on Sept 18, 2007, 9:02pm

September 15, 2007
Big Brother is watching us all
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6995061.stm

The US and UK governments are developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep individuals under their surveillance. When it comes to technology, the US is determined to stay ahead of the game.

"Five nine, five ten," said the research student, pushing down a laptop button to seal the measurement. "That's your height."

"Spot on," I said.

"OK, we're freezing you now," interjected another student, studying his computer screen. "So we have height and tracking and your gait DNA".

"Gait DNA?" I interrupted, raising my head, so inadvertently my full face was caught on a video camera.

"Have we got that?" asked their teacher Professor Rama Challapa. "We rely on just 30 frames - about one second - to get a picture we can work with," he explained.

Tracking individuals

I was at Maryland University just outside Washington DC, where Professor Challapa and his team are inventing the next generation of citizen surveillance.

They had pushed back furniture in the conference room for me to walk back and forth and set up cameras to feed my individual data back to their laptops.

Gait DNA, for example, is creating an individual code for the way I walk. Their goal is to invent a system whereby a facial image can be matched to your gait, your height, your weight and other elements, so a computer will be able to identify instantly who you are.

"As you walk through a crowd, we'll be able to track you," said Professor Challapa. "These are all things that don't need the cooperation of the individual."

Since 9/11, some of the best scientific minds in the defence industry have switched their concentration from tracking nuclear missiles to tracking individuals such as suicide bombers.

Surveillance society

My next stop was a Pentagon agency whose headquarters is a drab suburban building in Virginia. The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) had one specific mission - to ensure that when it comes to technology America is always ahead of the game.

Its track record is impressive. Back in the 70s, while we were working with typewriters and carbon paper, Darpa was developing the internet. In the 90s, while we pored over maps, Darpa invented satellite navigation that many of us now have in our cars.

"We ask the top people what keeps them awake at night," said its enthusiastic and forthright director Dr Tony Tether, "what problems they see long after they have left their posts."

"And what are they?" I asked.

He paused, hand on chin. "I'd prefer not to say. It's classified."

"All right then, can you say what you're actually working on now."

"Oh, language," he answered enthusiastically, clasping his fingers together. "Unless we're going to train every American citizen and soldier in 16 different languages we have to develop a technology that allows them to understand - whatever country they are in - what's going on around them.

"I hope in the future we'll be able to have conversations, if say you're speaking in French and I'm speaking in English, and it will be natural."

"And the computer will do the translation?"

"Yep. All by computer," he said.

"And this idea about a total surveillance society," I asked. "Is that science fiction?"

"No, that's not science fiction. We're developing an unmanned airplane - a UAV - which may be able to stay up five years with cameras on it, constantly being cued to look here and there. This is done today to a limited amount in Baghdad. But it's the way to go."

Smarter technology

Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance. Some American cities like New York and Chicago are thinking of taking a lead from Britain where our movements are monitored round the clock by four million CCTV cameras.

So far there is no gadget that can actually see inside our houses, but even that's about to change.

Ian Kitajima flew to Washington from his laboratories in Hawaii to show me sense-through-the-wall technology.

"Each individual has a characteristic profile," explained Ian, holding a green rectangular box that looked like a TV remote control.

Using radio waves, you point it a wall and it tells you if anyone is on the other side. His company, Oceanit, is due to test it with the Hawaiian National Guard in Iraq next year, and it turns out that the human body gives off such sensitive radio signals, that it can even pick up breathing and heart rates.

"First, you can tell whether someone is dead or alive on the battlefield," said Ian.

"But it will also show whether someone inside a house is looking to harm you, because if they are, their heart rate will be raised. And 10 years from now, the technology will be much smarter. We'll scan a person with one of these things and tell what they're actually thinking."

He glanced at me quizzically, noticing my apprehension.

"Yeah, I know," he said. "It sounds very Star Trekkish, but that's what's ahead."


Quote:

....."These are all things that don't need the cooperation of the individual.".....

Beautiful!


Quote:

.....Since 9/11, some of the best scientific minds in the defence industry have switched their concentration from tracking nuclear missiles to tracking individuals such as suicide bombers.....

This is very good news. As we know, the world is virtually CRAWLING with suicide bombers just waiting to LET IT RIP. I am ossified with fear every time I walk out my door, get on a bus, or even walk into my workplace. (Don't tell anyone this.) I am NOT paranoid but there's some things you just KNOW, if you get my drift. Like, I KNOW the Iranian guy behind the counter at the L'il Peach down the street from my house is definitely a suicide bomber, which is why I'm SUPER polite to him when I go in there for my cigarettes and Chicken Taquita Rolls. There's a fire station right across the street from that store or I wouldn't go in there at all.


Quote:

....."All right then, can you say what you're actually working on now." "Oh, language," he answered enthusiastically, clasping his fingers together. "Unless we're going to train every American citizen and soldier in 16 different languages we have to develop a technology that allows them to understand - whatever country they are in - what's going on around them.....

EXCELLENT! Because right now we clearly don't understand JACK about what's going on around us.


Quote:

....."And this idea about a total surveillance society," I asked. "Is that science fiction?" "No, that's not science fiction. We're developing an unmanned airplane - a UAV - which may be able to stay up five years with cameras on it, constantly being cued to look here and there. This is done today to a limited amount in Baghdad. But it's the way to go.".....

Oh my god, I KNEW it!! An unmanned airplane that can stay "up there" for five years with cameras on it! I remember reading in the news about seven years ago that they were going to be testing these planes "over selected cities in the U.S." I hope MY city is one of them!


Quote:

.....Interestingly, we, the public, don't seem to mind. Opinion polls, both in the US and Britain, say that about 75% of us want more, not less, surveillance. Some American cities like New York and Chicago are thinking of taking a lead from Britain where our movements are monitored round the clock by four million CCTV cameras.....

I must admit that I didn't know "75% of us" WANT more surveillance. This is very comforting. I really love it when so many people I don't even know are speaking for me. It makes me feel like - well - CONNECTED. But, even more importantly, it makes me feel SAFE.


Quote:

.....Using radio waves, you point it a wall and it tells you if anyone is on the other side. His company, Oceanit, is due to test it with the Hawaiian National Guard in Iraq next year, and it turns out that the human body gives off such sensitive radio signals, that it can even pick up breathing and heart rates. "First, you can tell whether someone is dead or alive on the battlefield," said Ian.....

Now THAT'S a major breakthrough - and in OUR lifetime! It's extremely difficult, as we know, to tell whether someone is dead or alive. I can't believe this is now going to be possible thanks to these incredible new surveillance devices. This capability is going to clear up so much confusion it isn't funny. God, I could just cry. This is SO amazing!

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 20, 2007, 12:02pm

---

Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 20, 2007, 12:04pm

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: September 20, 2007

New Backpack 'Exoskeleton' Lightens The Burden In An Unexpected Way

Researchers in the MIT Media Lab's Biomechatronics Group have created a device to lighten the burden for soldiers and others who carry heavy packs and equipment.


Graduate student Conor Walsh demonstrates a prototype of the 'exoskeleton' he and other MIT researchers have devised. The invention can successfully take on 80 percent of an 80-pound load carried on a person's back. (Credit: Photo by Samuel Au)

Their invention, known as an exoskeleton, can support much of the weight of a heavy backpack and transfer that weight directly to the ground, effectively taking a load off the back of the person wearing the device.

The researchers report that their prototype can successfully take on 80 percent of an 80-pound load carried on a person's back, but there's one catch: The current model impedes the natural walking gait of the person wearing it.

"You can definitely tell it's affecting your gait," said Conor Walsh, a graduate student who worked on the project, but "you do feel it taking the load off and you definitely feel less stress on your upper body."

The research team was led by Hugh Herr, principal investigator of the Biomechatronics Group and associate professor in the MIT Media Lab. Earlier this summer, Herr and his colleagues unveiled the world's first robotic ankle for lower-limb amputees.

Eventually Herr hopes to create assistive leg devices that can be useful for anyone. Herr said he envisions leg exoskeletons that could help people run without breathing hard, as well as help to carry heavy loads.

"Our dream is that 20 years from now, people won't go to bike racks--they'll go to leg racks," he said.

Exoskeleton devices could boost the weight that a person can carry, lessen the likelihood of leg or back injury and reduce the perceived level of difficulty of carrying a heavy load.

The person wearing the exoskeleton places his or her feet in boots attached to a series of tubes that run up the leg to the backpack, transferring the weight of the backpack to the ground. Springs at the ankle and hip and a damping device at the knee allow the device to approximate the walking motion of a human leg, with a very small external power input (one watt).

Other research teams have produced exoskeleton devices that can successfully carry a load but require a large power source (about 3,000 watts, supplied by a gasoline engine).

When the MIT researchers tested their device, they found that although the load borne by the wearer's back was lightened, the person carrying the load had to consume 10 percent more oxygen than normal, because of the extra effort to compensate for the gait interference.

The team hopes to revise the design so the exoskeleton more closely mimics the movement of a human leg, allowing for more normal walking motion. The most important result of this study, says Walsh, is that the team's spring-based, low-energy design shows promise.

"This is the first time that it has been tested," he said. "We didn't know what to expect."

This research is reported in the September issue of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics.

The research was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070919170025.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 20, 2007, 12:06pm

Source: National Aeronautics And Space Administration
Date: September 20, 2007

Skyray 48 Takes Flight

Calm excitement filled the ground control station. Engineers stared intently at their computer screens as the pilot, sitting next to them, flexed his fingers on the controls. Ground crew tending the aircraft finished putting away their equipment. Preparations for the first flight of the unmanned X-48B Blended Wing Body research aircraft were complete.


The X-48B Blended Wing Body aircraft in flight. (Credit: NASA photo by Carla Thomas)

Years of research, design, construction, wind tunnel and ground tests coalesced into this one moment of time.

Radios crackled. "Tower, Skyray 48 in position, lakebed runway 23, request clearance for takeoff..."

"Skyray 48 roger, main base winds 220 at 6, report airborne, lakebed 23..."

"Wilco"

"Five, four, three, two, one, brakes..."

Quickly, the manta ray-shaped aircraft rolled down the dry lakebed runway trailing a plume of dust as it picked up speed, its three small jet engines whining.

With an excitement that only comes with an aircraft's first flight, the triangular red, white and blue X-48B leapt into the air, obviously wanting to fly.

"Skyray 48's airborne," Boeing pilot Norm Howell called, matter-of-factly. And with that, years of toil blossomed into the sweet fruit of success on July 20, 2007 at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards AFB, Calif.

One of the latest cutting-edge experimental aircraft, or X-Planes, the X-48B BWB is a collaborative effort of the Boeing Co., NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. The 21-foot wingspan, 500-pound, remotely piloted plane is designed to demonstrate the viability of the blended wing shape. And demonstrate it has.

After completion of six flights, the X-48B team began a four-week maintenance and modification period during which removable leading edges with extended slats are being replaced with slatless leading edges in order to mimic a slats-retracted configuration. The change requires a software update to the flight control software. In addition, the team is removing and replacing all of the aircraft's flight control actuators for maintenance purposes.

NASA is interested in the potential benefits of the aircraft - increased volume for carrying capacity, efficient aerodynamics for reduced fuel burn, and, possibly, significant reductions in noise due to propulsion integration options. In these initial flights, the principal focus is to validate prior research on the aerodynamic performance and controllability of the shape, including comparisons of flight test data with the extensive database gathered in the wind tunnels at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia.

The Subsonic Fixed-Wing Project, part of NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program, has long supported the development of the blended wing body concept. It has participated in numerous collaborations with Boeing, as well as several wind tunnel tests for different speed regimes. The team is focused on researching the low-speed characteristics of the design and expanding its flight envelope beyond the limits of current capabilities.

In addition to hosting the X-48B flight test and research activities, NASA Dryden is providing engineering and technical support -- expertise garnered from years of operating cutting-edge air vehicles. NASA assists with the hardware and software validation and verification process, the integration and testing of the aircraft systems, and the pilot's ground control station. NASA's range group provides critical telemetry and command and control communications during the flight, while the flight operations group provides a T-34 chase aircraft and essential flight scheduling. Photo and video support complete the effort.

The composite-skinned, 8.5 percent scale vehicle can to fly up to 10,000 feet and 120 knots in its low-speed configuration. The aircraft is flown remotely from a ground control station by a pilot using conventional aircraft controls and instrumentation, while looking at a monitor fed by a forward-looking camera on the aircraft.

Up to 25 flights are planned to gather data in these low-speed flight regimes. Then, the X-48B may be used to test the aircraft's low-noise and handling characteristics at transonic speeds.

Two X-48B research vehicles were built by Cranfield Aerospace Ltd., in England, in accordance with Boeing specifications. The vehicle that flew on July 20, known as Ship 2, was also used for ground and taxi testing. Ship 1, a duplicate, was used for the wind tunnel tests. Ship 1 is available for use as a backup during the flight test program.

So far, so good as the Skyray 48 team works through the late summer heat of the Mojave Desert as they continue blazing a trail with this futuristic aircraft design.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070919174711.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 21, 2007, 12:42am

Red Tape Grounds Iraq's Robo-Planes
By Noah Shachtman September 20, 2007 | 12:34:00 PM



The Defense Department's unmanned air force has grown exponentially; there are now more than 3200 mil-drones in the fleet, up from about 200 in 2002. But after spending some time in Iraq, I'm starting to get the feeling that a lot of those robo-planes are sitting on the shelves, barely used.

Here's why. The military's big unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are controlled by colonels and generals. The local commanders on the ground basically have no say where the things fly. For example, a company commander, recently returned from Anbar province, said his area got a grand total of eight minutes of coverage from the Predator spy drone per day.

But wait, you say. The vast majority of America's UAVs are little, hand-launched drones, like the four-and-a-half pound Ravens and the five-pound Dragon Eyes. The local captain has control over those, right? Well, theoretically, yeah.

But there are so many bureaucratic hoops to jump through to get those tiny UAVs in the air that many captains have stopped bothering to try. Air clearance is the hoops that comes up most. Although the drones are small, they can get up pretty high -- 1000 feet, or more. Which means there's a concern about the UAVs getting tangled up with helicopters. Setting aside space for the drones can take 24 to 48 hours -- and insurgents don't usually stay in one place that long.

A few weeks ago in Anbar, I spoke to local Marine commander who had basically given up on using his Dragon Eye, for this reason. The same thing happened in Tarmiyah, north of Baghdad, where Captain Pat Roddy told me, "the Raven? Never fly it." Which is particularly frustrating. Because Roddy regularly gets airspace for himself, to fire mortars. But his higher-ups won't let him launch his drone during that time, because the computer program that tracks airspace says its a no-aircraft zone. Roddy has been told that he can make an emergency switch from mortar to Raven airspace -- and it'll only take an hour to make the switch in the computer. But he can only do so if his troops are in a firefight. And firefights in Iraq almost never take more than a few minutes. An hour later, the Raven is all-but-useless.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/the-american-mi.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 21, 2007, 1:15am

British Police's New Spy Drone
By David Hambling September 20, 2007 | 7:37:20 AM

In my 2005 book Weapons Grade I predicted that police would soon be using micro air vehicles developed for the military. I didn’t realize it would happen quite so soon.


The Microdrone MD4-200

British police are now using the Microdrone from German company Microdrones GmbH in trials. According to The Times it was used to police a rock festival this summer, and there has also been interest from "MI5, the Metropolitan police, and Soca, the Serious Organised Crime Agency ".

As the video below shows, its something of a contrast to the Honeywell craft we looked at earlier on in the week. It's battery powered, so it's quieter -- apparently at 350 feet it is rarely noticed from the ground -- but more limited in terms of performance. Although it might seem flimsy, the video shows how stable it is in flight. It is said to be quite rugged and can return to base even if it loses two of its four rotor blades. One unusual feature is a speaker so that police can give instructions to those on the ground.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4jtguSF0n4

The video style is also a contrast. It contains some footage shot from a Microdrone, which gives an impressive display of its powers. Zooming in on a sunbather in a bikini as a demonstration is not likely to allay fears about how intrusive this technology might be. And the ability to hover outside a window and peer in is one which is equally open to use and abuse.

Using these devices for military purposes is one thing, but when the police have them the discussion is completely different. Although in principle it won't allow them to spy on anything that couldn't already be seen from a helicopter, small and cheap MAVs are likely to be much more common. And, crucially, unlike a helicopter you will not be able to tell when one is watching you.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/british-polices.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 21, 2007, 1:39am

The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract
By Sharon Weinberger 09.20.07 | 2:00 AM

MOSCOW -- The future of U.S. anti-terrorism technology could lie near the end of a Moscow subway line in a circular dungeon-like room with a single door and no windows. Here, at the Psychotechnology Research Institute, human subjects submit to experiments aimed at manipulating their subconscious minds.

Elena Rusalkina, the silver-haired woman who runs the institute, gestured to the center of the claustrophobic room, where what looked like a dentist's chair sits in front of a glowing computer monitor. "We've had volunteers, a lot of them," she said, the thick concrete walls muffling the noise from the college campus outside. "We worked out a program with (a psychiatric facility) to study criminals. There's no way to falsify the results. There's no subjectivism."


A dungeon-like room in the Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow is used for human testing. The institute claims its technology can read the subconscious mind and alter behavior.

Photo: Nathan Hodge

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone to many strange places in its search for ways to identify terrorists before they attack, but perhaps none stranger than this lab on the outskirts of Russia's capital. The institute has for years served as the center of an obscure field of human behavior study -- dubbed psychoecology -- that traces it roots back to Soviet-era mind control research.

What's gotten DHS' attention is the institute's work on a system called Semantic Stimuli Response Measurements Technology, or SSRM Tek, a software-based mind reader that supposedly tests a subject's involuntary response to subliminal messages.

SSRM Tek is presented to a subject as an innocent computer game that flashes subliminal images across the screen -- like pictures of Osama bin Laden or the World Trade Center. The "player" -- a traveler at an airport screening line, for example -- presses a button in response to the images, without consciously registering what he or she is looking at. The terrorist's response to the scrambled image involuntarily differs from the innocent person's, according to the theory.


Gear for testing MindReader 2.0 software hangs on a wall at the Psychotechnology Research Institute in Moscow. Marketed in North America as SSRM Tek, the technology will soon be tested for airport screening by a U.S. company under contract to the Department of Homeland Security.
Photo: Nathan Hodge

"If it's a clean result, the passengers are allowed through," said Rusalkina, during a reporter's visit last year. "If there's something there, that person will need to go through extra checks."

Rusalkina markets the technology as a program called Mindreader 2.0. To sell Mindreader to the West, she's teamed up with a Canadian firm, which is now working with a U.S. defense contractor called SRS Technologies. This May, DHS announced plans to award a sole-source contract to conduct the first U.S.-government sponsored testing of SSRM Tek.

The contract is a small victory for the Psychotechnology Research Institute and its leaders, who have struggled for years to be accepted in the West. It also illustrates how the search for counter-terrorism technology has led the U.S. government into unconventional -- and some would say unsound -- science.

All of the technology at the institute is based on the work of Rusalkina's late husband, Igor Smirnov, a controversial Russian scientist whose incredible tales of mind control attracted frequent press attention before his death several years ago.

Smirnov was a Rasputin-like character often portrayed in the media as having almost mystical powers of persuasion. Today, first-time visitors to the institute -- housed in a drab concrete building at the Peoples Friendship University of Russia -- are asked to watch a half-hour television program dedicated to Smirnov, who is called the father of "psychotronic weapons," the Russian term for mind control weapons. Bearded and confident, Smirnov in the video explains how subliminal sounds could alter a person's behavior. To the untrained ear, the demonstration sounds like squealing pigs.


Elena Rusalkina demonstrates the terrorist-screening tool. She says it works faster than a polygraph and can be used at airports.
Photo: Nathan Hodge

According to Rusalkina, the Soviet military enlisted Smirnov's psychotechnology during the Soviet Union's bloody war in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "It was used for combating the Mujahideen, and also for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome" in Russian soldiers, she says.

In the United States, talk of mind control typically evokes visions of tinfoil hats. But the idea of psychotronic weapons enjoys some respectability in Russia. In the late 1990s, Vladimir Lopatin, then a member of the Duma, Russia's parliament, pushed to restrict mind control weapons, a move that was taken seriously in Russia but elicited some curious mentions in the Western press. In an interview in Moscow, Lopatin, who has since left the Duma, cited Smirnov's work as proof that such weaponry is real.

"It's financed and used not only by the medical community, but also by individual and criminal groups," Lopatin said. Terrorists might also get hold of such weapons, he added.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Smirnov moved from military research into treating patients with mental problems and drug addiction, setting up shop at the college. Most of the lab's research is focused on what it calls "psychocorrection" -- the use of subliminal messages to bend a subject's will, and even modify a person's personality without their knowledge.

The slow migration of Smirnov's technology to the United States began in 1991, at a KGB-sponsored conference in Moscow intended to market once-secret Soviet technology to the world. Smirnov's claims of mind control piqued the interest of Chris and Janet Morris -- former science-fiction writers turned Pentagon consultants who are now widely credited as founders of the Pentagon's "non-lethal" weapons concept.

In an interview last year, Chris Morris recalled being intrigued by Smirnov -- so much so that he accompanied the researcher to his lab and allowed Smirnov to wire his head up to an electroencephalograph, or EEG. Normally used by scientists to measure brain states, Smirnov peered into Morris's EEG tracings and divined the secrets of his subconscious, right down to intimate details like Morris' dislike of his own first name.


The underlying premise of the technology is that terrorists would recognize a scrambled terrorist image like this one without even realizing it, and would be betrayed by their subconscious reaction to the picture.
Photo: Nathan Hodge

"I said, 'gee, the guys back at home have got to see this,'" Morris recalled.

The Morrises shopped the technology around to a few military agencies, but found no one willing to put money into it. However, in 1993 Smirnov rose to brief fame in the United States when the FBI consulted with him in hope of ending the standoff in Waco with cult leader David Koresh. Smirnov proposed blasting scrambled sound -- the pig squeals again -- over loudspeakers to persuade Koresh to surrender.

But the FBI was put off by Smirnov's cavalier response to questions. When officials asked what would happen if the subliminal signals didn't work, Smirnov replied that Koresh's followers might slit each other's throats, Morris recounted. The FBI took a pass, and Smirnov returned to Moscow with his mind control technology.

"With Smirnov, the FBI was either demanding a yes or a no, and therefore our methods weren't put to use, unfortunately," Rusalkina said, taking a drag on her cigarette.


Igor Smirnov, founder of the Psychotechnology Research Institute, died of a heart attack in 2005. Smirnov is best known in the United States for consulting with the FBI during the 1993 Waco siege.
Photo: Nathan Hodge

Smirnov died in November 2004, leaving the widowed Rusalkina -- his long-time collaborator -- to run the institute. Portraits of Smirnov cover Rusalkina's desk, and his former office is like a shrine, the walls lined with his once-secret patents, his awards from the Soviet government, and a calendar from the KGB's cryptographic section.

Despite Smirnov's death, Rusalkina predicts an "arms race" in psychotronic weapons. Such weapons, she asserts, are far more dangerous than nuclear weapons.

She pointed, for example, to a spate of Russian news reports about "zombies" -- innocent people whose memories had been allegedly wiped out by mind control weapons. She also claimed that Russian special forces contacted the institute during the 2003 Moscow theater siege, in which several hundred people were held hostage by Chechen militants.

"We could have stabilized the situation in the concert hall, and the terrorists would have called the whole thing off," she said. "And naturally, you could have avoided all the casualties, and you could have put the terrorists on trial. But the Alfa Group" -- the Russian equivalent of Delta Force -- "decided to go with an old method that had already been tested before."

The Russians used a narcotic gas to subdue the attackers and their captives, which led to the asphyxiation death of many of the hostages.

These days, Rusalkina explained, the institute uses its psychotechnology to treat alcoholics and drug addicts. During the interview, several patients -- gaunt young men who appeared wasted from illness -- waited in the hallway.

But the U.S. war on terror and the millions of dollars set aside for homeland security research is offering Smirnov a chance at posthumous respectability in the West.

Smirnov's technology reappeared on the U.S. government's radar screen through Northam Psychotechnologies, a Canadian company that serves as North American distributor for the Psychotechnology Research Institute. About three years ago, Northam Psychotechnologies began seeking out U.S. partners to help it crack the DHS market. For companies claiming innovative technologies, the past few years have provided bountiful opportunities. In fiscal year 2007, DHS allocated $973 million for science and technology and recently announced Project Hostile Intent, which is designed to develop technologies to detect people with malicious intentions.

One California-based defense contractor, DownRange G2 Solutions, expressed interest in SSRM Tek, but became skeptical when Northam Psychotechnologies declined to make the software available for testing.

"That raised our suspicion right away," Scott Conn, CEO and president of DownRange, told Wired News. "We weren't prepared to put our good names on the line without due diligence." (When a reporter visited last year, Rusalkina also declined to demonstrate the software, saying it wasn't working that day.)

While Conn said the lack of testing bothered him, the relationship ended when he found out Northam Psychotechnologies went to SRS Technologies, now part of ManTech International Corp.

Semyon Ioffe, the head of Northam Psychotechnologies, who identifies himself as a "brain scientist," declined a phone interview, but answered questions over e-mail. Ioffe said he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Conn, and had "a few informal discussions, after which he disappeared to a different assignment and reappeared after (the) DHS announcement."

As for the science, Ioffe says he has a Ph.D in neurophysiology, and cited Smirnov's Russian-language publications as the basis for SSRM Tek.

However, not everyone is as impressed with Smirnov's technology, including John Alexander, a well-known expert on non-lethal weapons. Alexander was familiar with Smirnov's meetings in Washington during the Waco crisis, and said in an interview last year that there were serious doubts then as now.

"It was the height of the Waco problem, they were grasping at straws," he said of the FBI's fleeting interest. "From what I understand from people who were there, it didn't work very well."

Geoff Schoenbaum, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine, said that he was unaware of any scientific work specifically underpinning the technology described in SSRM Tek.

"There's no question your brain is able to perceive things below your ability to consciously express or identify," Schoenbaum said. He noted for example, studies showing that images displayed for milliseconds -- too short for people to perceive consciously -- may influence someone's mood. "That kind of thing is reasonable, and there's good experimental evidence behind it."

The problem, he said, is that there is no science he is aware of that can produce the specificity or sensitivity to pick out a terrorist, let alone influence behavior. "We're still working at the level of how rats learn that light predicts food," he explained. "That's the level of modern neuroscience."

Developments in neuroscience, he noted, are followed closely. "If we could do (what they're talking about), you would know about it," Schoenbaum said. "It wouldn't be a handful of Russian folks in a basement."

In the meantime, the DHS contract is still imminent, according to those involved, although all parties declined to comment on the details, or the size of the award. Rusalkina did not respond to a recent e-mail, but in the interview last year, she confirmed the institute was marketing the technology to the United States for airport screening.

Larry Orloskie, a spokesman for DHS, declined to comment on the contract announcement. "It has not been awarded yet," he replied in an e-mail.

"It would be premature to discuss any details about the pending contract with DHS and I will be happy to do an interview once the contract is in place," Ioffe, of Northam Psychotechnologies, wrote in an e-mail. Mark Root, a spokesman for ManTech, deferred questions to DHS, noting, "They are the customer."

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/09/mind_reading?currentPage=all

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 21, 2007, 1:59am

Remember the Stealthy Land-Attack Destroyer? Not So Much ...
By David Axe August 28, 2007 | 1:17:56 PM

Back in the '90s the Navy planned to fight off massive cross-border armored attacks like Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. For that, it needed a stealthy ship that could sit unnoticed off the coast and unleash barrages of missiles and shells to take out entire tank battalions. Thus was born the $4-billion Zumwalt-class destroyer [formerly DD(X)], which boasts a slanted "tumblehome" hull for deflecting radar. (At 14,000 tons, the Zumwalt is really a cruiser, but who's counting?) Noah had one of the best profiles of the vessel's capabilities in an issue of Popular Mechanics a while back:



The attack would come quickly, and it would be awful. Cruising far offshore, the U.S. Navy's DD(X) destroyer launches 20 artillery shells in less than a minute. As the satellite-guided weapons fall back to Earth at 830 mph, computer algorithms alter their flight paths so that the 250-pound projectiles all strike the same patch of ground at the same time, reducing everything in the vicinity to rubble and dust. If more firepower is needed, the destroyer can unleash another 580 artillery rounds, as well as 80 Tomahawk missiles. And when the attack is over, the ship simply vanishes. On a radar screen, the DD(X)'s stealthy hull makes the 14,000-ton vessel look like just another fishing boat, casting its nets into the sea.

Problem is, the world has changed since the Zumwalt's first blueprints were inked. "Nobody's building massive tank armies any more," explains Bob Work from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. So the Navy has quiety shifted the new destroyer's mission. What was once touted as a shore-bombardment platform is now an air defender for aircraft carriers, intended to protect against new cruise and ballistic missiles that are emerging as the preferred anti-ship weapons of our rivals. But there's a catch: the Zumwalt's specialized hull shape.



"The tumblehome hull -- the only reason you want that is for stealth close to shore," Work says. The tumblehome lacks stability, sacrifices internal volume for stealth and is poorly understood by engineers. "The Navy has all its money sunk into a design that may not be optimal any more.”

Simply put, the world is changing faster than ship design can keep up. “But that's not a new problem," Work says, citing the early 20th century and the post-Cold War period as similarly rapidly evolving eras. "When you keep a ship between strategic eras, you almost always have to goon it up.” That means kluging together all sorts of weapons and sensors you never anticipated during the design phase, and making do with less-than-perfect hull forms.

Making do is nothing new for the U.S. Navy, but making do with a $4-billion warship, one of the most expensive in history, is something new. We'll see what happens if and when the first vessel enters service in five years.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/remember-the-st.html#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 21, 2007, 2:05am

China's Casino -- I Mean, Carrier -- Ambitions
By David Axe August 21, 2007 | 11:36:10 PM

So China's rapidly developing military, like its entire economy and society, is a teetering house of cards. But you gotta admire the spunk. One fine example? In 2000, a Chinese front company purchased an incomplete Russian aircraft carrier, the Varyag, from Ukraine with the expressed intent of turning it into a floating casino. That was a lie, of course, and over the last seven years, the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy has been working hard to finish the bare-bones carrier while also assembling the many technologies and skills necessary to fly high-performance jets off of a ship. BEWARE SPOILERS BELOW!



It ain't going well.

First off, Varyag was little more than a hollow hull when China bought her. She reportedly had no engines, rudders or electronics. And as designed she was meant to support only small Yakovlev jump jets and helicopters. Since the only jump jets left in the world are American- and British-built Harriers and the forthcoming American F-35B, China has to modify Varyag to launch modified Russian-made Flankers. (A reported direct purchase of carrier-capable jets apparently never materialized.) The airplanes, too, need modification. All that rework requires extensive help from Russia. But Russia only this summer got her sole carrier back to sea after two years undergoing repairs. And the major Russian shipyard has proved incapable of modernizing one of Varyag's sister ships for India, as Reuters reports:

Russia's main military shipyard is at least three years behind schedule on a $1.5 billion contract to modernise an aircraft carrier sold to India in 2004, Interfax news agency reported on Wednesday. ... Interfax quoted an unnamed "high-ranking Sevmash source" as saying that the shipyard's Director General Vladimir Pastukhov had been fired after failing to meet deadlines. "The contract is delayed for three years," the source said. "The realistic date ... is now 2011."

Bottom line, according to The Jakarta Post: "Just getting the Varyag, or some other carrier design, to sea as an operational warship could cost [China] at least several billion U.S. dollars and take until 2015 or longer."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/chinas-casino--.html#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 21, 2007, 2:08am

China = Q.C. Disaster
By David Axe August 19, 2007 | 8:17:52 PM

You think the U.S. has problems with trapped miners, collapsing bridges and extreme weather? Well, check out this round-up of headlines from China this weekend:

"Typhoon Sepat hits China after mass evacuation"
"Hopes dim for over 180 trapped miners in China"
"Death toll in China bridge collapse climbs to 64"



Wait a minute! you’re thinking. This is a military blog! Why do we even care about China’s safety and quality-control crisis? Because Pentagon brass tout China as the next Soviet Union in a future Cold War. But China’s fast-expanding military has many of the same problems as its quality-impaired civil sector. Take submarines, for example. Four years ago, mechanical failures aboard an outdated Chinese submarine resulted in the deaths of 70 sailors. This was no isolated incident, as U.S. Navy Captain Brad Kaplan, the U.S. Naval Attaché to China, explained in a recent issue of Sea Power:

Although it deploys a force of more than 60 submarines, [People’s Liberation Army Navy] units lag behind Western standards, and most weapons and sensor systems are based on older Russian technology. … The PLAN’s four Kilo units remain the submarine force’s most capable boats, although the capability of their crews to operate them effectively in a tactical environment is suspect. … Progress in replacing aging Han-class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) with the new generation Type 093 SSN has been slow. The Type 093 SSNs have been compared in capability to the Russian Victor III SSN class [from the 1970s].

Liselotte Odgaard from the MIT Center for International Studies, drew the bottom line in a piece for AlterNet:

Chinese dependency on Russian arms deliveries and its arduous efforts to catch up with the Revolution in Military Affairs imply that China is far from the U.S. level of military prowess, especially in naval and aerial capabilities. A well-equipped and well-trained navy and air force is a necessary condition for exercising strategic influence in large parts of China’s Asian home region, such as the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, the Taiwan Strait and the Japanese isles. This goal remains out of China’s reach for several decades.

In related news, Beijing is finally opening up its once entirely state-owned defense industry to private investment, only a couple centuries behind the U.S.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/china-qc-disast.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 21, 2007, 2:18am

Taming The Information Torrent
By David Hambling September 19, 2007 | 5:56:00 AM

You can put hundreds of drones into the air over the battlefield, but it won't necesarily give troops the data they need. Soldiers can end up getting too focused on their displays trying to get their remote-controlled craft into pisition, while bad guys unencumbered by advanced technology draw a bead on them. And that's with just one machine; with dozens you have to have a way of co-ordinating the mass of video feeds and other data coming back, you're just going to get information overload.

DARPA's program for dealing with the chaos is called HURT, for Heterogeneous Urban RSTA Team ...which makes more sense when you know that RSTA stands for Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition .



The idea is that instead of having to control a particular drone and steer it around the area of interest, the troops on the ground just issue a request for what they want to see. The system then automatically arranges its collection of reconnaissance craft which might be BATMAVs, Predators, OAVs or whatever else is in the area to provide coverage. A complete 3-D picture of the scene is provided seamlessly to the footsoldier via a device live a tablet PC:

The unique feature of HURT is the real-time delivery of sensor data directly to frontline fighters. Warfighters can use an intuitive handheld interface to send their RSTA requests directly to a multi-platform, system of systems. These requests are consolidated, prioritized, and expedited through a formal service taxonomy and information management service that tasks the appropriate platform or platforms to execute the collections, while freeing warfighters from any piloting or airspace coordination concerns.

Goals:

Quickly induct new platforms and capabilities to create a RSTA force without making changes to either the platforms themselves or their ground stations.

Control heterogeneous mixtures of manned and unmanned platforms in order to provide a shared information service with archiving and replay capabilities.

Directly accept frontline fighter RSTA requests, and deliver the raw video or - within seconds of collection – precisely georegistered and mosaiced products for situation awareness, targeting or playback.

It's an ambitious scheme, but the progress so far has been encouraging - see their demo videos here:
http://dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/ixo_galleryVideoPopup.asp?ID=76

http://dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/ixo_galleryVideoPopup.asp?ID=94

http://dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/ixo_galleryVideoPopup.asp?ID=95

Some years back, DARPA gave us the Internet, which allows you to seamlessly access files without even knowing which computer they are on. HURT should give the same sort of seamless access to data from UAVs - and perhaps open up new possibilities in the civilian sector as well.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/hurt.html#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 21, 2007, 2:24am

HardSTOP: Selective Urban Lethality
By David Hambling September 07, 2007 | 3:45:00 PM

How can you use airpower effectively without causing civilian casualties? It's been a puzzle even since the military started using aircraft; now that precision guided munitions have turned bombing from a blunt instrument into a sharp one, there is still the issue collateral damage. The BBC reported yesterday that airstrikes in West of Baghdad killed 14 people and that "several houses were destroyed in the attack."



In an article in this months Defense Technology International I look at a whole variety of new low collateral damage munitions which are intended to destroy "the target, the whole target – and nothing but the target". One of the new weapons is HardSTOP:

The Hardened Surface Target Ordnance Package or HardSTOP is an Air Force Research Laboratory program to neutralize targets inside buildings without collateral damage. Terrorist leaders might be meeting on the fourth floor while there are civilians three floors below. The size of the target building may dictate a 2,000 lb bomb, which will not only destroy the structure but may bring down adjacent buildings.

HardSTOP is a munitions dispenser filled with fifty-four penetrators of two different sizes. INS/GPS guidance gives precise placement, and a few seconds before impact the penetrators are released in a pattern which can be varied from twenty to a hundred feet in diameter as required. This means an entire building or just a section can be targeted.

"The large penetrators can penetrate through more levels of the target than the small penetrators," says Ken West, AFRL Munitions Directorate Engineer. "By using two different sizes, you get the optimum combination of penetration capability and pattern density, such that you can saturate the entire structure."

Each penetrator has a special fuze and a small explosive charge. Electronic time delay allows each penetrator to attack a specific floor. This means that they can be set to target every floor of a multi-storey structure, or all can be concentrated on one level, but without damaging the building.

"Each penetrator fuze has a slightly different detonation time, which produces a different blast effect," says West. "This, in combination with the fact that the detonations are distributed throughout the structure, greatly reduces the potential for major structural damage both within and beyond the confines of the target."

HardSTOP has similar externally to existing munitions dispensers, and is compatible with current launch systems. Perhaps the biggest hurdle will be public relations: HardSTOP may be seen as a cluster bomb and therefore unacceptable to use in built-up areas. Even though the sub-munitions have two separate fail-safes and are unlikely to leave hazardous duds, prejudice against cluster weapons may be difficult to overcome.

Read the full article here:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aw/dti0907/index.php?startpage=54

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/how-can-you-use.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 30, 2007, 11:48pm

Soldier of the Future Gets His Gear On
By Noah Shachtman September 26, 2007



TARMIYAH, Iraq -- They were supposed to be wearing the high-tech soldier suits of the future. But when the grunts of the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment first started running around with a pile of gadgets on their backs and their helmets, they absolutely hated the gear.

Oh, maybe the Land Warrior gizmo suite -- complete with digital maps, wearable computers and new radios -- might do the bosses some good, the troops told me. And yeah, the equipment was about as close as troops today were going to get to the kind of tricked-out, sci-fi ensemble you might see worn by Halo's Master Chief. But at 16 pounds, on top of an already crushing 60-plus-pound load for grunts, the gear just wasn't worth the weight. The Army brass wasn't exactly thrilled with Land Warrior, either -- it yanked every last dime to fund the get-ups. The half-billion-dollar, 15-year project looked dead.

Cash was on hand to send the 4/9 into battle with Land Warrior, though. And their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Bill Prior, was a big fan. So, this spring, Land Warrior went off to Iraq.

I've just spent a week with Prior and the 4/9 (known as the "Manchus" since their assaults on China in 1901). And much to my surprise, a bunch of the soldiers in the unit are warming up to Land Warrior, especially now that the gizmo ensemble has been pared down and made more tactically relevant. So now the question is: can this once-doomed soldier-of-the-future ensemble spring back to life?

Over the last decade, the military has connected nearly all its command posts and all its vehicles into a kind of internet for battle. That allowed them to, at the very least, see each other's locations and better coordinate attacks.

Individual soldiers, however, still remain largely off the grid -- only now, more than four years into the Iraq war, are many troop teams getting radios of their own. That's a problem because counterinsurgency fights, like the ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, are almost wholly dependent on small groups of soldiers like these. Land Warrior was supposed to be the way to plug them in.

Captain Jack Moore, the commander of the 4/9's "Blowtorch" company, peers into his Land Warrior monocle. Inside is a digital map of Tarmiyah, a filthy little town about 25 kilometers north of Baghdad that's become a haven for Islamists. Blue icons show two of his platoons sweeping through the western half of the town. Two other icons represent Blowtorch soldiers who have teamed up with special forces and Iraqi Army units to raid local mosques with insurgent ties.

A red dot suddenly pops up on Moore's monocle screen: 3rd platoon has found a pair of improvised bombs -- black boxes, filled with homemade explosives. Other troops will circumvent the scene.

As the other platoons move south to north, green lights blink on Moore's map. Each of these "digital chem lights" represents a house checked and cleared. It keeps different groups of soldiers from kicking down the same set of doors twice.

A year ago, these chem lights weren't even part of the Land Warrior code. But after a suggestion from a Manchu soldier, the digital markers were added -- and quickly became the system's most popular feature. During air assaults on Baquba, to the northeast, troops were regularly dropped a quarter or half-kilometer from their original objective; the chem lights allowed them to converge on the spot where they were supposed to go. In the middle of one mission, a trail of green lights was used to mark a new objective -- and show the easiest way to get to the place.

Later, a five-man "small kill team" or SKT, was set up about 10 kilometers north of Tarmiyah to ambush an insurgent crew. But that crew turned out to be larger than expected, and the SKT was suddenly being attacked by 10 Iraqis. Almost instantly, Captain Aaron Miller, stationed two kilometers to the south, was able to respond.

"They didn't have to tell us their location -- we knew it right away. So they could focus on the fight," Miller says.

Miller is still not happy with how much the system weighs. "Look, I need this like I need a 10th arm," he sighs. And all this stuff (Land Warrior does), my cell phone basically does the same at home." But Miller is committed to soldiers being networked. So he's willing to be the digital guinea pig. "It's got to start with someone."

The system has become more palatable to the Manchus because it's been pared down, in all sorts of ways. By consolidating parts, a 16-pound ensemble is now down to a little more than 10. A new, digital gun scope has been largely abandoned by the troops -- the system was too cumbersome and too slow to be effective. And now, not every soldier in the 4/9 has to lug around Land Warrior. Only team leaders and above are so equipped.

"It helped morale a lot," says Lt. Col. Prior. "Leaders need it to track where you're going next, and when to use the right route. But for Joe (average soldier) -- pulling security, climbing through a window -- it was too much."

It still is, for some members of the Manchus.

"If it were five pounds, it'd be money," says Sergeant First Class Benjamin Mulkey. "But right now, it's not worth the weight."

Sam Lee, another sergeant stationed in Tarmiyah, drives back and forth over a stretch of unpaved road. His Land Warrior system has frozen up, and tells him he's a few hundred meters away from his actual location. When he gets out, his fellow soldiers can talk fine over their radios. His Land Warrior model is dead.

And of course, everybody has to be plugged into the system in order for it to be worth a damn. At the end of an exhausting night's worth of house-to-house searches, Lieutenant Michael Bennett loses track of half of his platoon. They aren't very far away -- just a few blocks. But because no one is up on Land Warrior, it takes an hour of bleary-eyed scrambling for the platoon to be reunited.

But while some troops struggle with Land Warrior's basics, new features are being added to the system. Video feeds from small ground robots, pictures from flying drones and data from sniper-detecting sensors should all be available in the Manchus' monocles before their tour is over next fall.

The question is whether the 4/9 will be the last unit to wear the Land Warrior gear. Right now, there is no money in the Defense Department budget to similarly equip another set of soldiers. But the 2nd Infantry Division's 5th Brigade Combat Team is in the process of officially asking for the gear. And Land Warrior allies are also pushing Congress to include $60 to $80 million to give more troops the get-ups.

Neither effort has been successful, so far. So the future of the soldier-of-the-future still remains very much in doubt.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/when-the-soldie.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 30, 2007, 11:53pm

I suppose this is an example of environmental warfare:

Improvised Bomb Triggers Wasp Attack
By Noah Shachtman September 27, 2007

Improvised bombs are really bad news. And that's before they start stirring up wasps' nests:

http://www.liveleak.com/player.swf?autostart=false&token=72f_1190749943

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/video-fix-impro.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 30, 2007, 11:56pm

Seaplane revival?
Posted by Bill Sweetman at 9/28/2007 11:54 AM

I heard several years ago that Lockheed Martin was looking at new seaplane designs. In 2003, seaplanes emerged again as an element of a sea-basing strategy - providing sea-bases with a high-speed, heavy-payload link to safe land bases a long way off. However, nobody at Lockheed Martin seemed to want to talk.

However, a newly unearthed paper with two Lockheed Martin authors shows some interesting potential features. The proposed SeaMax is a twin-hull design - apparently dating to equally little-known 1970s studies by Lockheed-Georgia - powered by two F117 turbofans.



A C-130 floatplane development - studied in the late 1990s, apparently at the instigation of the special operations community - would serve as the technology demonstrator for the project.

Incidentally, the third author on the paper - Basil Papadales of Washington-state consulting company Moire Inc - is an ex-Boeing guy, and was at one time the manager of the Condor UAV program.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/def....7-b3cdb2 aeb8fd

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Sept 30, 2007, 11:59pm

U.S. carries out successful missile defense test
Fri Sep 28, 2007 7:29pm EDT

By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. interceptor missile on Friday shot down a dummy warhead replicating an incoming North Korean missile in the seventh successful test of Boeing Co's long-range missile shield, the Pentagon said.

The Missile Defense Agency said in a statement it completed a test "involving a successful intercept by a ground-based interceptor missile designed to protect the United States against a limited long-range ballistic missile attack."

The interceptor missile was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's central coast, and its target was fired from Alaska's Kodiak Island.

"We got it," said test witness Riki Ellison, president of the private Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a group funded in part by missile shield contractors. "It was a success."

The $85 million test was a rerun of one that was supposed to have taken place in May but was scrubbed when the target misfired.

The test marked the sixth successful downing of a target in 10 full-fledged intercept tests since October 1999 in which knocking down the target was the primary objective, said Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency.

On September 1, 2006, the same missile system shot down a target. But the Pentagon said that test had been designed chiefly to collect flight data, not stop a target warhead. As a result, it was not included in the latest tally as reported by Lehner.

The Bush administration is building a layered shield to thwart ballistic missiles from countries like North Korea and Iran that could be tipped with chemical, germ or nuclear warheads.

Other components of the emerging anti-missile shield are based at sea, in the air and in space.

The United States want to install 10 ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland and a tracking radar station in the Czech Republic as a defense against a potential missile attack from Iran. Russia opposes the plan, saying it would upset a delicate strategic balance between major powers and threaten its own security.

U.S. critics say the missile defense tests prove little because they are highly scripted. An attacker would use decoys that would likely foil U.S. defenses, they say.

"Once again, there were no countermeasures or decoys used, making this test one of the simplest, easiest, flight intercept tests they've ever tried," Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under former President Bill Clinton, said in a statement e-mailed to Reuters.

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSWBT00766220070928?sp=true

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 1, 2007, 12:02am

China's Digital Soldiers
By Sharon Weinberger September 27, 2007

The U.S. military is already learning the limits of its own digital soldier, but that isn't stopping China from moving forward with its own system. As C4ISR Journal reports:



China revealed its version of the “digital soldier” concept at its annual North Sword 0709 live-fire exercise, begun Sept. 18 at the Zhurihe training base in northern Inner Mongolia. According to a Xinhua press report, the exercise involved 2,000 soldiers, tanks and other vehicles equipped with electronic devices that instantly relayed data about battlefield conditions back to the command center.

The system collected data on casualties, food, ammunition and supplies. “The system could let us know the exact conditions our troops are in under combat; how much ammunition, water and food remain; and when we should support them with logistics,” said Zhang Jixiang, vice commander of the Zhurihe training base, according to Xinhua. Richard Fisher, vice president of the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the system is China’s attempt at creating a digital soldier system.

The system would “shrink and graft computer/satnav/digital-video connectivity to the individual soldier,” Fisher said. “The idea is for the individual soldier to be able to broadcast intimate details of his combat condition and receive data of a magnitude to give him a thousandfold more situational awareness than before. Weight, power supply and ruggedness issues have been the main technical barriers.

China's system is likely to suffer the same weight/utility issues as the U.S. Land Warrior. But for China, it's at least some progress, considering an earlier version of its digital soldier system wasn't all that much more than a digital camera and duct tape:

“In 2002, the [People’s Liberation Army] revealed a limited digital soldier rig following a special forces exercise,” Fisher added. “It involved an unwieldy-looking digital camera and a small viewing screen lashed to a helmet. It did not look like it would really survive a jump from a helicopter, but it at least signaled the PLA work in that area.”

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/chinas-digital-.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 1, 2007, 12:07am

Here a thought - the fully recyclable PET soldier:

Armor and Dresses from Plastic Bottles
Posted by Joel Johnson, September 27, 2007 5:49 AM



Commissioned by a large soft drink manufacturer (I presume Coca-Cola, but I don't know), Artist Kosuke Tsumura created sets of armor and dresses out of plastic PET bottles, sewn together with transparant nylon thread. As Pink Tentacle points out, it may not be the strongest armor ever assembled, but it will last for many generations.

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/09/27/armor-and-dresses-fr.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 1, 2007, 12:10am

Homeland Security Money Buys Hovercraft
By Sharon Weinberger September 28, 2007

Local officials in Indiana are having a tough time explaining how federal dollars designated for counter-terrorism could be used to buy a hovercraft designed for all-weather rescue missions (short answer: It won't, unless you're expecting terrorists on water skiis). As the Indianapolis Star reports:



The six-passenger craft bought by emergency management officials from the two counties will be used in water, ice and snow rescues, according to Debbie Fletcher, spokeswoman for Marion County Emergency Management.

The craft's $59,600 cost includes a towing trailer and a pilot training course. It was purchased July 26 from the Terre Haute-based company Neoteric Hovercraft. The purchase was paid for by a 2005 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to the Indianapolis Urban Area Security Initiative, which includes Marion and Hamilton counties, Fletcher said. The initiative is part of a national homeland security program designed to protect cities with populations of more than 100,000.

Even a state senator noted that the homeland security funds are supposed to go for, well, homeland security:

While he did not criticize the hovercraft purchase, state Sen. Thomas J. Wyss, R-Fort Wayne, said purchases made with Department of Homeland Security grants must be used primarily for counterterrorism purposes. Wyss chairs the state Senate committee that oversees homeland security spending.

"Homeland Security money is not just for taking care of your, quote, everyday needs that you have for public safety," he said. "First and foremost, it's there for protection and prevention in counterterrorism."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/homeland-secu-1.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 1, 2007, 12:29am

Make Cars Safer by Dressing Them as Animals?
By Brandon Keim September 28, 2007 | 9:11:49 AM



Because most of human evolution took place while we were intimately involved with animals -- as food, or as potential food for them -- we developed parts of brain specifically devoted to paying attention to them.

So theorized Yale University cognitive scientist Joshua New, who showed study subjects pairs of photographs depicting people, plants, animals or tools, each image identical but for a single change. (If it sounds a bit like a kindergarten task or restaurant placemat entertainment for children, that's because it is.)

People noticed the changes more frequently in photographs of people and animals, ostensibly because we're more sensitive to movement in things we expect to move. (Timeless advice: don't worry about the rock unless it has fur.)

So is this learned or hard-wired? New then showed people paired images depicting either animals or cars -- the latter being something we've learned to classify as mobile, and have far more connection to than, say, elephants. Nevertheless, people were still better at noticing movement in animals than automobiles -- which is a little disconcerting, as we're far more likely to be run over by a minivan than a cape buffalo.

Two caveats to these findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: maybe people were responding to the novelty of the animals, and to the static depiction of the automobiles. Show them pigeons rather than African megafauna, and video clips rather than snapshots, and maybe we'd be more aware of the cars.

But if the results really do represent reality, two possibilities: maybe, in a million years, vehicular accidents will have wiped out those of us who are still more likely to notice a rat by the curb than a car in the passing lane. And maybe vehicle manufacturers could start offering a novel safety feature: cars tricked out as animals! Compacts as gazelles, mid-size sedans as zebras, pickups as wildebeests, SUVs as elephants.....

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/make-cars-safer.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 1, 2007, 1:13am

Commandos Get Hydrogen-Powered Drone
By Noah Shachtman September 28, 2007

Robotic spy planes can stay in the air way longer than manned ones. But even the drones have their limits. The military's long-lasting Global Hawk maxes out at about a day and a half. Even the unmanned endurance champ can only go for two days or so. American commandos want to go far beyond that, with a unmanned eye the sky that can fly for up to a week, without landing. U.S. Special Operations Command has just handed out a contract, worth up to $108 million, to build as many as five of the marathon drones.

Robo-plane maker AeroVironment, Inc., which won the award, has been working on long-lasting unmanned aerial vehicles for years. Their Pathfinder and Helios solar-powered aircraft have set altitude and endurance records. Global Observer, powered by hydrogen fuel cells, will fly at 55,000 to 65,000 feet, serving as a communications' relay for commandos -- and keeping watching over the ground below. Here's a vid:

http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=626958248

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/commandos-gets-.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 4, 2007, 1:34am

Yacht Crashes into Submarine
Sunday, September 30, 2007, 11:50 PM

It took place Friday afternoon, during the 4th leg of the Vuelta España a Vela (Spain Sailing Tour), from Cartagena to Alicante.

While the fleet was approaching Alicante, a submarine suddenly surfaced in front of Endesa-Ceuta. The yacht managed to avoid a head on collision but the extent of damages suffered is not clear.



Unfortunately, the photo is fuzzy but the photographer, like the rest of the participants, was caught by surprise. Obviously, nobody was expecting to see a submarine surface in front of them.

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 4, 2007, 8:59pm

'Gay bomb' scoops Ig Nobel award

Pioneering research into a "gay bomb" that makes enemy troops "sexually irresistible" to each other has scooped one of this year's Ig Nobel Prizes.

Other winners included work on treating hamster jetlag with impotency drugs, extracting vanilla from cow dung, and the side-effects of sword swallowing.

The awards, founded in 1991, mark achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think".

The prize ceremony took place at Harvard University, US.

Genuine Nobel Laureates handed out the much-coveted awards to the winners, who took away no cash, but instead received a handmade prize, a certificate, and, of course, the glory of such an illustrious win.

Sword effects

Dan Meyer, executive director of Sword Swallowing Association International and an author of the British Medical Journal paper Sword Swallowing and its Side-Effects, said: "I was surprised and extremely honoured when I found out I was not only nominated for an Ig Nobel prize but that I had won it. I couldn't believe it."

He told the BBC News website that the study revealed that when professional sword swallowers ingested a single sword very carefully, it did not do much harm, but swallowing many swords, strangely shaped blades, or being distracted when swallowing, could cause injury.

The findings also suggested that sword swallowers should not swallow swords if they already had a sore throat, he said.

Unfortunately, said the organisers, nobody from the US military who carried out the research on chemicals that could prompt homosexual dalliances amongst rival troops (a research project called Harassing, Annoying and "Bad Guy" Identifying Chemicals) attended the ceremony because the study's authors could not be tracked down.

Real research

The Ig Nobel Prizes were created by the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), a science magazine.

The awards, now in their 17th year, are intended to "celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative - and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology".

Marc Abrahams, the editor of AIR, told the BBC News website: "When I became the editor of a science magazine, suddenly I was meeting all kinds of people who had done things that were hard to describe, and for the most part, nobody had ever heard of.

"For some of them, it seemed a great shame that nobody would give them any kind of recognition, and that was what really led to the birth of the Ig Nobels."

Like their more sober counterpart, the Nobel Prizes, the Ig Nobels are split into several categories and all research is real and published.

2007 Ig Nobel Winners

Medicine - Brain Witcombe, of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust, UK, and Dan Meyer for their probing work on the health consequences of swallowing a sword.

Physics - A US-Chile team who ironed out the problem of how sheets become wrinkled.

Biology - Dr Johanna van Bronswijk of the Netherlands for carrying out a creepy crawly census of all of the mites, insects, spiders, ferns and fungi that share our beds.

Chemistry - Mayu Yamamoto, from Japan, for developing a method to extract vanilla fragrance and flavouring from cow dung.

Linguistics - A University of Barcelona team for showing that rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards.

Literature - Glenda Browne of Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the", and how it can flummox those trying to put things into alphabetical order.

Peace - The US Air Force Wright Laboratory for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among enemy troops.

Nutrition - Brian Wansink of Cornell University for investigating the limits of human appetite by feeding volunteers a self-refilling, "bottomless" bowl of soup.

Economics - Kuo Cheng Hsieh of Taiwan for patenting a device that can catch bank robbers by dropping a net over them.

Aviation - A National University of Quilmes, Argentina, team for discovering that impotency drugs can help hamsters to recover from jet lag.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7026150.stm

Published: 2007/10/04 23:47:10 GMT

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 12:09pm

Ready, Aim, Zap!
By Sharon Weinberger October 03, 2007

The Air Force is seeking proposals for high-powered microwave weapons to "use as a Counter Electronics payload that would not cause physical damage to buildings or harm to humans." And they're not looking for blue sky type ideas either: they want either "immediate capabilities" that are ready for use or "near-term capabilities" that could be in commercial production in less than a year.



That's a tall order, because despite advances in high-powered microwave weapons, there's been some difficulties in developing fieldable weapons, as Aviation Week's Dave Fulghum noted earlier this year:

The development of HPM weapons has been hobbled for the last 30 years by seemingly intractable cost, size, beam-control and power-generation requirements. Tests of modified air-launched cruise missiles carrying devices to produce explosively generated spikes of energy were considered big disappointments in the early 1990s because of an inability to direct pulses and predict effects. New active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars can jam emitters or possibly cause damage to electronic components with focused beams. But power levels and ranges are limited by aperture size.

That said, some of the U.S. companies active in this area --like Raytheon and BAE Systems North America -- are quick to talk up advances. For example, Aviation Week's Fulghum in that same article notes that BAE Systems claims it has combined lasers and high-powered microwaves, and Raytheon is already marketing a ground-based weapon that can protect airports from missiles: http://www.raytheon.com/products/vigilanteagle/

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/ready-aim-zap.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 12:12pm

DHS 'Spam' List
Published: 2007-10-03,
Last Updated: 2007-10-03 20:26:37 UTC
by Marcus Sachs (Version: 3)

The US Department of Homeland Security sends out a daily Open Source Intelligence Report to a subscription list of hundreds, perhaps thousands of recipients. This morning a reader replied to the list address with a request for a change and his note got re-sent to all of the list subscribers. In the next hour or so, dozens of readers have replied, creating a mini-DDoS of sorts to the subscriber's inboxes. This points out an important point - if you maintain a broadcast mailing list make sure that the address will not reflect email from sources other than the owner of the list. Otherwise, you will become a training example for SANS.

While this is not a Cyber Security Awareness tip, it comes mighty close.

(DHS has been notified.)

Update #1

As of 1920UTC, about six hours into this event, over 275 emails were sent. Nearly one-half were either pleas to stop sending more replies or people demanding to be unsubscribed (in spite of the fact that unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of the DHS daily reports.) Many of the posts were humorous, some offered jobs, at least one was a "vote for me" political advertisement, and many more offered their names and contact information in case somebody was looking to connect with their sector or region. While 275 is not even close to the millions of emails that get sent on a typical commercial spam run, it is a large number for a "flash crowd" or whatever this may eventually be called. It also revealed a nice cross-section of who subscribes to DHS daily publications and consider themselves part of the defensive security community. Most definitely do not have the Jack Bauer (character from the series "24") mentality of total seriousness and no-joking attitude.

We did a bit of investigating and this does not look like a typical Mailman or MajorDomo listserve administered by DHS. Instead, it appears to be an email address on a Lotus Domino Release 7.0.2FP1 server hosted by a government contractor that reflects email to a list of thousands of subscribers. It's not clear why a single email got reflected today and not in the many previous months this service has been available. Quite likely an email administrator either clicked a box last night, rebuilt the system, migrated it to a new server, or did something that un-set a setting designed to prevent this type of event. Regardless, the situation is still not fixed. As this diary is being written another email just came through. Sigh....

Update #2

The pain continues...in the past few minutes the CSC server has started spewing "attachment blocking notifications" in response to the emails sent in that had MIME formatted content. So now we brace for another round of spew.

A reader sent us an interesting idea - all it takes now is some wise-acre (or a BadGuy™) to send a zero-day PDF or Word attachment to the nearly 300 names now available and nail a few dozen gullible security professionals.

Marcus H. Sachs
Director, SANS Internet Storm Center

http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3450

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 12:21pm

DARPA's Sex Slave Insects
By Sharon Weinberger
October 04, 2007

Of the many fascinating theoretical applications of DARPA's "cyborg insect" research, the most creative could be using sex-starved moths to follow bank robbers. A new article in EE Times goes into detail on HI-MEMS, and quotes a science fiction writer whose book inspired the DARPA program:

"Moths are extraordinarily sensitive to sex attractants, so instead of giving bank robbers money treated with dye, they could use sex attractants instead," said [science fiction writer Thomas] Easton. "Then, a moth-based HI-MEMS could find the robber by following the scent."



Easton, as it turns out, is a scientist as well as a science fiction writer, and his novel Sparrowhawk provided some of the ideas behind the DARPA program. Easton, in fact, was invited by DARPA to give a presentation at the start of the HI MEMS program, but wasn't able to attend the meeting. Instead, he posted his presentation online.

That's just one of the details that comes out in the article on the HI-MEMS program in the EE Times. The article provides a fair amount of details on the program I didn't previously know, and strikes a great balance between wide-eyed wonder and calibrated skepticism.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/darpas-sex-slav.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 12:27pm

Video Fix: AK-47 = Cigarette Lighter
By Noah Shachtman
October 04, 2007 | 7:18:31 AM

I'm sure Mikhail Kalashnikov would be proud...

See following link:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/video-fix-ak-47.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 12:51pm

How Israel Spoofed Syria's Air Defense System
By Sharon Weinberger
October 04, 2007 | 5:14:56 PM



Earlier this month, Israeli fighters bombed a suspected nuclear materials site in Syria. Here's the million dollar question: How did they do it without tipping off Syria's Russian-bought air defense radar? Radar expert Dave Fulghum over at Aviation Week's Ares blog may have the answer: Israel hacked the network.

Israel U.S. aerospace industry and retired military officials indicated today that a technology like the U.S.-developed “Suter” airborne network attack system developed by BAE Systems and integrated into U.S. unmanned aircraft by L-3 Communications was used by the Israelis. The system has been used or at least tested operationally in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last year.

The technology allows users to invade communications networks, see what enemy sensors see and even take over as systems administrator so sensors can be manipulated into positions so that approaching aircraft can’t be seen, they say. The process involves locating enemy emitters with great precision and then directing data streams into them that can include false targets and misleading messages algorithms that allow a number of activities including control.

Whether this is the final explanation is unclear, but as Fulghum notes, there's a bunch of Russian radar engineers studying the strike right now.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/how-israel-spoo.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 1:17pm

Russian "Father of All Bombs" = Fake?
By David Axe October
04, 2007 | 1:13:00 PM


The test of the huge vacuum bomb is shown in this undated television image shown by Russian Channel One. Inset, the bomb before the blast.

Remember Russia's "Father of All Bombs," reportedly the most powerful thermobaric weapon in the world? Turns out it's at least partially a fraud. I've got the scoop over at Wired News:

Father of All Bombs "has no match in the world," a military officer boasts in the official video. ... But close analysis of the video reveals inconsistencies that have led some U.S. experts to question the veracity of the Russian claims, and to downgrade assessments of the weapon. It's possible, they say, that the video was partially faked, and that the test was hyped for political reasons.

The evidence? The video on state media that represents the only official "press release" about FOAB implies the bomb was dropped by a Tu-160 long-range bomber, thus making it a powerful weapon for conventional missions. But there's a problem.

The Father of All Bombs, as shown, would not fit in a Tu-160's bomb bay, as it features a horizontally deploying drogue parachute that would be fouled by the aircraft if released vertically. The only way to deploy a bomb like this is to slide it out of the cargo hold of an airlifter, as the U.S. Air Force has done with its fuel-air "Daisy Cutter" bombs used in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The appearance of ski-like legs on the bottom of the Father of All Bombs attests to this delivery method.

The Father of All Bombs cannot be used against defended targets; a cargo plane is too vulnerable. Daisy Cutters, for their part, were only ever dropped on remote deserts or jungles or against terrorists hiding in caves.

But wait, there's more! Read the whole damning analysis following.

See original report at:
http://chem11.proboards2.com/index.cgi?b....ge=2#1189557173

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/russian-father-.html

#2 Did Russia Stage the Father of All Bombs Hoax?
By David Axe And Daria Solovieva
10.04.07 | 12:00 AM

"All that is alive merely evaporates."

That's how a Russian official described the effects of what is reportedly the world's most powerful non-nuclear bomb, tested on Sept. 11. A video released by state media shows a Tupolev 160 bomber, a bomb falling as a parachute unfurls and a huge fireball.

The Russians call the device the "Father of All Bombs," an homage to the American GBU-43 Massive-Ordnance Air Blast munition nicknamed "Mother of All Bombs."

Both weapons weigh around 8 tons, but the Russian device reportedly has a more powerful blast: equivalent to 44 tons of TNT, whereas the American bomb is equivalent to 10 tons.

Father of All Bombs "has no match in the world," a military officer boasts in the official video.

Western media reacted with alarm. An editor for Jane's told the BBC it was likely that FOAB indeed represented "the world's biggest non-nuclear bomb." UPI claimed the device "would enormously boost Russia's conventional military capabilities."

Russian state-run television released this video of a bomber dropping the "Father of all Bombs" last month:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1ee_cDX7ys

But close analysis of the video reveals inconsistencies that have led some U.S. experts to question the veracity of the Russian claims, and to downgrade assessments of the weapon. It's possible, they say, that the video was partially faked, and that the test was hyped for political reasons.

"You've got to approach Russian claims with skepticism," says John Pike, an analyst at the think tank GlobalSecurity.org in Alexandria, Virginia.


A Russian video implies that a Tu-160 long-range bomber dropped the FOAB test munition, but the bomb and bomber never appear in the same shot.
Image: Channel One

It's not even clear what kind of weapon the Russians tested -- if it was what some experts call a "fuel-air explosive," or if it was a "thermobaric" weapon. Fuel-air and thermobaric bombs differ in usefulness.

Traditional bombs rely on metal fragments propelled by TNT to do their damage. Thermobaric weapons, by contrast, release a massive shockwave. They're meant for taking out big buildings and cave complexes, places where fragmentation doesn't work very well, explains Tom Burky, a senior research scientist at Battelle, an Ohio-based defense contractor. Thermobaric blasts can push around corners and down corridors.

Fuel-air bombs, on the other hand, have a small explosive device connected to a large tank of compressed fuel. The tank cracks on impact with the ground, spreading a cloud of fuel vapor. The warhead explodes, igniting the fuel. The effect is roughly the same, but fuel-air bombs are much more finicky than thermobarics, according to Burky. "The mixing process is highly randomized -- very difficult to control on the battlefield."

The official video compares the Russian bomb to the thermobaric GBU-43, but the weapon depicted in the video appears to be a fuel-air explosive, based on its shape, Burky says.

Regardless, Phillip Coyle, an adviser to the Washington, D.C., Center for Defense Information, says he is skeptical about Father of All Bombs' true power. "It (the blast) may be bigger than MOAB," he concedes, "but it's not four times bigger -- at best 50 percent bigger, just going on the bomb's size and how these bombs are designed."


FOAB's ski-like legs -- and the drag-'chute lines seen on top -- indicate the bomb was released by a slow-flying cargo plane, contrary to Russian claims.
Image: Channel One

The force of a thermobaric/fuel-air blast is a function of the fuel type, the proportions of fuel and high explosive, and the way these elements mix during the blast. "The difficulty with bombs of this type is predicting the shape of the blast," Pike says. Teasing a fourfold improvement over the MOAB would require sophisticated chemistry, according to Burky, and that would challenge what Pike describes as cash-strapped Russian military labs.

Despite his skepticism regarding many Russian military developments, Pike says he believes that the Father of All Bombs is roughly as powerful as the Russians claim. What he doesn't necessarily buy is that the weapon is actually new. The Russian military has a tendency to rename old weapons in order to create the impression that they are new, Pike says. The Russians have possessed a range of thermobaric weapons for at least four decades.

The details of the "new" bomb's provenance and design are murky, but one thing is clear. The Father of All Bombs’ test model was not delivered by a Tu-160 bomber, as implied. Nowhere in the video are the bomber and the bomb in the same shot.

The Father of All Bombs, as shown, would not fit in a Tu-160's bomb bay, as it features a horizontally deploying drogue parachute that would be fouled by the aircraft if released vertically. The only way to deploy a bomb like this is to slide it out of the cargo hold of an airlifter, as the U.S. Air Force has done with its fuel-air "Daisy Cutter" bombs used in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The appearance of ski-like legs on the bottom of the Father of All Bombs attests to this delivery method.

The Father of All Bombs cannot be used against defended targets; a cargo plane is too vulnerable. Daisy Cutters, for their part, were only ever dropped on remote deserts or jungles or against terrorists hiding in caves.


The force of FOAB's blast was estimated at 44 tons -- four times the power of the equivalent U.S. bomb -- but some analysts doubt the claim.
Image: Channel One

"It's actually a niche weapon," Burky says. "They have their place, in attacking caves. But there are only so many caves you're going to attack. Not that we should ignore them."

Indeed, the Father of All Bombs' actual destructive force and military utility are perhaps less important than its apparent power.

"Some people claim Russia did this because they were upset about our (ballistic) missile-defense proposals for Poland and the Czech Republic," Coyle says. "Other people say it has more to do with the upcoming presidential elections in Russia. Maybe (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is trying to preserve his legacy."

Pike says that despite Moscow's recent surge in oil revenue, the underfunded Russian military is still 15 years behind the United States. But with Putin's regime positioning itself as a bulwark against the United States, the Russian military has had to step up. And where it lacks genuine capabilities, it has not hesitated to fake them.

Case in point, the much-hyped bomber patrols. In the past year, Russian long-range bomber types, including the Tu-160 featured in the video, have begun probing Western air defenses, in an echo of Cold War practices.

But according to Hudson Institute fellow Richard Weitz, the bombers themselves are old and poorly maintained -- State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack referred to them being taken "out of mothballs." Henry T. Nash, in his book Nuclear Weapons and International Behavior, describes deterrence as "being closely tied to the 'politics of appearances.'"


The horizontal drag 'chute slows the bomb in order to allow the releasing aircraft to escape, a method necessary for slow-moving cargo planes.
Image: Channel One

So it doesn't matter so much if a bomber is well-maintained, as long as it appears on U.S. radars. Nor does it matter if the Father of All Bombs is a fuel-air explosive or a thermobaric device, if it is really the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the world, or even if it is a new weapon at all. All that matters is that it makes an impressive explosion for the cameras.

Semantics support this view. The nickname Father of All Bombs is more than just an homage to the American MOAB. It's also an apparently intentional reference to an earlier episode in Russian military showmanship.

The Russian term for the Father of All Bombs, "Kuzkin otets," translates literally as "Kuzkin's father." The phrase itself makes no sense. But to "show you 'Kuzkina mat,'" "to show Kuzkina's mother," is one of the most famous Russian idioms. It equates roughly with the English-language threat "we'll show you." Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev forever cemented "Kuzkina mat" in the Russian lexicon in 1962, during a period of escalating tension that preceded the Cuban missile crisis, and described a reportedly successful test of a 50-megaton H-bomb, the most powerful weapon ever.

The kicker? Khrushchev's H-bomb itself was mostly a demonstration of might rather than a serious attempt at fielding a practical weapon. The H-bomb was too big and unwieldy for day-to-day carriage on Soviet bombers, so only the one test model was ever built.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/10/russian_bomb?currentPage=all

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 1:24pm

Israelis win award for submarine-based chopper
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich , THE JERUSALEM POST
Oct. 1, 2007

A small helicopter that can take off underwater from a submarine and hold two passengers - designed jointly by students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and the University of Pennsylvania - has won first prize in a US helicopter design competition.



Called "Waterspout," the helicopter can be stored inside the submarine without taking up too much space. It is released through existing openings in the submarine, so no new ones have to be made.

The helicopter is autonomous, can function in a variety of weather conditions and can be dispatched from a submarine from some 15 meters under the water's surface (enough for a periscope to see into the air from under the water.)

It can also float on the water in a rough sea, has the ability to fly 260 kilometers in one trip, and can hold two passengers (even if they are injured and have to lie on stretchers.)

The Waterspout also features stealth technology, including low-heat emissions and a coating that prevents it from being picked up by radar.

The Technion team, consisting of Mor Gilad, Avihai Elimelech, Roni Hachmon, Igor Teller, Avida Schneller, Elad Sinai, Lior Shani and Chen Friedman, under the supervision of Prof. Omri Rand (dean of the school's Aeronautics, Engineering and Space Faculty) planned the rotor mechanics, the blade-folding mechanism, and the takeoff mechanism.

The Pennsylvania team, which was responsible for the aerodynamics of the rotors, the fuel system - which is not vulnerable to crashes - and various calculations, included Paul Branson, Meehir Misri, Alex Razano and Daniel Leonard, who worked under the supervision of Prof. Edward Smith, head of the Center of Excellence in Rotary Aircraft, and Dr. Robert Beale.

The model won first prize in the first-degree student category in a helicopter planning competition organized by the American Helicopter Society, as well as a prize in the "Best New Competitor" classification.

This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c....icle%2FShowFull

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 1:30pm

RAFAEL Unveils Panoramic, Vehicular Electro-Optical Gunshot Detector

* News Sept 29, 2007

At the upcoming AUSA 2007 exhibition in Washington DC, RAFAEL is planning to introduce a new vehicular version of the Spotlite electro-optical gunshot locator. The system is currently in development, with R&D funded by several customers. It's unique sensor and signal processing provides fully panoramic coverage, initiating threat warning, detection and localization within few seconds from a gunshot, rocket or a missile being launch, well before the threat reaches its target. RAFAEL plans to complete an integrated vehicular system before the year's end.


SpotLite-M

The new system, designated SpotLite-M joins the SpotLite-P (portable version). Both systems are capable of accurately and immediately detecting, locating and thereby enabling reaction to enemy fire sources, such as small arms fire, RPGs and anti-tank missiles. Spotlite M provides critical early warning on an imminent attack and enables the vehicle's crew to take evasive actions, employ effective counter-fire or deploy countermeasures against the threat within seconds from initial detection. Simultaneously, coordinates of the firing source can be sent to any shooter capable of receiving those coordinates, whether it be a tank, attack helicopter, anti-tank missile, sniper, etc. "The SpotLite-M provides the best solution for one of the most serious problems for mobile platforms on any battlefield and that, is finding the enemy and being able to react in real-time," says David Stemer Corporate VP and General Manager of Rafael's Missile Division. "We are confident that it will attract the attention of our customers worldwide."

The system comprises a unique, panoramic infrared camera developed by Rafael, enabling target detection and location at more than the effective range of the various threats. The system is effective in both day and night covering a full panoramic 360° view. In addition to land platforms, the SpotLite-M is also suitable for aerial and naval platforms.

http://www.defense-update.com/newscast/0907/news/300907_spotlite.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 1:39pm

Technology from another era may still serve the purpose:

Release the Gunships! Part One
Sunday September 30th 2007, 11:15 pm



The tech-heavy, increasingly irrelevant Air Force is finally making a half-hearted effort to actually contribute to low-tech counter-insurgency fights. But it could do a lot more, according to Major Robert Seifert in a recent piece for Joint Forces Quarterly. First up, the service needs to reconceptualize the enemy, Seifert writes:

Strategists yearn for a center of gravity to attack in order to crush the insurgency, and many claim there is none. They fail to see that the center of gravity is the individual insurgent and the location of his attack. For it is at that location alone, and only for a brief time, that the insurgent we struggle to define is an irrefutable enemy and a definable target. Strategists and tacticians both must look at each insurgent attack in the same light as our grandfathers looked at Germany’s war industry.

Next, the Air Force must give more freedom to one of its most effective weapons, the AC-130 gunship, to go out and destroy this “industry.” Why gunships? Because they combine a wide range of sensors and weapons in a platform with a long loiter time. It’s a perfect combo for a low-threat environment. The problem is that the Air Force assigns gunships to orbit over specified ground units for hours at a time, whether or not those units are likely to come across any bad guys:

[Gunships] fly every night in Iraq but rarely identify a single insurgent due to the inefficient manner in which they are requested by the Army and employed by the Air Force. … [A] simple yet fundamental change in AC–130 employment can kill or capture more insurgents, save friendly lives, and improve prospects for coalition success.

“I am convinced that if I was allowed to employ my gunship the way I propose, I would find and kill insurgents every single night,” Seifert told me:

I would ask where the insurgents are most likely to be (although I would start figuring it out pretty quickly myself) and I would then fly over those areas as much as possible all the while being on a frequency that all of the ground forces in the triangle knew to call at the first sign of trouble. Sure a lot of insurgents would get away every night but you catch a dozen insurgents every night and you start demoralizing them pretty darn quickly. I’ve shot dozens of them and they don’t even know what’s shooting them. AC-130s against insurgents is a total and complete unfair fight. We’ve made it fair, though, by sitting the gunships in the same spot for hours at a time “defending” whatever ground force happens to be in that location.

My concept is no different than how police forces are used. Do cop cars sit in the same spot and defend a neighborhood? Or do they roam around looking for bad guys all the while being on call to EVERY citizen in their jurisdiction. Cops are the best weapon against bad guys and gunships are the best weapon against insurgents. Another example is F-15 employment. Do F-15s sit in the same spot defending a particular army unit against air attack or do they roam the skies looking for MiGs and waiting for AWACS to push them to the first indication of MiGs? The Air Force has perfected the art of air-to-air and is the reason the Iraqi Air Force wouldn’t even take off. Put the same effort and expertise into gunship employment and you’d start seeing insurgents that didn’t want to leave their houses.



Sounds a bit optimistic to me, but the man does make an interesting argument. Today and tomorrow I am posting a two-part Q&A with Seifert:

Q: Do you think the gunship presence in theater will support this new strategy? In other words, are there enough planes?

Seifert: There are more than enough planes in theater. Keep in mind there are 13 U model gunships in existence with 4 more being built [plus 8 H models — ed.]. My article proposes two every night which would put a gunship anywhere in the triangle WORST case in 20 minutes. Another one or two would be nice but two employed optimally would change the course of the war. Have fighters working the same way and talking to the gunships and you’d have an airborne sensor on scene in minutes. And once that sensor locks on the insurgent(s), it’s a done deal. The gunship shows up and is either cleared to engage by the ground force commander for known insurgents or the gunship escorts a QRF to the scene so they can see if the insurgents act hostile or not. Approximately 10 seconds after showing hostile intent, there’s a single 40-mm round on the way or a single 105[-mm] howitzer round, ground commander’s choice. Again, the insurgent doesn’t even know what’s shooting at them. A total and complete unfair fight.

Q: In your article, you posit that the insurgency’s center of gravity is the individual fighter and his attacks. I disagree. I say the center of gravity is ideological and infused in the regional populace. Can you address my assessment in light of your proposal?

Seifert: I know what you’re saying but I still say that the insurgent shooting at U.S. troops is the center of gravity. Destroy and demoralize him as quickly and efficiently as possible and the war will start going better. The insurgents keep fighting because we haven’t made it painful enough for them to stop fighting. Sure there is the politicial aspect to the war but there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that we need to kill as many insurgents as possible, as fast as possible, as cheaply as possible, as unfairly as possible, etc etc. Killing insurgents with M-16s and F-16s is tough, dangerous, complicated, expensive, etc. Killing insurgents with an ammo-laden transport aircraft that can loiter in the Sunni triangle for 10+ hours every night shooting bullets that cost pennies compared to other means of killing insurgents and now we’ve got a chance of winning the war without bankrupting our country. I will also say that the Arab culture respects strength. If the gunships were unleashed, the only defense would be to stop attacking US forces. Again, you’d get away with some attacks but it would only be a matter of time before a gunship or another air asset caught you or a US soldier called quick enough to get the gunship in place. How many hours long battles have you read about in the paper. Why? Other air assets respond but only the gunship has the situational awareness and the ability to shoot a single 40-mm round at a time to efficiently kill insurgents and not cause collateral damage. The gunship is the only air asset I know that shows up on scene and quicly has more situational awareness than the ground forces. Too many times I’ve told ground forces that personnel were sneaking up on them and that we were 10 seconds away from a round on target the second they gave the command. No other asset compares (in a low threat environment like Iraq). There are CAS aircraft and then there is the AC-130. How many times have you read about other air assets making low passes and dispensing flares to scare away the enemy after they’ve attacked our forces. Why are we asking our pilots to fly hundreds of feet from the ground to dispense flares? Our pilots’ bravery is unquestioned but there has to be a better way. When you have enemy forces attacking your forces, they need to be killed not scared away. I’ll say it again, the Arab respects strength.

http://warisboring.com/?p=642

#2 Release the Gunships! Part Two
By David Axe
October 03, 2007 | 11:35:00 AM



The Air Force is struggling to adapt its Cold War airplanes and attitudes to new counter-insurgency fights. On Monday I introduced Major Robert Seifert, an AC-130 pilot who, in an excellent article, proposed putting the sensor-laden, heavily-armed gunships at the front of a new COIN strategy. He says the Air Force should release the AC-130s to roam around Iraq, working with ground controllers to spot and kill insurgents. Today I wrap my Q&A with Seifert:

Q: Would heavier use of gunships result in more civilian casualties?

Seifert: The gunship ONLY shoots when given permission by the ground force commander. It is easy to think that I am proposing that gunships should be allowed to roam the countryside shooting all the bad guys they can find, but nothing is further from the truth. Read again the situation in the article where I saw tracers in my window, got the sensors on the suspicious guys running away and then called the Army to tell them what had happened. The Army [Command and Control] called the unit at the coordinates we gave them and got word that, yes, they had been attacked. Army C2 then cleared us to shoot, BUT we saw the bad guys getting in cars, so we asked for further guidance. C2 said to keep track of them and they formed a QRF which ultimately resulted in 15 captured and us telling the troopers where to start digging to find the box of AK's and RPGs. Army C2 could have said shoot them on the spot and there would have been zero collateral damage. This would have been the case whether they were in open fields (which they were) or in the center of a town.

Most air assets would not have been able to shoot in a town though because they use 500 lb bombs minimum. The gunship, unlike anything else though, can fire a single 2.5-lb HE 40-mm warhead anywhere you want it. This warhead is the rough equivalent of a hand grenade or the 40-mm grenade our soldiers shoot from their rifles. So, you have an air asset that fires an equivalent weapon as a single soldier. The ability to do this is battle-changing. The gunship's two biggest strengths, in my opinion, are the situational awareness and the low-yield weapons. People think the 105-mm is huge, but it has a 32-lb HE warhead, vs 500-lb warheads [on bombs]. Could you use these weapons to kill lots of innocent people? Yes, and it has unfortunately happened -- but only when ground force commanders and/or gunship crews have made significant mistakes.

Q: So if you were in charge, what would you do to improve Air Force COIN capability?

Seifert: If I were King, I'd have several irregular-warfare wings, but I'd break them down between [Close Air Support] and transport wings. I found no synergy from being part of a wing that had transports and CAS aircraft. For example, I'd have an irregular wing of A-10s, AC-130s, an OV-10-type aircraft -- and I think the small gunship is an awesome idea. Not necessarily for operating out of small airstrips, but for the ability to buy enough of them so they're not hoarded and so they don't cause the Air Force to only have two dozen like they do the present gunships. A small gunship with one or two 30-mm cannons and a crew of about four would be awesome. I also would put the wings in ACC versus AFSOC, as I found AFSOC deep in their heart only wants to support "special ops" ground forces, whereas I have found ACC wants to kill bad guys for whoever was nice enough to point them out. The transport irregular warfare wing would obviously have some C-130s, CV-22s and a small transport. And both wings though would have a ... squadron for training friendly forces on how to operate the various wing aircraft.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/release-the-g-1.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 1:46pm

Congress may think its won but knowing the Military as I do the Star Wars concept will just be dressed up under a new name and trotted out again in a couple years time. Congress forgets that the Military specialize in camouflage:

Congress Dashes 'Star Wars' Dreams
By Sharon Weinberger
October 05, 2007 | 8:51:54 AM

Congress this week quashed the Pentagon's plans to start studies on a "space test bed" for missile defense, Aviation Week reports:



Missile defense advocates tried to resurrect MDA's request Oct. 3, but opponents claimed it was another step toward the so-called armed "Star Wars" concept. In particular, Sens. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), a vocal missile defense proponent, and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D), an ardent critic, squared off during debate of FY '08 defense appropriations over Kyl's effort to restore the $10 million request.

Kyl eventually withdrew his amendment as it faced significant opposition from top defense appropriator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and other leading Democrats. So far neither House nor Senate defense authorizers, nor House appropriators, have approved or funded MDA's request.

Nevertheless, since China destroyed one of its own satellites in January with a ballistic missile, Kyl has pushed an aggressive defense of MDA budget requests on Capitol Hill and has even criticized Bush administration actions as insufficient (DAILY, Jan. 30). His test bed appropriations push, a repeat effort, follows explicit calls for space-based weapons to defend satellites.

It's wasn't a tiny chuck of change either; the article says the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency planned to spend $300 million between 2008 and 2013 on the space test bed concept.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/congresses-dash.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 2:02pm

If Xenu can't help, Tom has another option:

Tom Cruise's $10M Survival Bunker
By Sharon Weinberger
October 01, 2007 | 12:00:00 PM



Earlier this month, David Hambling wrote about one-time plans for a super-lux congressional bunker, a billion dollar bunker, and Finnish bunkers. So, why shouldn't Hollywood stars have bunkers? At least one may be planning on it, according to reports:

Tom Cruise is planning to build a $10 million bunker underneath his Colorado mansion in preparation for the end of the world, according to a bizarre new report. The Top Gun star and Scientology nut is said to be taking the costly precaution in order to out-smart an evil intergalactic ruler called Xenu who, he believes, will attack Earth. A source told Star magazine: "Tom is planning to build a $10 million bunker under his Telluride estate.

Of course, the Cadillac of bomber shelters is a converted missile silo.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/tom-cruises-10m.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 2:10pm

Pain Ray 2.0: Heat vs. Heat Gun
By Sharon Weinberger
October 02, 2007 | 9:13:00 AM

Some view it as a wonder weapon capable of revolutionizing warfare, others fear it as a scary microwave death beam. Yet despite the hype and attention, the Active Denial System (ADS), a nonlethal “pain ray” that heats the top layer of skin to create an intense burning sensation without damaging the target, still hasn't been deployed yet. Last week, DANGER ROOM spoke with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Diana Loree, the ADS project manager, to talk abut the weapon, particularly the new “System 2” version, which could eventually be sent to Iraq (or elsewhere).

Q: Why hasn’t ADS been deployed yet to Iraq? Is heat the major issue?

I will let you make that decision. System 1 was built as an advanced concept technology demonstrator (ACTD). It was a technology demonstrator. It met its requirements. The ACTD practically started before 9/11. At that time, with the cost and schedule constraints we had, we had no reason and we had no money to really make a fully temperatured system. A system that can only go to 95 or 100 degrees Fahrenheit without sun loading is probably not appropriate for a lot of regimes right now.

[But] we have no more room or weight to try to change System 1 a lot. System 2 has been being built for the last several years and it hasn’t been quite finished yet, even as of today. Do we have a system really ready for the environment that might be being requested? The answer was kind of “no” sometimes.

Q: What are the temperature limits now for System 1?

For the Humvee-mounted system, System 1, it’s about 100 degrees Fahrenheit. That was totally adequate for the concept technology demonstration. It did everything we needed. But obviously there are areas of the world that might be hotter than 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The next system, System 2, has fixed it just by putting in a lot of air-conditioning, and a lot more room.

Q: And for System 2, what are the weather limitations?

System 2 was built for 125 degrees Fahrenheit with sun loading, and for rain. System 1 – you can’t let it rain a whole bunch. We’re not watertight. As soon as it starts raining, we pull it into the garage. System 2 has been tested for rain and tested for dust.

Q: What other improvements are you working on for the long-term?

I’ve been with the program since 1993, so I’ve seen all the current transmitters be built and go through their activities. Therefore, I can also see what has worked well and what hasn’t. We always want to work on anything we see that has not been reliable. We want to work anything we see that takes a long time to prepare. One example is the super-conducting magnet. We haven’t had any failures with the super-conducting magnet, but it takes about a day to get it ready if you start without it plugged in. If you just start with a system sitting there, we have to run a vacuum for a while, and then you turn on our compressor. And just like your refrigerator -- if your refrigerator isn’t ready, and it turns on, it takes a while to get cold; it’s same thing with our super-conducting magnet. It takes a while. It goes all the way to four degrees Kelvin. That takes about 16 hours. We have had magnets that are in the system take 30 hours, but the magnets in the system now take about 16 hours. That one day of prep, is something that, especially the Army, would like to see come down.

Q: What about in terms of preparation; does System 2 still need 16 hours?

Yes it does. We used basically System 2—you can point to every piece of technology on system 1. There wasn’t redesign time. It was simply: build another copy, but include the environmental [upgrades], even if we need to take it not quite as mobile. We took it off the Humvee wheels, and it’s on palletized containers, and so it could go on a variety of larger vehicles. We didn’t have time to change or wait for technology development. The pieces are almost exactly the same. We just have more room now.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/wheres-the-pain.html

#2: Pain Ray 2.0: People-Zapper on the Move
By Sharon Weinberger
October 03, 2007 | 7:00:00 AM

The Active Denial System, the Pentagon's "pain ray," is a millimeter wave nonlethal weapon that has been at the center of controversy since it was publicly revealed in 2001. This is the second part of an interview with the Air Force Research Laboratory's Diana Loree, the ADS project manager, who has been with the program since 1993. (Here's the first part.) In today's entry, we focus on "System 2," the latest version of the weapon, which could eventually be sent to Iraq.



Q: Where is System 2 in terms of testing?

The government is doing a little bit of testing on System 2 for the first time right now. Until this time, Raytheon was still manufacturing it. It’s just now starting a little bit of government testing. Just measurements right now.

Q: With System 1, the Humvee has to stop when it’s in use, correct?

With System 1 the power also turns the vehicle’s tires. System 1 is electrical; it’s a hybrid-electric Humvee, so that same power that's powering up the transmitters also turns the tires. We just couldn't quite fit on enough power to do both at the same time. The next system, you could absolutely do it. For System 1, the second you pull the trigger, unfortunately, it needs some of the wheel turning power.

Q: But System 2 can shoot and move at the same time?

It’s not tied to a vehicle. It's in boxes. If it’s on a truck, the truck could be in motion. We don’t quite have the antenna stabilization for really ‘shoot on move.’ Even for System 2, that’s a lot of vehicle motion, and we don’t quite have the level of antenna stabilization. To stabilize an antenna to a moving vehicle, you have to tie it to gyros, and use that in your computer loop, so it will help hold it still. We don’t have a communications link between System 2 and the vehicle it’s on. That is simple and could be added in the future. We just don’t have it on the current one.

Q: ADS still hasn’t been used operationally, are you concerned about accidental overexposure in a real world setting, for example, if someone trips and can't move away?

The current systems – any I’m sure any future systems – absolutely have hardware and safety limitations even beyond the operator’s control. The system is designed to make sure so we don’t defeat the blink response, no matter where somebody pops in. The system is designed with software that aids in range and aids in limiting how long it can be on, even if the operator holds the trigger down. Then, the operator in the loop here. They are being trained in tactics, techniques and procedures and the law of armed conflict and how to use this to engage someone, stop and gauge reaction and use it within the mission set. I think the combination of hardware, software and people in the loop, and someone watching the person in the loop, is going to be quite good.

Q: How long does it take for the automatic cutoff to kick in?

It can vary. But, again, I’m talking about the technology demonstrator system, the simple crawl, walk, and run approach. We’re probably at the crawl stage. Even these transmitters can only be on for 1,2,3,4,5,6 seconds. We do have a CW setting, but we don’t use it. The CW testing is mostly for measurement. This is still an assessment. The warfighters are still figuring out how to use it. We need to give them the flexibility. That type of setting can be disabled, if necessary, for other use.

Q: There was an April report of a test subject getting second-degree burn; can you provide any more details?

No, we have to stick with the public release statement. There’s going to be another one.

Q: What sort of improvements to the system do you envision making in the future, beyond System 2?

We have some small business innovative research projects going on to work on more rapid cool down magnets. Also, the compressor, the refrigerator we’re using to cool it down, has a harsh temperature limit. It’s this commercial product. It’s made to be in a nice hospital or a nice laboratory indoors with air conditioning. We have it sitting in the back of our humvee. It really hates hot weather. It’s something we didn’t have to fix for the [advanced concept technology demonstration] ACTD. The warfighter would like something that doesn’t mind hot weather. Another thing we’re trying to do in our innovative research is to get a more ruggedized compressor that doesn’t mind high temperature limits.

Q: Are you optimistic the weapon will be used eventually?

It’s been used 10,600 times.

Q: Yes, but what about operational use? It seems like there’s almost a psychological barrier, particularly because of its stigma as the “microwave weapon.”

It’s the millimeter wave weapon. I don’t control use. There are only a couple of these things, it’s up to the services to decide to use, or decide to buy, and get it into a program of record. This is just an advanced concept technology demonstration for the ground-based system. There are no established programs of record. There are some services looking at it, trying to make documents and do some planning. There’s not a real program of record. I think it’s a great success story for how far we’ve been able to advance and prove the capability. It does exactly what we say, now it’s simply the services’ time to decide.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/pain-ray-20-par.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 5, 2007, 2:15pm

The frontline soldiers who will run on solar power
By CHRISTOPHER LEAKE
Last updated at 23:19pm on 29th September 2007

Front-line troops could soon be carrying a new piece of hi-tech gear into battle - solar panels.

Soldiers will have them moulded on to their backpacks to help power the array of electronic equipment now used in combat.

The introduction of solar panels is being studied by the Ministry of Defence, which is keen to cut the use of traditional batteries. The new technology would be 'greener' than disposable batteries and much cheaper in the long run.



It could also help save troops' lives by eliminating the danger of equipment failing because of lack of power.

And it could save them from the risk of injury posed by traditional batteries, which can explode if exposed to fire or extreme desert temperatures.

Weighing just 14oz, the panels have been developed for the Australian army, whose troops and special forces regularly fight alongside elite British SAS units in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The panels are made from a secret compound and can produce hours of low-level energy to power radios, night-vision goggles, communications equipment and sensors to detect enemy positions.

They even work in cloudy conditions because they harness solar radiation rather than direct sunlight. The Australian military, which spent £1million on the project, says the battlefield has become more "power hungry", so finding an alternative battery source was vital.

Lieutenant Colonel John Baird, of the Australian army, said: "This is fighting in the information age, where every soldier is connected via sophisticated communications equipment and uses sensors to provide information on an enemy's position.

"But it uses a hell of a lot of power, and the disposable batteries we are using now are far from ideal because when they run out the soldiers have to return to base and take the used batteries with them.

"If we can use the sun's radiation to recharge equipment then that is a clear advantage."

Dr Gavin Tulloch, director of the solar-panel project, said: "The lithium used in traditional batteries can be dangerous, particularly in conflict situations, and the residual electrolytes are quite polluting.

"The military disposes of them very carefully, but obviously it takes a long time for them to break down. This is a win-win situation for the army because it addresses those problems as well as operational needs."

A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: "We are exploring a variety of battery technology and alternatives to reduce the environmental impact and transport burden that comes with battery use."

She added that the MoD already used solar panels to keep its unmanned Zephyr aircraft aloft at nearly 60,000ft. The Zephyr has set a world record for the longest unmanned flight.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/ar....in_page_id=1965

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 6, 2007, 10:19am

Source: US Department of Homeland Security
Date: October 6, 2007

Detecting Liquid Explosives On A Plane

After the plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airlines with liquid explosives was uncovered in London in August 2006, there has been pressure on the airline industry, and Homeland Security, to find new ways to not only detect liquids in baggage and on airline passengers, but also to figure out what they are. Now, the DHS Science & Technology Directorate (S&T) is teaming with scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to find a possible solution.


The DHS Science & Technology Directorate's SENSIT research will detect liquids and gels such as these. (Credit: DHS)

"Having to place your consumable liquids through the baggy routine when going through airport security may one day be history," says S&T Program Manager on the project, Mr. Brian Tait, "and that's going to make a lot of people very happy. This is a new screening prototype that definitely shows promise."

In late June, Los Alamos National Laboratory team successfully completed proof of concept of an extremely sensitive future screening technology. The new technology scans the magnetic changes of individual materials at the molecular level and stores them in a database, which then allows the differentiation and identification of many materials that may be packaged together or separately as they go through the screening process.

It uses the same technology that brain scans are performed with, and is based on ultra-low field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which is already being used in medical field for advanced brain imaging. The end goal is to eventually put it next to the current x-ray screener.

The SENSIT technology has already demonstrated the ability to differentiate more than four dozen materials considered "safe" for carrying onto aircraft --from everyday personal items like toothpaste to mouth wash -- to those that are considered hazardous .

"With the MRI signal, we want to distinguish between harmful items, and many common carry-on liquid consumables," says Tait. "The goal is reliable detection of liquids, with high throughput, that is non-contact, non-invasive, requires no radiation, produces no residue and uses the existing airport security portal."

SENSIT is one of S&T's Homeland Innovation Prototypes (HIPS) projects -- high-impact innovative technologies that have shown great promise and are on their way to being transitioned to industry for manufacturing and distribution.

"We're working hard on getting the SENSIT technology to an airport near you very soon," says S&T's Innovation Director, Roger McGinnis.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071002154017.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 11, 2007, 1:29am

Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs.

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 9, 2007; A03


Robotic fliers have been used by the military since World War II, but in the past decade their numbers and level of sophistication have increased enormously.

Vanessa Alarcon saw them while working at an antiwar rally in Lafayette Square last month.

"I heard someone say, 'Oh my god, look at those,' " the college senior from New York recalled. "I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?' They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."

Out in the crowd, Bernard Crane saw them, too.

"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "

That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.

Others think they are, well, dragonflies -- an ancient order of insects that even biologists concede look about as robotic as a living creature can look.

No agency admits to having deployed insect-size spy drones. But a number of U.S. government and private entities acknowledge they are trying. Some federally funded teams are even growing live insects with computer chips in them, with the goal of mounting spyware on their bodies and controlling their flight muscles remotely.

The robobugs could follow suspects, guide missiles to targets or navigate the crannies of collapsed buildings to find survivors.

The technical challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most experts doubt that fully working models exist yet.

"If you find something, let me know," said Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office.

But the CIA secretly developed a simple dragonfly snooper as long ago as the 1970s. And given recent advances, even skeptics say there is always a chance that some agency has quietly managed to make something operational.

"America can be pretty sneaky," said Tom Ehrhard, a retired Air Force colonel and expert in unmanned aerial vehicles who is now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonprofit Washington-based research institute.

Robotic fliers have been used by the military since World War II, but in the past decade their numbers and level of sophistication have increased enormously. Defense Department documents describe nearly 100 different models in use today, some as tiny as birds, and some the size of small planes.

All told, the nation's fleet of flying robots logged more than 160,000 flight hours last year -- a more than fourfold increase since 2003. A recent report by the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College warned that if traffic rules are not clarified soon, the glut of unmanned vehicles "could render military airspace chaotic and potentially dangerous."

But getting from bird size to bug size is not a simple matter of making everything smaller.

"You can't make a conventional robot of metal and ball bearings and just shrink the design down," said Ronald Fearing, a roboticist at the University of California at Berkeley. For one thing, the rules of aerodynamics change at very tiny scales and require wings that flap in precise ways -- a huge engineering challenge.

Only recently have scientists come to understand how insects fly -- a biomechanical feat that, despite the evidence before scientists' eyes, was for decades deemed "theoretically impossible." Just last month, researchers at Cornell University published a physics paper clarifying how dragonflies adjust the relative motions of their front and rear wings to save energy while hovering.

That kind of finding is important to roboticists because flapping fliers tend to be energy hogs, and batteries are heavy.

The CIA was among the earliest to tackle the problem. The "insectothopter," developed by the agency's Office of Research and Development 30 years ago, looked just like a dragonfly and contained a tiny gasoline engine to make the four wings flap. It flew but was ultimately declared a failure because it could not handle crosswinds.

Agency spokesman George Little said he could not talk about what the CIA may have done since then. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service also declined to discuss the topic.

Only the FBI offered a declarative denial. "We don't have anything like that," a spokesman said.

The Defense Department is trying, though.

In one approach, researchers funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are inserting computer chips into moth pupae -- the intermediate stage between a caterpillar and a flying adult -- and hatching them into healthy "cyborg moths."

The Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs -- camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles.

"You might recall that Gandalf the friendly wizard in the recent classic 'Lord of the Rings' used a moth to call in air support," DARPA program manager Amit Lal said at a symposium in August. Today, he said, "this science fiction vision is within the realm of reality."

A DARPA spokeswoman denied a reporter's request to interview Lal or others on the project.

The cyborg insect project has its share of doubters.

"I'll be seriously dead before that program deploys," said vice admiral Joe Dyer, former commander of the Naval Air Systems Command, now at iRobot in Burlington, Mass., which makes household and military robots.

By contrast, fully mechanical micro-fliers are advancing quickly.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology have made a "microbat ornithopter" that flies freely and fits in the palm of one's hand. A Vanderbilt University team has made a similar device.

With their sail-like wings, neither of those would be mistaken for insects. In July, however, a Harvard University team got a truly fly-like robot airborne, its synthetic wings buzzing at 120 beats per second.

"It showed that we can manufacture the articulated, high-speed structures that you need to re-create the complex wing motions that insects produce," said team leader Robert Wood.

The fly's vanishingly thin materials were machined with lasers, then folded into three-dimensional form "like a micro-origami," he said. Alternating electric fields make the wings flap. The whole thing weighs just 65 milligrams, or a little more than the plastic head of a push pin.

Still, it can fly only while attached to a threadlike tether that supplies power, evidence that significant hurdles remain.

In August, at the International Symposium on Flying Insects and Robots, held in Switzerland, Japanese researchers introduced radio-controlled fliers with four-inch wingspans that resemble hawk moths. Those who watch them fly, its creator wrote in the program, "feel something of 'living souls.' "

Others, taking a tip from the CIA, are making fliers that run on chemical fuels instead of batteries. The "entomopter," in early stages of development at the Georgia Institute of Technology and resembling a toy plane more than a bug, converts liquid fuel into a hot gas, which powers four flapping wings and ancillary equipment.

"You can get more energy out of a drop of gasoline than out of a battery the size of a drop of gasoline," said team leader Robert Michelson.

Even if the technical hurdles are overcome, insect-size fliers will always be risky investments.

"They can get eaten by a bird, they can get caught in a spider web," said Fearing of Berkeley. "No matter how smart you are -- you can put a Pentium in there -- if a bird comes at you at 30 miles per hour there's nothing you can do about it."

Protesters might even nab one with a net -- one of many reasons why Ehrhard, the former Air Force colonel, and other experts said they doubted that the hovering bugs spotted in Washington were spies.

So what was seen by Crane, Alarcon and a handful of others at the D.C. march -- and as far back as 2004, during the Republican National Convention in New York, when one observant but perhaps paranoid peace-march participant described on the Web "a jet-black dragonfly hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th avenue . . . watching us"?

They probably saw dragonflies, said Jerry Louton, an entomologist at the National Museum of Natural History. Washington is home to some large, spectacularly adorned dragonflies that "can knock your socks off," he said.

At the same time, he added, some details do not make sense. Three people at the D.C. event independently described a row of spheres, the size of small berries, attached along the tails of the big dragonflies -- an accoutrement that Louton could not explain. And all reported seeing at least three maneuvering in unison.

"Dragonflies never fly in a pack," he said.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice said her group is investigating witness reports and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests with several federal agencies. If such devices are being used to spy on political activists, she said, "it would be a significant violation of people's civil rights."

For many roboticists still struggling to get off the ground, however, that concern -- and their technology's potential role -- seems superfluous.

"I don't want people to get paranoid, but what can I say?" Fearing said. "Cellphone cameras are already everywhere. It's not that much different."

See video:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con....7100400958.html

See also DARPA's "Cyborg Concept":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/science/interactives/moth/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con....7100801434.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 12, 2007, 1:34am

IMI to unveil precision mortar shell
Ehud Zion Waldoks , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 9, 2007

Israel Military Industries (IMI) will unveil a precision 120 mm. mortar shell at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) exhibition in Washington this week.

The shell can be fitted to any 120 mm. launcher, which is already widely used all over the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan.

The shell has a range of 13 km. and can be guided in two different ways: either other IDF personnel mark the target via laser, which the shell then can hone in on, or by using GPS relayed via satellite.

Because it can be guided in, it will enable a target to be destroyed with one shot, thus reducing the number of mortar rounds needed to be put on target as well as transported to the battlefield. That in turn will greatly reduce the strain on logistics during battles.

The "brain" of the mortar shell is a combined computer, guidance and navigation system called "Pure Heart" which operates in real time. Because of its minimal size, it can be loaded onto almost any air or ground weapons system.

The need for such a weapon became clear after the Second Lebanon War, IMI said, and therefore they decided to focus on "smart" munitions.

IMI head Avi Felder said in a statement Tuesday that the shell was in advanced demonstration stages for the IDF as well as foreign armies. He added that combining the "Pure Heart" system with other munitions such as rockets and artillery shells could very well bring about a revolution in battlefield capabilities.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1191257265227&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 12, 2007, 1:39am

Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Weaving Batteries into Clothes

A new machine that makes nanostructured fibers could turn soldiers' uniforms into power supplies.

By Kevin Bullis

A novel machine that makes nanostructured fibers could be the key to a new generation of military uniforms that take on active functions such as generating and storing energy.


Wearable power: Researchers have developed technology that combines multiple materials into intricately structured fibers, such as those shown here (right). The researchers hope to make fibers that can store energy or convert sunlight into power, for use in soldiers’ uniforms.
Credit: (left) U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center, (right) Hills, Inc.

The fibers can be made of up to three different materials, arranged in regular, nanoscale patterns visible in cross section. (See slide show.) The machine, manufactured by Hills, of West Melbourne, FL, is one of only two in the world capable of producing such fibers, says Stephen Fossey, a researcher at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center, in Natick, MA. The machine is scheduled to be delivered early next year to the Natick facility, where it will serve as the centerpiece of a program geared to making multifunctional uniforms.

Among the machine's many potential uses is assembling fibers that act as rechargeable batteries. Angela Belcher, a professor of biological engineering and materials science and engineering at MIT, says that some of the sample structures the device has made could be useful for combining positive and negative battery electrodes and electrolytes into individual threads. Such threads could be woven into uniforms and paired with threads that act as fuel cells or photovoltaics.

The machine was featured last week as part of a workshop on wearable power held at the United States Army Research Laboratory, outside of Washington, DC. The workshop was part of a major push to develop better alternatives to today's batteries as foot soldiers come to depend more on electronic devices, from night-vision goggles and laser range finders to advanced radios and networked computers. Today, a typical platoon requires almost 900 batteries of up to seven different types for a five-day mission, says Charlene Mello, a member of the macromolecular-science team at the Natick soldier center. Besides being cumbersome to manage and carry, the batteries don't last very long, which could put soldiers in the position of having to change them in the middle of a fight.

What's needed are ways to store energy in less space and relieve soldiers of logistical burdens so that they can concentrate on their jobs, says Dave Schimmel, a project manager at the Natick facility who works with experimental technologies that are close to being tested in the field.

Proposed solutions include lightweight fuel cells and batteries molded to the shape of a soldier's body armor. The Natick machine is important for longer-range research on power sources that would simply disappear into the background.

The machine is a variant on a common manufacturing technology used to extrude polymers: heated materials are forced through a die and then drawn down to make thin fibers. Its ability to combine three different materials into intricate patterns, however, depends on separate control of the temperature of each material (the upper temperature limit is 350 ºC).

The machine can process materials besides polymers, which could be key to making functional fabrics. Metals with low melting points could be used to make conducting fibers. A wide array of inorganic materials that can be useful for batteries, fuel cells, and photovoltaics could be incorporated into the fibers by embedding them within polymers. The fibers, once formed into novel shapes, could also serve as templates for inorganic materials deposited using other techniques.

One of the more exotic possibilities is creating fibers from viruses that Belcher has genetically engineered to bind to and organize inorganic materials. She has already shown that the viruses can be used to make high-energy-density battery electrodes and fibers. The machine could combine battery electrodes with a polymer separator and electrolyte to form a complete battery. A similar approach could be used with photovoltaic materials. (Indeed, photovoltaic fibers made by other means have been demonstrated in the past.)

Among the cross-sectional patterns possible with the machine (and illustrated by the slide show accompanying this article) are some that look like sliced pies or concentric rings, and others that are much more complex. Once made, the fibers can be modified by dissolving certain polymers, leaving behind fibers with increased surface area. In one example, called "islands in the sea," a fiber thinner than a human hair is divided into dozens of nanoscale fibers. The machine can also produce fibers with cross sections that, instead of being circular, could have the shape of a cross or a three-lobed structure.

"Pretty much any cross section can be made," Fossey says. Indeed, what's lacking now is not the capabilities of the machine, he says, but enough researchers with ideas for how to use it.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/19487/page1/

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 12, 2007, 1:41am

Start for Pentagon Super-Sniper Scopes
By Noah Shachtman October 10, 2007 | 8:58:00 AM



The Pentagon's super-sniper program is under way. Back in April, we told you about "One Shot," DARPA's program to build scopes that compensate for the wind -- and boost snipers' kill-rates by ten-fold, in the process.

The first of those contracts has now been handed out to Lockheed Martin. It's a $2 million, nine-month deal to basic wind-measurement system. That'll be followed by an eighteen month project to build a prototype One Shot scope.

"Even a light gust has a huge impact on [snipers] and missing the target by over 1.5 meters at distances as short as 400 meters is not uncommon," notes DARPA program manager Deepak Varshneya. The agency wants its new scope to provide lethal precision at 2000 meters range, in winds up to 40 miles per hour. If it all works out as planned, American snipers will able to fire in a hurry -- "engag[ing] and pull[ing] the trigger" in "less than one second" -- and they won't miss, no matter how hard the wind blows.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/darpa-sniper-co.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 12, 2007, 2:25am

When Pork Flies
By Noah Shachtman October 11, 2007 | 12:52:00 PM



It only took 20 years and $63 million. But infamous DP-2 Vectored Thrust Aircraft finally made its first flight the other day -- "for a total of about 90 seconds," the San Diego Union Tribune reports.

By the way, that's two 45-second flights, not one minute-and-a-halfer, for the aeronautically-challenged plane that's been repeatedly pushed on the armed services by Congresscritters. The pair of takeoffs did not particularly impress the DP-2's legion of critics.

“What the video of the test flights on Sunday shows is the aircraft flying in extraordinarily ideal conditions with no blowing dust and no indication of any wind,” John Eney, a former head of the aircraft conceptual design group at the Naval Air Systems Command.,said. “The airplane that he's promoting for taking troops would have to be able to take people into the desert. If you blast that with your jet engines, you can bury yourself in a dust storm.”

At an earlier hearing, "Eney warned that the DP-2's system, which directs hot jet exhaust toward the ground, could burn troops who were rappelling out of the aircraft, which is one of its intended uses."

Check out Jason Vest's definitive history of the pork plane:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/theres_way_way_.html

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/rohrabacher_len.html


http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/when-pork-flies.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 12, 2007, 2:43am

Insect Drones 'Spotted' on U.S. Streets (Updated)
By Sharon Weinberger October 10, 2007 | 11:00:00 AM

I was incredibly remiss -- as one commenter pointed out -- in not linking to David Hambling's excellent post on beamed power for Dragonfly spies (where he also discusses a reported sightings of what one commenter thought might be a robo-critter) - see following. David pointed out that the idea wasn't totally far-fetched. The biggest limitation for these types of drones is power.

He wrote: "Beamed power micro UAVs would have obvious limitations – they're not going to be flying hundreds of miles away over enemy territory. But for covert surveillance in the domestic arena, they might be just the thing. I have no idea whether there are any dragonfly spies out there yet; but if there aren't now, there soon will be."

Do I think that dragonflies are already being used in the United States? Not likely. Why? First, because I've seen a lot of real dragonflies. They are beautiful and I love them. And yes, they sometimes look robotic -- that's just the bizarre, wonderful, cool thing about Dragonflies. Second, UAVs crash. That's just the nature of UAV technology. So my guess is that if the government was really using cyberbugs to spy, one of them would have crashed by now and the cat would be out of the proverbial bag.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/insect-drones-s.html

Beamed Power For Dragonfly Spies
By David Hambling September 21, 2007 | 11:51:00 AM



DANGER ROOM reader Justin posted this comment on yesterday's piece about the British Police's New Spy Drone :

During the Republican National Convention in 2004, I swear I saw a jet-black dragonfy hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th avenue. About six blocks later, marching toward Madison Sq. Garden, I saw another. Hovering. Motionless but for the wings beating. Dead center of the street, ten feet off the ground. Watching us.

In other words, I'm pretty sure smaller and stealthier gadgets are already in use for surveillance. Call me crazy.

Not that crazy. As far back as the 1970's the CIA were experimenting with a micro air vehicle which looked like a dragonfly. Flight International reported last year:

Developed during the 1970s, the CIA has displayed a mock-up of the micro UAV in its museum at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia since 2003. However until now no media organisation has been given access to the material that proved that the artificial dragonfly had been flight tested.

…. In the 1970s the CIA was interested in the dragonfly concept as a small unmanned surveillance device. Flight cannot reveal exactly what materials have been seen, but can confirm the four-winged robotic insect achieved sustained flight…. The CIA's entomopter dragonfly's power supply and actuation system for its wings are still highly classified subjects.



The CIA drone really does look like a real dragonfly. The problem was apparently with the flight control system, as the craft could not cope with crosswinds. This type of problem can be solved much more easily with modern electronics. The big issue with a craft so small is the power supply. Until we can get something as compact and efficient as the biological version (and there already ecobots that power themslves by digesting insects), the answer for robotic insects is likely to be beamed power.

There has been a lot of serious work on this already (and let's not talk about Tesla). As long ago as 1964, pioneer Bill Brown demonstrated a mini-helicopter powered by microwaves on the CBS News with Walter Cronkite. The craft was developed under a contract with the Air Force. NASA seem to believe that miocrowaves will be inherently inefficient because of how they spread out with range, and have been working on micro air vehicles remotely powered by laser.

But there has been more recent work on microwaves to power UAVs, using the body of the craft as an antenna to pick up power:

"We've already demonstrated we can transfer power with microwaves. We've performed tests on the safety issues of microwaves, and we've shown that having multiple ground stations [sending microwaves] is the best possible method, said Jenn. "Now we plan to show how we can power these UAVs using radar systems -- systems the Navy already has."

That was almost ten years ago. Beamed power micro UAVs would have obvious limitations – they're not going to be flying hundreds of miles away over enemy territory. But for covert surveillance in the domestic arena, they might be just the thing. I have no idea whether there are any dragonfly spies out there yet; but if there aren't now, there soon will be.

(Picture courtesy of Teresa Earl at the AFRL)

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/beamed-power-fo.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 12, 2007, 3:03am

Army "Future" vs. Insurgent Superbombs
By David Axe October 10, 2007 | 1:58:00 PM



The Army’s $120 $200+ billion Future Combat Systems – a light, networked family of vehicles intended to replace a third of the active tank and Bradley fleet — was conceived in the 1990s before Improvised Explosive Devices and Explosively Formed Penetrators (insurgent "superbombs") started demolishing U.S. forces in Iraq. So does the FCS concept still hold water?

No, according to Ana Marte and Elise Szabo in an August 2007 study for the Center for Defense Information:

Based on the deployment of prototypical [FCS] systems in Iraq since the beginning of the war there, analysts … are unaware that this concept has achieved even rudimentary feasibility. Indeed, the devastating success of enemy IEDs and [Explosively Formed Projectiles] in Iraq has led to the deployment of heavier armor, not lighter, and an acknowledgement that the enemy rarely permits itself to be found and identified by sensor hardware.

Army officials disagree. Program manager Major General Charles Cartwright insists that FCS is still the way to go, for it represents one way of breaking the endless cycle of “up-armoring” that has resulted in 15-ton “Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected” trucks replacing 7-ton Humvees in Iraq. “If all we’re doing is piling on armor, where does that stop?” Cartwright asks.

The key, officials say, is applying all the lessons learned in Iraq to make the FCS vehicles as survivable as possible in the event of a blast, while still counting on improved sensors and networks to spot and avoid bombs — in a sense, swapping some armor for more information. Even after four years of dirty, low-tech war in Iraq, the network is still “the most important thing to come out of FCS,” says Brigadier General James Terry, who’s responsible for developing FCS tactics.

The vehicles themselves have been redesigned in light of Iraq, Cartwright says. “We’ve learned an awful lot about IEDs and EFPs.” The general won’t go into specifics, but angled hulls to deflect blasts and new layered armor for defeating EFPs both surely play a role. Plus, they’re heavier. Long gone is the 20-ton weight limit and the requirement to fly aboard C-130s. FCS vehicles will be transported by C-17 and, more often, by ship.

The FCS brigades that actually deploy around 2015 won’t look at all like those in the original 1990s plan. In addition to the heavier FCS vehicles and all the robots, FCS brigades will probably include MRAPs upgraded with network terminals, sensors and new armor kits. The Army and Marines are still studying the exact mix of MRAPs and FCS vehicles, but Cartwright assures that “there are going to be wheels inside an FCS [brigade combat team].”

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/army-future-vs-.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 12, 2007, 3:06am

Lockheed's Stealth Waterplane (Updated)
By Sharon Weinberger October 11, 2007 | 9:14:36 AM



Defense giant Lockheed Martin has patented a "relatively small, stable, low-signature, fast, heavily-armed marine vessel." Dubbed a SWATH boat, as in "small waterplane area twin hull," the boat could operate from a larger ship, deploying into shallow coastal waters. As the patent describes:

The marine vessel includes an upper hull, two propulsion hulls, and two struts for coupling the propulsion hulls to the upper hull. The struts are segmented and are capable of reconfiguring the marine vessel. In one configuration, the vessel can be folded for launch and recovery. In a second configuration, the struts can be extended downwardly for cruising and surveillance. In a third configuration, the struts can be extended laterally from the upper hull to provide a minimum-draft configuration for approaching a beach.

Update:

Although the patent was granted just this month, ATACMS correctly points out that this is actually Lockheed's CHARC (pronounced "shark") which has been around as a concept ship for a while. As this Popular Mechanics article from 2004 describes (and with great concept art of the CHARC):

At a recent armaments convention, the company revealed its plans for blending the offensive capabilities of an attack helicopter with the mobility of a high-speed surface ship. The resulting Covert High-speed Attack and Reconnaissance Craft (CHARC) would be used in missions by special forces units and by the Navy to protect its vessels from small, armed speedboats and submarines.

This looks like an idea that Lockheed floated, but couldn't get a good bite on.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/lockheeds-swath.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 12, 2007, 3:32am

Darpa Goal: Psychic Doctors
By Noah Shachtman October 11, 2007 | 8:14:00 PM



Most of us start wheezing, or coughing, or sniffling -- then we go see a doctor, to get treated for the flu. The Pentagon's mad science division wants to flip that around: Constantly monitoring troops' health, so diseases can be spotted, before the first sniffle. It's like having a having a doctor with a stethoscope... and a crystal ball, too.

The Predicting Health and Disease (PHD) Program will generate methods to assess whether an individual will develop an infectious disease prior to the onset of symptoms. While current methods diagnose and treat after an individual reports to a physician, the PHD Program seeks to alter this paradigm by identifying changes in the baseline state of human health through frequent surveillance. The vision is to maintain 100-percent warfighter readiness by detecting, intervening, and eliminating disease before the emergence of symptoms.

DARPA doesn't say how the trick might be pulled off -- only that it will require, "at the minimum, innovative data analytic methodologies coupled with traditional and non-traditional medical diagnostic[s]." But the agency does know what kinds of illnesses it would like to spot.

We are mainly interested in viral, upper respiratory pathogens that have the potential for decreasing warfighter mission readiness, and occasionally result in aborted missions and significant warfighter morbidity. Pathogens of interest include influenza, parainfluenza, adenovirus, respiratory syncytial virus, and other similar viruses.

And since soldiers don't have time to wait, the agency wants the detection done in a hurry. "DARPA’s end goal is to create the technological breakthroughs required for the development of a field-portable, point-of-care health assessment system that is able to handle large throughput (100 or more analyses), in short time spans (under a 3-hour turnaround), at low costs."

Good luck, docs.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/darpas-nose-for.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 13, 2007, 1:11pm

Desktop naval gazers know a sub when they see one


Ship ahoy ... the two Chinese Jin Class submarines docked at the Bohai shipyard at Huludao, 400 km east of Beijing. Insets: The first Jin class sub; an Ohio-class US sub in transit and another Ohio class ballistic missile submarine in dry dock in Bangor, Washington state.
Photo: Google Earth

Stephen Hutcheon
October 12, 2007 - 2:01PM

Updated satellite imagery on Google Earth has revealed new evidence of China's nuclear submarine capability.

The discovery of what appears to be a second and possibly a third Jin class nuclear-powered submarine at a naval shipyard in north-eastern China has set armchair admirals' tongues wagging.

The find - the latest in a series of submersibles to surface on Google Earth and other online mapping services - was the work of Hans Kristensen, an analyst and blogger for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

Kristensen is the same man who discovered the first publicly available pictures of the secret Jin class Chinese submarine on Google Earth in July.

(The FAS is a non-profit organisation comprising scientists who believe they have an ethical obligation to share their knowledge with the public and influence government policy.)

"The significance of this lies in the fact that China has never before had an operational sea-based deterrent," said Sam Roggeveen, the blog editor at the Lowy Institute think tank and a former senior analyst at the Office of National Assessment.

The two submarines popped up on Google Earth after the the most recent imagery update. The photo was taken by a commercial satellite on May 3, 2007, according to Kristensen.

Before that update, images of the Bohai shipyard at Huludao - about 400km east of Beijing - showed an empty dock surrounded by ice floe.

Kristensen writes that it is unclear whether both of the subs in the updated image are new or whether one is the earlier vessel he revealed in July.

"The rapid launch of two or three Jin class [submarines] indicate that the Chinese navy feels confident it has overcome at least some of the technical problems that curtailed the Xia [an earlier model]," he writes.

According to published US intelligence reports, China is believed to be building five of these new submarines that have a capacity to launch ballistic nuclear missiles with a range of more than 8000km.

When operational, the subs would for the first time give China a seaborne nuclear deterrent and place Hawaii and Alaska in range from anything fired from within Chinese territorial waters.

"It's the standard belief that you need at least four [nuclear-armed]submarines in order to have one operational at any time - that's what the French and British do," said the Lowy Institute's Roggeveen.

The new images of the Chinese subs are the latest in a recent string of submarine sightings on free online mapping services.

Last month, Dan Twohig - who works as a deck officer on a ferry service - stumbled across an aerial image of a US nuclear-powered submarine in dry dock showing its secret seven-bladed propeller.

Twohig was looking for a new home on Microsoft's Virtual Earth mapping service - which is similar to Google Earth - when he spotted the Ohio class submarine in dry dock at the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Washington state.

The latest Google Earth imagery update has also revealed another Ohio class nuclear sub - this one travelling through the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the waterway that separates the US and Canada on the west coast of the North American continent.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/secret-su....ge#contentSwap1

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 15, 2007, 1:12am

Finally, the mini-bots have hit the newswires - the question though is will the story be killed or just allowed to die:

Reports: Dragonflies spying on protests

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- Some protesters suspect strange looking dragonflies spotted hovering over Washington anti-war protests are surveillance devices.



Protesters in New York also said they have seen the devices, which reportedly look something like tiny helicopters, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

The claims may seem far-fetched, but they are not completely implausible, the newspaper said.

A variety of unmanned vehicles already fly, the newspaper said, and though no federal agency has admitted to having tiny dragonfly-looking spy drones, some have tried.

Both the CIA and Defense Department have worked on ways to create insect-like drones, and technology is progressing all the time.

Some experts say an obscure branch of the government may have developed the devices already, the Post said.

If that is true, the world may soon find out. The Partnership for Civil Justice has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with several federal agencies to find out if the protesters are right.

http://www.newsdaily.com/TopNews/UPI-1-20071015-00553900-bc-us-spybugs.xml

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 19, 2007, 4:49am

Reaper UAV now in Afghanistan
Air Force Print News | October 12, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The Air Force announced Oct. 11 that the MQ-9 Reaper, the service's new hunter-killer unmanned aerial vehicle, is now flying operational missions in Afghanistan. The Reaper has completed 12 missions since its inaugural flight there Sept. 25, averaging about one sortie per day.



Capable of striking enemy targets with on-board weapons, the Reaper has conducted close-air support and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

Operational use of Reaper's advanced capabilities marks a step forward in the evolution of unmanned aerial systems. Air Force quality assurance evaluators gave a "thumbs up" to the aircraft's debut performance and have been pleased with its operation ever since.

"The Reaper is a significant evolution in capability for the Air Force," said Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff. "We've taken these aircraft from performing mainly as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms to carrying out true hunter-killer missions."

The Reaper is larger and more heavily-armed than the MQ-1 Predator. In addition to its traditional ISR capabilities, it is designed to attack time-sensitive targets with persistence and precision, and destroy or disable those targets. To date, Reaper operators have not been called upon to drop their weapons on enemy positions.

Like the Predator, the Reaper is launched, recovered and maintained at deployed locations, while being remotely operated by pilots and sensor operators at Creech Air Force Base, Nev. That is where the resemblance ends. The MQ-9 has nearly nine times the range, can fly twice as high and carries more munitions.

"It's a tremendous increase in our capability that will allow us to keep UAVs over the airspace of Afghanistan and Iraq in the future for a very long time," said Lt. Gen. Gary North, commander of U.S. Central Command Air Forces, who said the Reaper was a perfect complement to the Air Force's existing manned airborne platforms. "This is just another evolutionary step where technology is helping commanders on the battlefield to integrate great effects from the air into the ground commander's scheme of maneuver."

General North added that he expects the Reaper to bring a significant impact to military operations throughout the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility.

"The enemy knows we track them and they know that if and when they commit acts against their people and government, we will take action against them," General North said. "The Reaper is an incredible weapon in our quiver."

Approved by Air Combat Command in 2004, the Air Force currently has nine Reapers in its inventory.

http://www.military.com/features/0%2C15240%2C152564%2C00.html?ESRC=airforce.nl

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 20, 2007, 12:31pm

Classified satellite failure led to latest SBIRS delay
BY: Amy Butler, Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
10/16/2007

The loss of a classified satellite after only 7 seconds on orbit prompted the review of software and processors that has caused the most recent delay and a potential $1 billion overrun in Lockheed Martin's Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS), says Gary Payton, deputy under secretary of the Air Force for space programs.

The classified satellite went into a "safe hold," mode, which is initiated when a major anomaly disrupts its operation, and the failure of the safe-hold software made it impossible for ground-control to recover the spacecraft. Payton refers to it as a useless "ice cube."

The safe-hold equipment engages with an anomaly and is used to properly point a spacecraft's solar panels toward the sun and direct its communications nodes toward ground stations to collect instructions. The satellite remains in orbit.

Industry officials say Lockheed Martin designed the safe-hold software and architecture for both the failed satellite and SBIRS. This classified spacecraft has some similar architectural qualities to that of the upcoming SBIRS geosynchronous spacecraft, which is what triggered a review of its processors and architecture this summer.

The architectural flaw that has proven troublesome is the process by which the attitude control and telemetry units process data and communicate through a common bus. Highly precise timing for communications between the computers is crucial to ensure the safe-hold software can engage as needed. In this case, however, timing for processing various tasks is slow, prompting officials to declare what Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne calls a "no-fly" condition for SBIRS GEO-1.

Though Wynne predicts in a Sept. 26 memo to the Pentagon acquisition czar that this newest SBIRS problem could prompt a one-year delay and a $1 billion overrun, Lockheed Martin's predictions are less dire.

Payton says Air Force officials will know in November the exact extent of the delay and cost impact. To date, SBIRS has experienced five cost overruns of more than 15 percent. Its cost estimate has nearly tripled and now stands at $10.2 billion for three GEO satellites and four payloads designed to piggyback on satellites in highly elliptical orbit.

Hints of this latest problem began early this year, Payton says, when Lockheed Martin began seeing software discrepancy reports on the first GEO spacecraft at its Sunnyvale, Calif., facility. By summer, the number of those discrepancy reports began to outstrip the pace at which officials could remedy them, Payton says. These types of problems generally don't reveal themselves until the spacecraft begins testing in a space-representative environment in the thermal vacuum chamber, he adds.

One government official suggested that Lockheed Martin's decision to shift its program management staff from Sunnyvale, Calif., where the spacecraft are being assembled and tested, to Denver, Colo., could have contributed to the problem. Close, on-sight management might have tackled the problem more aggressively, this source suggests.

Meanwhile, as engineers work on a fix to the processor timing issue, Payton says the team will also continue work on the spacecraft in parallel. This is the main reason why he says the schedule impact may not amount to a full year.

http://aimpoints.hq.af.mil/display.cfm?id=21842

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 20, 2007, 12:44pm

Lockheed Tapped for X-Plane
By Sharon Weinberger October 18, 2007 | 9:34:40 AM

It may not be as exciting as a fighter, but at least it's something new: The Air Force Research Laboratory has selected Lockheed Martin to work on the second phase of a program aimed at building a composite-cargo aircraft, Defense Daily reports.



Bethesda-Md.-based Lockheed Martin said yesterday that the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has authorized it to proceed to the phase-two contract of the Advanced Composite Cargo Aircraft (ACCA) Flight Demonstration program. The Air Force anticipates that innovations from the ACCA program will contribute to it being able to acquire a new class of short-takeoff-and-landing transports circa 2020 that is significantly lighter and costs much less to produce than current air mobility platforms of the same size.

The next phase funds lockheed Martin to build a prototype of the plastic aircraft.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/lockheed-tapped.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 20, 2007, 12:48pm

Report: Pentagon Going Overboard on MRAPs
By Noah Shachtman October 18, 2007 | 9:50:00 AM

For years, the Pentagon ignored calls to put heavily-armored vehicles on the streets of Iraq. Now, according to a new report, there's a good chance the Defense Department is overreacting -- buying way, way too many of the vehicles than is militarily or financially responsible.



The Pentagon is on track to buy 15,000 or more of the Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs -- at a cost of nearly a million dollars each. There's no question that the tough, bomb-deflecting vehicles are life-savers; soldiers are so secure inside the MRAPs, they sometimes don't even know when they've been hit with an improvised explosive. There's also no question that guerrilla types can and will build bigger bombs, to knock even these well-armored MRAPs out. So the vehicles are a short- to mid-term fix, as Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway acknowledged on Monday. According to the AP, "Conway said he sees the current procurement plans for the vehicles as a moral imperative, but that a longer-term assessment of military requirements is probably necessary."

"Can I give a satisfactory answer to what we're going to be doing with those things in five or 10 years? Probably not," he said at a lunch sponsored by the Center for a New American Security. "Wrap them in shrink wrap and put them in asphalt somewhere is about the best thing that we can describe at this point. And as expensive as they are, that is probably not a good use of the taxpayers money."

The new report, from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, raises similar fiscal concerns. But it also questions whether the MRAPs are at odds with the American counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Counterintuitively, it may also be that a better way to reduce overall US casualties is to have personnel operate outside their vehicles. Successful counterinsurgency (COIN) operations, in particular, require close contact with the local population to provide them with security and to develop a working knowledge of the local environment that, together, produces the intelligence necessary to defeat an insurgent enemy force. This approach is similar to law enforcement techniques that emphasize policemen “walking the beat” in a neighborhood as opposed to merely driving through it in a squad car. Simply put, commanders may have to risk some casualties in the near term, by having their troops dismount, in order to develop the secure environment that yields the intelligence that will reduce the insurgent threat—and US casualties—over the longer term. Given this approach, which is consistent with the military’s new COIN doctrine, the MRAP—at least in this situation—may send the wrong message to troops in the field...

Counterinsurgent force commanders know that armor protects forces in the field; so, to mitigate the effects of enemy action and reduce casualties, commanders are drawn to increase the armor in their force. But heavily armored forces in a COIN environment are made less effective in accomplishing the tasks necessary to prevail.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/for-years-the-p.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 20, 2007, 1:03pm

Video: Robo-Weapon's Scary Twist (Updated)
By Noah Shachtman October 18, 2007 | 10:59:00 AM

The tragedy in South Africa that killed nine soldiers isn't the first time a robotic weapon has spun out of control.



Here's a video I obtained a few years back, showing a XM-101 Common Remotely Operated Weapons Station connected to an Apache chaingun, emptying its magazine of 30 mm high explosive rounds -- and then turning towards the camera, looking for new targets to nail. I'm told -- but cannot confirm -- that this footage was shot during a demonstration for VIPs, and that several members of Congress would've been in serious jeopardy, had the weapon not run out of ammo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7poF0M7H5M

UPDATE: I've changed the details above, thanks to info from KS, who "was there when it happened, and I was lying flat on the ground together with US Army officers."

See also:
XM101 Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS)
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m101-crows.htm


http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/video-robo-weap.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 20, 2007, 1:19pm

Roomba-Maker Unveils Kill-Bot
By Noah Shachtman October 17, 2007 | 10:39:18 AM



The makers of the cuter-than-cute robotic vacuum cleaner are rolling out a new machine: A big, fast-moving, semi-autonomous 'bot capable of killing a whole bunch of people at once.

Early versions of the iRobot Warrior X700 "are slated to be ready by the second half of next year," according to Army Times' Kris Osborn. And unlike previous offerings from iRobot -- which tended to be on the light, bordering-on-flimsy side -- the Warrior will weigh up to 250 pounds. It'll be able to lug a 500-pound payload, and carry 150 pounds with a newly muscular arm. Which will mean the machine is more than buff enough to pack heat.

“We’re looking at urban warfare... It can be deploying weapons systems. It can be doing re-supply operations, taking ammo or water to troops who are pinned down, perimeter security and building clearing,” Helen Greiner, iRobot chairman and co-founder, tells Army Times.

“Right now, it can go 10 miles per hour. When we finish the development, it will be able to do a four-minute mile,” said retired U.S. Navy Vice Adm. Joe Dyer, iRobot’s president of the government and industrial division. “You are starting to see the first robot that can really haul your pack and be not only a partner but be a stronger and faster partner.”

Unlike other armed robots -- which are entirely remote-controlled -- the Warriors are "being engineered with advanced software, giving them the ability to perform some battlefield functions autonomously."



“The software says, ‘Hey, robot, get back up yourself.’ If you lose [communications], right now you have to go get the robot,” Dyer said. “A capability they are building into PackBot is if you lose comms, go back to where you could talk last and re-establish comms on your own.”

At the same time, a key dimension to the Warrior X700 is its ability to protect soldiers by firing weapons such as a machine gun or 40mm explosive round.

“The Warrior has the stability and the engineering to be a weapons platform,” Dyer said. One Warrior variant is outfitted with an electronic firing system with four small barrels able to shoot as many as 16 rounds a second when firing simultaneously. The robot-mounted weapons shoot as far as 800 meters, according to officials at Metal Storm, the Brisbane, Australia-based company that makes the firing system. [Uh oh -- ed.]


“We have an inducted firing system which electronically creates an electric field that ignites the primer or the sensor,” a Metal Storm official said. “What it means is it is totally electronic. There are no moving parts apart from the rounds themselves. They can be sealed so it is resistant to weather conditions.”

Being fully electronic, it marries in well with a robotic platform and an electronic fire control, the official said.

“What we are focusing on at the moment is 40mm, so we’re dealing with high-explosive grenades or air-burst rounds. We also have less-than-lethal rounds and [improvised explosive device] disruptor rounds,” he said.

Recently, iRobot competitor Foster-Miller already has three armed robots in Iraq. The company unveiled a new, tougher model last week. iRobot has other armed offerings, too. The bot-makers already teamed with up Taser International to build a stun gun-equipped robot.

Re current stun gun-equipped robot, see:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/06/taser-armed-bot.html


http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/roomba-maker-un.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 20, 2007, 1:39pm

Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14
By Noah Shachtman October 18, 2007 | 11:00:00 AM



We're not used to thinking of them this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic -- picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday."

SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is not yet known...

Media reports say the shooting exercise, using live ammunition, took place at the SA Army's Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape, as part of an annual force preparation endeavour.

Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have," he said. "It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers."

Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if “the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found."

The anti-aircraft weapon, an Oerlikon GDF-005, is designed to use passive and active radar, as well as laser target designators range finders, to lock on to "high-speed, low-flying aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and cruise missiles." In "automatic mode," the weapon feeds targeting data from the fire control unit straight to the pair of 35mm guns, and reloads on its own when its emptied its magazine.

Electronics engineer and defence company CEO Richard Young says he can't believe the incident was purely a mechanical fault. He says his company, C2I2, in the mid 1990s, was involved in two air defence artillery upgrade programmes, dubbed Projects Catchy and Dart.

During the shooting trials at Armscor's Alkantpan shooting range, “I personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” Young says. “They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging. The weapon eventually knocked the pol[e]s down.”

According to The Star, "a female artillery officer risked her life... in a desperate bid " to save members of her battery from the gun."

But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.

By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/robot-cannon-ki.html


Inside the Robo-Cannon Rampage (Updated)
By Noah Shachtman October 19, 2007 | 3:41:00 PM

A South African robotic cannon went out of control, killing nine, "immediately after technicians had finished repairing the weapon," the Mail & Guardian reports.



A burst of explosive shells, lasting one-eighth of a second, from the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun killed nine soldiers and injured 15 others...

Explaining the circumstances around the incident, which happened last Friday, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota told South Africa's National Assembly that he training exercise had involved eight guns positioned 20m apart in a line facing north.

The day was the first on which the soldiers involved had used "live" ammunition in a training exercise... Each gun [the picture above is of a Chinese knock-off -- ed.] had a crew of four. The gun on which the incident occurred was the one on the far right, at the east end of the line.

"As all guns commenced firing, the gun on the far right ... had a stoppage. This is something that happens from time to time. Technicians repaired this gun, while all the other guns continued firing. This is a very normal drill.

"As they continued firing, after the gun was fixed, it swung completely to the left, and one barrel fired off a burst of 15 to 20 shots in one-eighth of a second. The ... gun immediately to the left was hit.

"This fatal burst then killed or injured members of all the guns to the left. The effect was therefore that all of those killed or injured [were hit] from the right and lost right hands, or right legs, or lost their lives."

He confirmed the total number killed was nine, and 15 injured.


Lekota said the eight guns had been used the day before, "and each one had successfully fired between 500 and 800 rounds each".

He further explained the guns could be set on either "manual or electric firing mode". On the day, they had all been set on manual. This meant they were sighted on the target, and the barrel then clamped into position "so that the barrel should not move from side to side".

"When firing in electric mode, safety boundaries are computerised and the barrels are not clamped, but move within the boundaries set in advance."

UPDATE: Jim O'Halloran of Jane's Land-Based Air Defence is telling New Scientist that the incident was probably caused by "simple mechanical failure."

"Like many weapons these days you can fire this gun from a remote position," says O'Halloran, "but it's not a robotic weapon." While the gun is typically used with automated target-tracking systems, the decision to fire is left to the operator.

Okay, the last thing I feel like doing on a Friday afternoon is get into a semantic debate about what does or does not constitute a robotic system. However, we call remote-controlled machines like these robots -- and they don't automatically track and slew to targets, or automatically reload once their guns have been fired. Anyway...

"If a shell was jammed in the breech and the cordite then fired, it could set off the ammunition in the canisters," says O'Halloran. The force of that explosion could easily spin the turret around, he notes. "It's a very tragic accident, but it is not a robot gone out of control."

"I think it is bad luck more than anything else, the shells move through the gun so fast you only have to be a fraction out for something to go wrong," O'Halloran says, adding that weapons are usually subject to rigorous tests to try and ensure that they rarely, if ever, malfunction.

The Mark 5 model used by the South African army, as well as forces around the world was first produced in 1985 and is well known in the industry. "I've never heard of this kind of incident before," says O'Halloran, "and I think it is unlikely to happen again."

While we're waiting to find out, Matt Armstrong would like you all to fill out a survey on 'bots on the battlefield.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/inside-the-robo.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 23, 2007, 1:23pm


Super-strong body armour in sight
By Paul Rincon
Science reporter, BBC News


Future soldier concept. Image: US Army/Sgt Lorie Jewell.

A new type of carbon fibre, developed at the University of Cambridge, could be woven into super-strong body armour for the military and law enforcement.

The researchers say their material is already several times stronger, tougher and stiffer than fibres currently used to make protective armour.

The lightweight fibre, made up of millions of tiny carbon nanotubes, is starting to reveal exciting properties.

Carbon nanotubes are hollow cylinders of carbon just one atom thick.

The new material was developed by a group at the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy at Cambridge.

It has emerged from efforts to create the world's strongest man-made fibre.

Our fibre is up there with the existing high performance fibres
Alan Windle, University of Cambridge

"These nanotube fibres possess characteristics which enable them to be woven as a cloth, or incorporated into composite materials to produce super-strong products," said Professor Windle.

For body armour, the strength of fibres in a fabric is a critical parameter. Strain-to-failure - in other words how much the material can extend before it breaks - is another.

The fibre created in Cambridge is very strong, lightweight and good at absorbing energy in the form of fragments travelling at very high velocity.


Reel of carbon nanotube fibre. Image courtesy of Alan Windle/University of Cambridge.

Carbon nanotube filaments are lightweight but very, very strong
"Our fibre is up there with the existing high performance fibres such as Kevlar", said Professor Windle.

But he added: "We've seen bits that are much better than Kevlar in all respects".

The work at Cambridge has already attracted interest from the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Army.

But the new material could also find applications in the area of hi-tech "smart" clothing, bomb-proof refuse bins, flexible solar panels, and, eventually, as a replacement for copper wire in transmitting electrical power and signals.

The method for making the fibre is simple but ingenious.

'Elastic smoke'

A hydrocarbon feedstock, such as ethanol, is injected into the furnace along with a small amount of iron-based catalyst.

Inside the furnace, this feedstock is broken down into hydrogen and carbon. The carbon is then chemically "re-built" on particles of iron catalyst as long, thin-walled nanotubes.

CARBON NANOTUBES

Single-walled carbon nanotube. Image courtesy of Alan Windle/University of Cambridge.
Made by folding over layers of graphite so they join at each end, forming a cylinder
Measure just a few billionths of a metre across
When pulled along their axes, are 5-10 times stronger than strongest known fibre
Can have single walls or multiple walls

"It makes particles of carbon that are like smoke. But because the nanotubes are entangled, the smoke we make is elastic," explains Professor Windle.

To the eye, this "elastic smoke" looks a bit like an ever-expanding dark "sock".

To begin winding it up, a rod is inserted into the furnace from below to grab one end of the sock and yank it down. This stretches the sock into a filament that can be wound up continuously on a reel.

The researchers are currently seeking funds to investigate whether the method can be upgraded from a laboratory to an industrial process.

Cambridge Enterprise Limited, the commercialisation office of the University of Cambridge, filed an initial patent application in July 2003.

It has now granted a licence to Q-Flo Limited, a university spin-out company, which will exploit the technology.

Nanotubes are made from graphite which is - along with diamond - one of two common forms carbon takes in nature. In graphite, carbon atoms are bonded in hexagon structures to form flat layers that are stacked on top of one another like sheets of paper.

To make nanotubes, scientists take individual graphite layers and fold them over so they join at either edge to form cylinders.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7038686.stm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 25, 2007, 11:08am

German Chocolate Bar Grenade Shows Cocoa Is Bad for Your Health After All



The MI5 says this chocolate bar is really a grenade. Made of steel and covered in chocolate, the Nazis designed this during WWII to kill British Royals, who were thought to be chocoholic and stupid. The Royals only had to open these and seven seconds later they will be dead. No bomb ever arrived to Britain, so the Royals remained as chocoholic and stupid as they ever where.

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2007/09/german_chocolate_bar_grenade_s.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 26, 2007, 11:16am

October 24, 2007
Terrorist Insects

Yet another movie-plot threat to worry about:

One of the cheapest and most destructive weapons available to terrorists today is also one of the most widely ignored: insects. These biological warfare agents are easy to sneak across borders, reproduce quickly, spread disease, and devastate crops in an indefatigable march. Our stores of grain could be ravaged by the khapra beetle, cotton and soybean fields decimated by the Egyptian cottonworm, citrus and cotton crops stripped by the false codling moth, and vegetable fields pummeled by the cabbage moth. The costs could easily escalate into the billions of dollars, and the resulting disruption of our food supply - and our sense of well-being - could be devastating. Yet the government focuses on shoe bombs and anthrax while virtually ignoring insect insurgents.

[...]

Seeing the potential, military strategists have been keen to conscript insects during war. In World War II, the French and Germans pursued the mass production and dispersion of Colorado potato beetles to destroy enemy food supplies. The Japanese military, meanwhile, sprayed disease-carrying fleas from low-flying airplanes and dropped bombs packed with flies and a slurry of cholera bacteria. The Japanese killed at least 440,000 Chinese using plague-infected fleas and cholera-coated flies, according to a 2002 international symposium of historians.

During the Cold War, the US military planned a facility to produce 100 million yellow-fever-infected mosquitoes a month, produced an "Entomological Warfare Target Analysis" of vulnerable sites in the Soviet Union and among its allies, and tested the dispersal and biting capacity of (uninfected) mosquitoes by secretly dropping the insects over American cities.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/10/terrorist_insec.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 26, 2007, 11:31am

Before you get too excited there is nothing new about the technology per se. Rather it is simply an indication where the Defense budget is going to be spent:

Air Force Eyes Energy Shields, Microwave Bombs
By Noah Shachtman October 25, 2007 | 7:04:00 AM

Energy shields, microwave bombs, and laser-firing gunships -- those are just a few of the ideas the Air Force has in mind for its future arsenal.



Susan Thornton, head of the Air Force Research Lab's Directed Energy Directorate, laid out the sci-fi-style vision at the 33rd Annual Air Armament Symposium, held earlier this month. In it, she touts a high-powered microwave munition, capable of destroying of everything from "WMD Production Facilities" to "Cyber War Targets." The blasts from such a weapon "enables attack[s] on high value electronic targets with minimal collateral damage," Thornton notes, "virtually eliminating high post-conflict reconstruction costs!!!!"

Energy can also be used a defense, she notes. Using a combination of lethal and non-lethal weaponry, Thornton foresees a layered protection system... to detect, identify, and engage threats with beams of energy. An accompanying illustration shows an energy bubble -- straight out of Star Wars -- shielding a city. Incoming missiles bounce away, presumably harmlessly. (Sharon and David Hambling have both written about the idea of plasma shields here, recently.)

In her presentation, Thornton also touts a "Tactical Airborne High Energy Laser" -- a C-130 Hercules turboprop plane, outfitted with a blaster weapon. But unlike the shield project, say, the Air Force has already sunk millions of dollars into researching and developing such a system, also known as the "Advanced Tactical Laser." A flight demonstration is currently scheduled for 2015, according to Inside the Air Force.

Once the period for the advanced concept technology development is completed, the plane will be transferred to Air Combat Command for an extended user evaluation, which will last until the end of fiscal year 2010, Lawrence Grimes, production line lead for Precision Engagement for the lab’s Directed Energy Directorate, said in an Oct. 10 interview.

Currently, the laser system is equipped with a rudimentary targeting system. The pilot can identify his target, put it in his cross hairs and then press a firing button to engage the laser, Grimes said. In the future, the lab intends to develop a fully autonomous targeting system, he added.

Using the current technology, the developers are hoping to “let the pilots fly [the aircraft] around and see how they feel with being able to do a Buck Rogers-type thing and shoot a laser from a distance they’re not used to,” Grimes said. “The mere fact that we have a beam control system on there allows them to actually see out farther than they normally do, because most sensors on aircraft have very small apertures. The one on this system is considerably bigger and actually affords them an opportunity to see at higher resolutions at longer distances.”

Currently, the plane uses a chemical-powered laser -- which is problematic, for all kinds of reasons. But the Air Force is hoping to have an electric-powered laser by 2010 or so. Assuming that works, flight tests could begin about five years later.

The primary objective of the directed energy initiative is to create a laser for an offensive mission, Grimes said. Though the specific mission would depend on the platform on which they are integrated, they would mainly be engaging tactical, air-to-ground targets. Early on, they may be as simple as starting fires on the ground and other “disruptive” tasks, Grimes said.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/af-on-de.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 26, 2007, 11:35am

Drones, Everywhere
By Noah Shachtman October 24, 2007 | 9:24:58 AM

We tend to think of robotic planes as some kind of American-only invention. But just about every decent-sized military on the planet is building a unmanned air force of their own.

The new issue of Defense Update takes a look at all of the new flying robo-spies from around the world. Drones from Switzerland, Turkey, Israel, and Italy are all featured... as are models for a pair of unmanned aircraft from China. One is a "jet-powered High Altitude Long Endurance platform," the other, a fast recce [reconnaissance] super-drone called DarkSword." (Cue the ominous music.)

But my favorite drone of the bunch has to be this odd-looking contraption from the European aerospace conglomerate EADS:



http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/drones-everywhe.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 26, 2007, 11:41am

I Was a Pain Ray Guinea Pig

By Sharon Weinberger October 25, 2007 | 4:20:59 PM

Today, I broke my cardinal rule of defense reporting: never be a test subject for a supposedly "nonlethal" weapon. I adopted this rule some time back at a trade show, when I saw somebody pick up a dazzling laser from a booth and point it as his own face at close range. Basically, untrained people are prone to do stupid stuff around nonlethal weapons and I'm really fond of my central field of vision, so why take the risk?

But today, the military offered the second opportunity ever for reporters to be blasted by the Active Denial System, a millimeter wave beam weapon designed to heat up the very tippy top layer of skin. Considering that they've blasted the thing some 10,000 plus times, and at several hundred people, I thought, "Oh why not?" The demonstration was held today at Quantico in Virginia, where a couple dozen reporters -- along with military personnel -- volunteered for a demo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRBuohFBsFU

All you had to sign was a "release of liability" and a "general talent release" that "grants the U.S. Government the right to "use my name, or that of said infant or minor child ... in any matter and for any purpose whatsoever; and to do the same perpetually." [Note to U.S. government: I may have forgot to sign and turn that second form in. Sorry!]

That's right, I was shot -- not once, but twice -- by the military's oh-so-scary Active Denial System. Yes, I realize the video is rather undramatic. Let me get to that.

In the briefings leading up to the test, Susan LeVine, of the Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate, told us that ADS felt like being burned by a hairdryer at the hairdresser (women will understand this one better than men).

Colonel Kirk Hymes, head of the Directorate, described it like the heat on your face when you open the oven to baste a Thanksgiving Turkey (I guess that's a guy thing, because women don't stick their heads in the oven when they baste a turkey).

Now, here's the immediate reaction of three reporters after going under the beam today:

"Can you do my other side?" one guy asked.

"That felt great," another reporter quipped.

"I want to go, again," a third requested.

Lesson number one: The Active Denial System does not like the rain, or as Air Force Research Lab scientist Diana Loree put it, rain "attenuates the beam." And it wasn't just raining down at Quantico today, there was water everywhere. On the equipment, on the ground, and forming in huge, muddy puddles. We were all drenched and cold. Frankly, getting that nice blast of heat from ADS was the best part of my day.

Lesson number two: It's hard to say whether the rain issue (which has always been acknowledged as a factor in the ADS beam) makes any difference in the end. After all, everyone jumped out of the beam within a couple of seconds. And, as the officials at the test noted, in real world operations, we would likely be closer to the beam (we were positioned over 500 meters away from the ADS system).

That said, my initial thought was: If it doesn't cut it as a weapon, it could be a nice space heater in a pinch.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/the-active-can-.html

Further:

2008: Year of the Pain Ray?
By Sharon Weinberger October 26, 2007 | 8:00:00 AM

It's been promised for years and yeas. But at a demonstration and briefing yesterday at Quantico, nonlethal weapons head Col. Kirk Hymes said that calendar year 2008 could indeed be the year the Active Denial System -- the so-called nonlethal "pain ray" -- is deployed to Iraq. That is, if it clears a long, long series of hurdles.

ADS still has to complete its Military Utility Assessment, another review, and then a sign off by the Secretary of Defense (or the deputy). But if that all that happens, ADS could, maybe, possibly might be fielded to Iraq with the Marines, who made the formal request for the weapon last year.

The question is, should it be deployed? For die-hard critics, no amount of testing will ever be enough, and that's part of the problem. On one hand, it is now conventional wisdom that no nonlethal system has endured as many tests and reviews as ADS. The military -- as the video here shows -- has demonstrated the system again and again on its own troops. It's even demonstrated in on reporters (twice now). As I wrote yesterday about my own experience being zapped, even on a rainy day, and at a great distance, it basically works as advertised.

If a few blisters are really the worst of the mishaps, well, that doesn't sound all that bad. It's better, as the military often likes to point out, than being shot by a lethal weapon. And I fully believe Col. Hymes when he says that having been Tasered, he'd much rather be shot by the ADS. Me, too, and I haven't even been Tasered.

See Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D088b7gMIEs

But perhaps the bigger question of ADS is simply the time and bureaucracy required to deploy it. The current system is over a decade in the making, not to mention the years of prior related research. This is not to say that ADS needs less or more review, or that is should or shouldn't be deployed, but that -- like with all Pentagon-funded weapons -- the time taken to field ADS should prompt the Defense Department leadership to think not just about how it moves such weapons through the bureaucracy, but also about which weapons it chooses to develop in the first place.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/2008-year-of-th.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 31, 2007, 3:56am

Heat Beam Targets 'Angry Mob'
By Sharon Weinberger October 29, 2007 | 12:42:05 PM

Last week, the military demonstrated its millimeter-wave nonlethal weapon, the Active Denial System, to reporters at Quantico.

They also released some new video, including this clip that shows the heat beam weapon used against a "mob" (or at least military personnel imitating a mob):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpjxjLRKqw8

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/heat-beam-targe.html#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 31, 2007, 4:01am

AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance
By Ryan Singel October 29, 2007 | 5:58:18 PM



From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes.

An AT&T research paper published in 2001 and unearthed today by Andrew Appel at Freedom to Tinker shows how the phone company uses Hancock-coded software to crunch through tens of millions of long distance phone records a night to draw up what AT&T calls "communities of interest" -- i.e., calling circles that show who is talking to whom.

The system was built in the late 1990s to develop marketing leads, and as a security tool to see if new customers called the same numbers as previously cut-off fraudsters -- something the paper refers to as "guilt by association."

But it's of interest to THREAT LEVEL because of recent revelations that the FBI has been requesting "communities of interest" records from phone companies under the USA PATRIOT Act without a warrant. Where the bureau got the idea that phone companies collect such data has, until now, been a mystery.

According to a letter from Verizon to a congressional committee earlier this month, the FBI has been asking Verizon for "community of interest" records on some of its customers out to two generations -- i.e., not just the people that communicated with an FBI target, but also those who talked to people who talked to an FBI target. Verizon, though, doesn't create those records and couldn't comply. Now it appears that AT&T invented the concept and the technology. It even owns a patent on some of its data mining methods, issued to two of Hancock's creators in 2002.

Programs written in Hancock work by analyzing data as it flows into a data warehouse. That differentiates the language from traditional data-mining applications which tend to look for patterns in static databases. A 2004 paper published in ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems shows how Hancock code can sift calling card records, long distance calls, IP addresses and internet traffic dumps, and even track the physical movements of mobile phone customers as their signal moves from cell site to cell site.

With Hancock, "analysts could store sufficiently precise information to enable new applications previously thought to be infeasible," the program authors wrote. AT&T uses Hancock code to sift 9 GB of telephone traffic data a night, according to the paper.

The good news for budding data miners is that Hancock's source code and binaries (now up to version 2.0) are available free to noncommercial users from an AT&T Research website.

The instruction manual ( http://www.research.att.com/~kfisher/hancock/manual.pdf ) is also free, and old-timers will appreciate its spare Kernighan & Ritchie style. The manual even includes a few sample programs in the style of K&R's Hello World, but coded specifically to handle data collected by AT&T's phone and internet switches. This one reads in a dump of internet headers, computes what IP addresses were visited, makes a record and prints them out, in less than 40 lines of code.

#include "ipRec.hh"
#include "ihash.h"

hash_table *ofInterest;

int inSet (ipPacket_t * p)
{
if (hash_get (ofInterest, p->source.hash_value) == 1)
return 1;
if (hash_get (ofInterest, p->dest.hash_value) == 1)
return 1;
return 0;
}
void sig_main (ipAddr_s addrs < l:>,
ipPacket_s packets < p:>)
{
/* code to set up hash table */
ofInterest = hash_empty ();
iterate
(over addrs) {
event (ipAddr_t * addr) {
if (hash_insert (ofInterest, addr->hash_value, 1) < 0)
}
}
/* code to select packets */
iterate
(over packets
filteredby inSet)
{
event (ipPacket_t * p)
{
printPacketInfo (p);
}
};
}

Another sample program included in the manual shows how a Hancock program could create historical maps of a person's travels by recording nightly what cell phone towers a person's phone had used or pinged throughout a day.

AT&T is currently defending itself in federal court from allegations that it installed, on behalf of the NSA, secret internet spying rooms in its domestic internet switching facilities. AT&T and Verizon are also accused of giving the NSA access to billions of Americans' phone records, in order to data-mine them to spot suspected terrorists, and presumably to identify targets for warrantless wiretapping.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/att-invents-pro.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Oct 31, 2007, 4:27am

Dragonfly Drones in Flight
By David Hambling October 29, 2007 | 11:00:00 AM

More than a few people were skeptical, when the Washington Post picked up on our story about robotic dragonfly spies. The paper quoted eyewitness accounts -- but failed to find any agency who would admit to using this type of micro air vehicle.

The FBI said they didn't have one. Homeland Security wouldn't comment. Neither would the CIA, whose previous robo-dragonfly effort in the 70's was shelved due to its inability to handle crosswinds. It can now be seen in their online museum*. DARPA said they were interested in the idea but still working on it.

"If you find something, let me know," Gary Anderson of the Pentagon's Rapid Reaction Technology Office told the Washington Post reporter.

No wonder the Post ended up with an arched eyebrow. However, if they don’t think there are operational, camera-carrying micro air vehicles that look like dragonflies maybe they should take a look the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hwvnXCOBdY

Or check out the at some of the impressive footage of the DelFly II ( http://www.delfly.nl/index.php?site=DI&menu=&lang=en ) , a craft built by a team at the Delft University of Technology. This video includes some footages from the DelFly's camera:

http://www.delfly.nl/media/movies/promo%20videa%20very%20smal.wmv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hwvnXCOBdY

http://www.delfly.nl/media/movies/outdoor.wmv

Bart Remes, Developer of the Delfly, explains the unusual approach in building it. First you get your micro air vehicle working, then you make it smaller. And smaller.

"We start with a system that works (DelFly I), but which on has only forward flight, and make it smaller and better. DelFly II is smaller and more robust, has longer flight time, is able to hover, take off and land vertically, can even fly backwards. It can fly against the ceiling and walls without crashing - all this with a camera on board, so it is a useful platform."

The next stage is DelFly Micro with a ten-centimeter wingspan (pictured) which is already in development. This will be followed by DelFly nano with a wingspan of just five cemtimetres. Miniaturising the flight system is not necessarily a problem – it's the rest of it.



"Developing the electronics, battery, camera, controls - that's the hardest part," says Remes.

He also has experience of flying the craft in wind, and finds that it is not the show-stopper that many people assume.

"Flying outdoors is no problem. If the wind is higher than the max forward velocity, you float with the wind like insects do to go from one spot to the other. DelFly II is a inherent stable platform so flying outdoors with gusts is no problem - if you stop steering DelFly II will simply assume a stable position."

It's robustness means that impacts with obstacles or the ground will not damage it, which should mean that crashes are not a problem. The DelFly II has a maximum speed of 15 meters/second -- over 30 mph -- and an endurance of at least 15 minutes.

It won't just be used for spying on people. Remes suggests that it could be used to locate victims in collapsed buildings, or with a chemical sensor it can track down airborne pollution.

Perhaps there is nothing as advanced as DelFly in the US – in which case DARPA, the Rapid Reaction Technology Office and rest should come and talk to the DelFly team.

* I suspect the CIA may not have dropped the idea entirely. At a Christmas party thrown by the CIA's Office of Technical Services in 2000, Wired reported on a number of gadgets teasingly on display, noting "A dragonfly ornament's wings move at hummingbird speed ..."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/10/dragonfly-uav-v.html#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by alienops on Oct 31, 2007, 5:04pm

Anyone here think this technology has something to do with all the UFO sightings this past year?
This site has them all the major ones listed in order UFOSfrom all over the world.

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 1, 2007, 11:33am

Short answer: No.

In regard to the above post from alienops (aka seeker), I find the remarks describing the link to be most misleading and deceptive. Equally I am quite humorless about debunkers (in any shape or form) misrepresenting their identity and/or intent. Ergo, alienops is no more.

BB

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 1, 2007, 11:34am


Invisible tank ready for service by 2012

From correspondents in London

November 02, 2007 12:00am

NEW technology that can make tanks invisible has been unveiled by Britain's Ministry of Defence.

In secret trials last week, the army said it had made a vehicle completely disappear and predicted an invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012.

The new technology uses cameras and projectors to beam images of the surrounding landscape onto a tank.

The result is that anyone looking in the direction of the vehicle only sees what is beyond it and not the tank itself.

A soldier who was at the trials said, "This technology is incredible.

"If I hadn't been present I wouldn't have believed it.

"I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees - but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun."

How the technology works in combat is very sensitive, but the Defence Ministry is believed to be also testing a military jacket that works on the same principles.

It is the type of innovation normally associated with James Bond.

The brains behind the technology, Prof Sir John Pendry, said the next step was to make a tank invisible without the cameras and projectors.

The Daily Mail, in The Herald Sun

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22689812-2,00.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 6, 2007, 8:48pm

Thinking quietly about the Dragonfly drones (Reply #89 on this thread), there is nothing terribly novel about them. I say this because of an advert I found in my local media advertising a micro helicopter which is powered by a rechargeable battery. Nothing special about that until you realize that the battery is recharged by an infrared beam from the control unit. In other words, the same design principles which apply to the Dragonfly drones. For your edification, if nothing else:

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 6, 2007, 8:53pm

Our technology may be sophisticated but that's as good as it gets:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8KKtO2SSk4

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 6, 2007, 9:08pm

Area 51's Robotic Spy Bird
By David Hambling November 06, 2007 | 4:54:00 AM



Those robo-dragonflies may not be the only creatures keeping an eye on you. For many years now intelligence agencies have been looking at drones disguised as birds. These days flapping-wing 'ornithopters' are not easy to tell apart from birds – take a look at this video of a robo-peregrine and some seagulls and see how long it takes you to spot the impostor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GtEXpb4j5s

But even back in the 1970's you could build something that did a pretty good impression of a soaring bird seen from a distance. This was the CIA's 1970 Project Aquiline, one of those top-secret program carried out at Area 51. That's the only known model of it in the photo.

The plane's mission was to intercept signals from deep inside enemy territory, hence the need for the bird camouflage. The project was headed by Lt Col John H. "Hank" Meierdierck, who tells the story in his online autobiography. The relationship with contractors McDonnell Douglas was the problem:

The vehicle was a six foot long plane that had a small pusher prop and actually looked like an eagle or buzzard when it was in the air. It was designed to fly at very low levels along communications lines and intercept their messages. It also had a small television in the nose as an aid to navigation and to photograph targets of opportunity. There were several successful flights and some crashes [reason unknown] and some lousy landings.

This small vehicle was launched from inclined rails and was recovered in a large net strung between two poles. Progress was passable, but then came budget time. The contractor predicts the amount of money needed since I did not have the intimate knowledge of the development expenses. I had $11 million for the following year and I advised McDonnell of this fact and asked for the next years operating budget.

They came back to me with a $110 million forecast. Ridiculous! I returned to HDQ and discussed it with the bosses and they suggested that I give them two weeks to adjust the amount and then to come to DC with the result and have Macdonald Douglas present their budget. I did just that.

They decided to back into the $110 million number rather than actually justify the true amounts needed. A grave error. I was forced to interrupt them many times during the presentation to point out errors and outright lies. Upon the completion, I was asked for my comments.

I explained that we really needed only $11 million and could not possibly spend the larger amount. I also pointed out their exaggerations, padded costs for items and the brazen lies that they tried to force on the group. My big boss asked me what I thought we ought to do.

I stated, in no uncertain terms that since this group tried to charge 110 Million for a 11 Million job, that I couldn’t trust them and that “WE SHOULD CANCEL THE PROGRAM."

He said "I think that you are correct. Program canceled”.

That was the end of Aquline. A typical story of Area 51: no aliens or weird science, but a bold attempt to pump up the budget of a black program outside of government oversight. Hank Meierdierck was a brave man – by terminating the project he put himself out of a job. Few people have the honesty to make that sort of stand.

Meanwhile, where is the successor to Aquiline? I've no idea, but perhaps some of those vultures circling above Afghanistan may not be real vultures.

(Aquiline is not to be confused with Aquila, a small US army drone from the same era which also ended in expensive failure.)

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/its-a-bird---it.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 6, 2007, 9:11pm

Invisible Submarines?
By Noah Shachtman November 06, 2007 | 10:44:59 AM

Scientists are already making progress in developing real-world invisibility cloaks. Now, Navy-funded Duke University researchers are applying some of the same concepts to sound. One day, perhaps, it could make a sub invisible to sonar signals -- and impossible to spot.



The key to both projects are metamaterials -- composites than can be structured to let electromagnetic waves flow around them, rather than reflecting those waves back. Light waves, just outside the visible spectrum, have been bent. -- can be turned into real-world invisibility cloaks. Duke University investigators are trying to finding out if "acoustic cloaking" is possible, too.

If so, you might be able to "'cloak' a submarine so that sonar signals from another submarine flowed around it and didn't bounce back," according to a Office of Naval Research newsletter. You could "make a submarine invisible (or inaudible)."

A submarine sends out a sonar "ping"—a burst of sound waves that travels through the water. If the sound waves encounter a solid mass, perhaps another submarine, some of the waves bounce back and return to the first submarine. Sonar receivers pick up this echo, which contains information about the location and distance of the object ahead. No echo, no sonar signature.

Maybe.

"In two dimensions, acoustic waves behave like electromagnetic waves" in a way that would "allow someone to build an acoustic cloaking device," theoretically. But it wouldn't work three dimensions, "so presumably such a cloak would only hide a submarine from another submarine at the same depth, not one that was sending sonar upward or downward." Plus, the "surrounding fluid[s]... must have different densities in different directions, such as a layer of oil floating on water, or bands of particles suspended in a liquid. This is not a typical property of your average ocean."

So it's gonna be a while before we hear anything substantive about invisible subs.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/invisible-subma.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 10, 2007, 1:29am

Skynet military launch is delayed
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, Kourou



The launch of the UK's Skynet 5B military communications satellite from French Guiana has been delayed.

The spacecraft's Ariane rocket has developed an electronic problem in one of its solid fuel boosters and will be rolled back to an inspection shed.

The flight, originally timed for Friday night, is not now expected to take place until Monday at the earliest.

The £3.6bn Skynet project is designed to give British commanders access to more information, much faster.

"We tried to understand what's going on [in the electronic equipment] but unfortunately we did not succeed," explained Jean-Yves Le Gall from Arianespace, the company which runs the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana.

"We are now taking the launch vehicle back to the Final Assembly Building where we will investigate the equipment and replace it."

The countdown was stopped six hours, two minutes and 34 seconds before the scheduled lift-off.

Video demand

The Skynet 5B platform is set to join in orbit the 5A satellite, which was lofted successfully in March and is already handling secure traffic for UK forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The spacecraft, which have been developed by EADS Astrium in Stevenage and Portsmouth, provide-two-and-a-half times the bandwidth capacity of their predecessors, the Skynet 4 satellites.

The greater performance is necessary because military commanders are starting to use information-rich applications, such as video, in their operations.


The RAF is now using Reaper, which was formerly known as Predator B

Only today, the Ministry of Defence announced it had started flying its new Reaper Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in Afghanistan. The planes will gather intelligence on Taliban activities and their pictures can be fed back to the UK via Skynet 5A for further analysis, if necessary.

The problem with the Ariane rocket also delays the launch of Skynet 5B's co-passenger - a Brazilian satellite called Star One C1 which will deliver broadband internet services to consumers in South America.

Delays to launches are not uncommon. Officials constantly monitor the rocket and its payload and if there is the slightest doubt, the flight is stood down. Skynet 5A was itself held on the ground for 24 hours when a fault developed in the launch table.

"This is the price for total quality; we do not want to take any risks, and this is why we replace equipment anytime we could have a problem," said Mr Le Gall.

The technical teams responsible for the satellites will continue to monitor their systems over the weekend. Umbilical connections to the Ariane allow engineers to talk to the spacecraft even though they are closed inside the top of the rocket.

"At this stage, the thing we worry about is the battery [in 5B]," explained Patrick Wood, the Skynet programme chief at Astrium.

"The team will be monitoring the charge on the lithium ion battery, and checking it is on external power. Once we've got a resumed launch time, we will go with our standard test sequence," he told BBC News.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7087910.stm

Published: 2007/11/09 17:45:34 GMT

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 10, 2007, 4:38am

Pentagon Forecast: Cloudy, 80% Chance of Riots
By Noah Shachtman November 09, 2007 | 9:02:00 AM



The Pentagon is paying Lockheed Martin to try to predict insurgencies and civil unrest like the weather. It's part of a larger military effort to blend forecasting software with social science that has some counterinsurgency experts cringing.

Lockheed recently won a $1.3 million, 15-month contract from the Defense Department to help develop the "Integrated Crises Early Warning System, or ICEWS. The program will "let military commanders anticipate and respond to worldwide political crises and predict events of interest and stability of countries of interest with greater than 80 percent accuracy," the company claims. "Rebellions, insurgencies, ethnic/religious violence, civil war, and major economic crises" will all be predictable. So will "combinations of strategies, tactics, and resources to mitigate [against those] instabilities."

DARPA, the Pentagon's bleeding-edge research arm, laid out the case for ICEWS this summer at its conference, held outside of Disneyworld. "Commanders will always need to have an accurate picture of enemy positions, as well as friendly units and allies," David Honey, who heads the agency’s Strategic Technology Office, told confab-goers in Anaheim, California. "But increasingly it’s social, cultural, political and economic information, foreign language capabilities and other clues – that are proving essential."

Figuring out how to find those clues won’t be easy, his colleague, Sean O’Brien, warned. He has a three-part plan for how ICEWS might get it done, however. It tracks, roughly, to how meteorologists piece together long-range weather forecasts.

Step one: dump everything we know about a country like Iraq, and “create [software] agents that mirror the actual communities.”



Not only does that mean identifying "government leaders['] propensity to defuse or exacerbate potentially volatile situations," O'Brien explained in a call for proposals. It also requires a determination of "how a country’s macro-structural conditions (social, demographic, economic) affect the way in which the country’s citizens interact with its government."

What's more, according to an article in the Military & Aerospace Electronics trade journal, the ICEWS system should be designed to "capture and process vast quantities of data from digitized news media, Websites, blogs, and other sources of information that reflect the dynamic and rapidly changing character and intensity of interactions between people and governments."

Step two in the ICEWS plan: make these agents even more realistic, by “leverag[ing] the hundreds of social, cultural, and behavioral theories” about why people act the way they do.

Step three: let commanders run mock battle plans against these modeled Iraqis, to see how they might react.

Experts on counterinsurgency are, to say the least, skeptical.

“Wait a minute, you can’t tell me who’s going to a win a football game. And now you’re going to replicate free will?” Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, who helped write the Army's manual on defusing insurgencies, tells DANGER ROOM.

“They are smoking something they shouldn't be," retired Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper recently quipped to Science Magazine.



The military has been trying, for decades, to use social science data to forecast what might happen next on the battlefield -- or around the world. In 1976, for example, Pentagon-funded researchers put together a "integrated crisis warning system... comprised of (1) quantitative military, political, and economic crisis indicators; (2) quantitative indicators of U.S. military, political, and economic interests abroad; (3) a unified multi-method forecasting capability; and (4) a computer base."

More recently, DARPA has funded efforts to "anticipate the societal/regional indicators that precipitate instability."

For these projects, the agency turned to Massachusetts research firm Aptima, Inc. VISualization of Threats and Attacks in Urban Environments, or "VISTA," was the company's attempt to "utiliz[e] cultural models and other social network analysis techniques to assess and forecast nation state instability and conflict." The "Anticipatory Culture-Based Modeling Environment," or ACUMEN, toolkit created a "simulation engine" based on "theories from psychology, social psychology, sociology, organization science, political science, and economics."

ACUMEN modeled political, military, social, religious, and insurgent groups as agents, along with their relationships regarding hostility, support, membership, and more. ACUMEN modeled the profiles of agents and geographic regions (at the state and province levels) within specific test states using a set of social, political, economic, health, and demographic indicators. In all there were 150 indicators for the state, 60 indicators for each province, and 30 indicators for each agent.

But that was all in the lab. The goal of ICEWS is to eventually bring the tool to war. As Military & Aerospace Electronics notes, "The third phase will involve a live, in-theater test of the system."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/lockheed-peers-.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 11, 2007, 10:30am

The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced

By MATTHEW HICKLEY -
Last updated at 00:13am on 10th November 2007

When the U.S. Navy deploys a battle fleet on exercises, it takes the security of its aircraft carriers very seriously indeed.

At least a dozen warships provide a physical guard while the technical wizardry of the world's only military superpower offers an invisible shield to detect and deter any intruders.

That is the theory. Or, rather, was the theory.


Uninvited guest: A Chinese Song Class submarine, like the one that sufaced by the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier.

According to senior Nato officials the incident caused consternation in the U.S. Navy.

The Americans had no idea China's fast-growing submarine fleet had reached such a level of sophistication, or that it posed such a threat.

One Nato figure said the effect was "as big a shock as the Russians launching Sputnik" - a reference to the Soviet Union's first orbiting satellite in 1957 which marked the start of the space age.

The incident, which took place in the ocean between southern Japan and Taiwan, is a major embarrassment for the Pentagon.

The lone Chinese vessel slipped past at least a dozen other American warships which were supposed to protect the carrier from hostile aircraft or submarines.

And the rest of the costly defensive screen, which usually includes at least two U.S. submarines, was also apparently unable to detect it.

According to the Nato source, the encounter has forced a serious re-think of American and Nato naval strategy as commanders reconsider the level of threat from potentially hostile Chinese submarines.

It also led to tense diplomatic exchanges, with shaken American diplomats demanding to know why the submarine was "shadowing" the U.S. fleet while Beijing pleaded ignorance and dismissed the affair as coincidence.

Analysts believe Beijing was sending a message to America and the West demonstrating its rapidly-growing military capability to threaten foreign powers which try to interfere in its "backyard".

The People's Liberation Army Navy's submarine fleet includes at least two nuclear-missile launching vessels.

Its 13 Song Class submarines are extremely quiet and difficult to detect when running on electric motors.

Commodore Stephen Saunders, editor of Jane's Fighting Ships, and a former Royal Navy anti-submarine specialist, said the U.S. had paid relatively little attention to this form of warfare since the end of the Cold War.

He said: "It was certainly a wake-up call for the Americans.

"It would tie in with what we see the Chinese trying to do, which appears to be to deter the Americans from interfering or operating in their backyard, particularly in relation to Taiwan."

In January China carried a successful missile test, shooting down a satellite in orbit for the first time.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/ar....in_page_id=1811

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 12, 2007, 9:55am

Updated information on Chinese Song class referred to above:

Type 039 Song Class Diesel-Electric Submarine



Last updated: 28 August 2007

The Type 039 (NATO codename: Song class) diesel-electric submarine was designed by Wuhan Ship Development and Design Institute (701 Institute) for the PLA Navy (PLAN). Construction was carried out by Wuhan Shipbuilding Industry Company in Wuhan, Hubei Province and Jiangnan Shipyard Group Corporation in Shanghai. At least seven hulls have been delivered to the PLA Navy since 1994, with more expected to come in the future.

The first hull of the Type 039 submarine (pennant No.320) was launched on 25 May 1994 at Wuhan Shipyard, and started sea trials in August 1995. However, the submarine was not fully operational until 1999, reportedly due to serious design flaws, including unsatisfactory underwater performance and noise level. After some major redesign work, a modified Type 039G variant (No.321) entered the service in April 2001, followed by the second (No.322) in December 2001 and the third (No. 323) in November 2003.

On 3 June 2004, Wuhan Shipbuilding Industry Company revealed a further improved variant Type 039G1. Since then at least six hulls (324, 314, 315, 316, 318, and 327) of this design have been launched in Wuhan and two more in Shanghai-based Jiangnan Shipyard, indicating that the submarine design had been finalised and the series production was underway.

The Type 039 was designed for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and anti-surface warfare (ASuW) using torpedoes and submarine-launched anti-ship missiles. The submarine is also capable of reconnaissance, water mine laying and patrol roles. The submarine itself is a blend of Chinese and Western technologies, and represents a major step forward in China’s conventional submarine design.

Compared with the previous Chinese-built submarines, the Type 039 has a more hydro-dynamically sleek profile. To reduce the submarine’s acoustic signature, the main engine is fitted with a shock absorbance, and the hull is covered by rubber anti-sonar protection tiles similar to those used on the Russian Kilo class. The submarine has a pair of fin-mounted hydroplanes, four rudders, and a single large skewed propeller.

The first and only basic variant Type 039 submarine has a stepped conning fin, with the bridge a step lower than the part of the fin that contains masts. This design was reported to have affected the submarine’s underwater performance and noise level, and was replaced by a different shape with no cutaway on the subsequent Type 039s.

Armaments

The Type 039 is equipped with six bow 533mm torpedo tubes, which are said to be capable of firing the YJ-8 series anti-ship cruise missiles as well as the indigenous Yu-4 (SAET-60) and Yu-1 torpedoes. The submarine carries 18 torpedoes, with 6 in the launch tubes and 12 on the weapon racks. Alternatively the submarine can carry 24~36 mines.

In the past few years, China has developed a range of new torpedoes for its submarine forces, including both wire-guided and wave-homing designs. Detailed information of these torpedoes is not available, but it can be certain that these torpedoes can all be launched from the Type 039 submarine.

The submarine can also carry 4~6 YJ-82 submarine-launched anti-ship missiles, which are carried inside cylinder-shape containers and launched from the submarine’s torpedo tubes. The missile flies at a speed of Mach 0.9 over a distance of 40~80km to deliver a 165kg high explosive warhead.

Electronic Equipment

The submarine has a new digital bow-mounted, medium-frequency sonar for passive and active search and attack, as well as for underwater communication. The submarine is also fitted with an H/SQG-04 low-frequency passive ranging and interception. There is an I-band radar for surface search purpose. Countermeasures include electronic support measures (ESM), radar warning receiver and direction-finder. In addition, the submarine is fitted with an indigenous combat data system capable of multiple targets tracking as well as other functions such as surveillance and navigation.

http://www.sinodefence.com/navy/sub/type039song.asp

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 12, 2007, 10:16am

George Knapp, Chief Investigative Reporter

I-Team: Area 52, The Secret Sister

Some of the greatest and most secretive airplanes in history have been developed in the Nevada desert, most of them at the now-infamous base known as Area 51. It turns out Area 51 has a sister facility -- Area 52 -- and it's a place with secrets of its own.

Area 52 isn't quite as secretive as Area 51. For one thing, you can at least find it on some maps. But it's off limits to most of us because of the classified work that goes on out there. The base has been bombed, blasted, poisoned, and nuked in the pursuit of cutting edge technology that probably can't be tested anywhere else.

At Cisco's in Tonopah, you can get a grilled cheese or crispy fries, but you won't get much information, not about the classified military base that sits in the desert east of this hardscrabble mining town.

Jose Ramirez: "They sure got a lot of stuff out there."

George Knapp: "What is it?"

Jose Ramirez: "You know more than I do."

It's a Tonopah tradition to keep a tight lip about a place they call "The Base." Back in the mid-80s, when the rest of the world was still in the dark about stealth technology, Tonopah residents saw bat-like 117's flying overhead almost nightly, but didn't tell anyone. Ramirez' son and daughter-in-law work at the base.

Jose Ramirez: "I don't ask the kids. I don't want to put them in that position."

The base, all 525-square miles of it, is best known as the Tonopah Test Range, or TTR. In government documents, however, it's called Area 52, sort of a nod to a better known and far more secretive sister facility on the other side of the Nellis Range, Area 51. The connection between the two is more than sequential.

Joerg Arnu, Dreamland Resort webmaster, said, "Yes, TTR is really referred to in official documents as Area 52. On several occasions, black projects moved from Area 51 to TTR, Area 51 being, of course, a super-secret facility, TTR being slightly less secret. It's still a secret facility but not a supersecret facility."

Joerg Arnu is at the center of a loose, worldwide network of aviation watchers who share information online about the so-called black world, including Areas 51 and 52. Employees at both bases travel to work onboard unmarked planes that depart a private terminal in Las Vegas.

Arnu and other listen to the air traffic chatter for clues about what's going on. The most obvious indication that 52 is less secretive than 51 is a rocket-shaped sign 20 miles east of Tonopah. Unlike 51, TTR is listed on most maps, although the paved road leading to the base isn't. At the main gate, armed security forces stop any unauthorized visitors, and with good reason.

Aviation researcher John Lear said, "There's always something going on there, some secret project going on there."

Before he became interested in UFOs at Area 51, famed pilot John Lear was staking out the boundaries of Area 52 in search of secret planes, planes that some think were never built.

"Originally, when the F-117 came out, that was a cover airplane for another airplane, the F-19. The F-19 was made for the Navy. They made 62 of them. You go anywhere on the net and they say that's total bull, there was no F-19. But there was," Lear said

Area 52 is managed by the private Sandia Corporation, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. The base serves both the Department of Energy and Department of Defense. Because the area is so isolated, it's the perfect spot to cut loose. It's there that new missiles are tested, bombs are dropped, cannons are fired, bunker busters are tried, and all sorts of things that go boom.

As Joerg Arnu says, "Where they can blow stuff up and nobody cares."

It took decades for images from 52 to be declassified. It will be decades more before we see what's underway now. One effort believed underway at TTR is the weaponization of UAVs. This is where the military figured out how to strap missiles onto predators, for example, and it's believed the work on drones is a major effort at TTR.

If you think secrets can't be kept, you've never met Colonel Gail Peck, who headed a classified program dubbed "Constant Peg." From 1978 through 1988, Peck commanded a team of pilots who flew Russian MiGs in simulated combat against American warplanes. It's long been known that Area 51 had MiGs for radar testing. Peck put those planes into combat action from Area 52.

Col. (Ret.) Gail Peck, U.S. Air Force, said, "It was compartmentalized into what we call must-know. Meaning, that if you were going to participate, you were brought into the program, briefed, participated in the program, then were debriefed; you had the door shut behind you."

They built the long runway at TTR, not for the Stealth as everyone has long believed, but for a fleet of MiGs. Through ten years and 15,000 sorties, the public never knew about it until 11 months ago, some 19 years after the program ended.

Col. (Ret.) Peck said, "The fact that security was maintained is a reflection of the respect that all the pilots who participated had for the value of it. It just was not a leaker."

As far as anyone knows, TTR did not receive any of those strange disc-shaped craft that people claim to have seen at Area 51 over the years, but, there are more exotic secrets about programs at the base -- things supposedly deep in the ground.

Part 2

The deserts of Nevada hold many secrets, including military secrets. Our state is home to some of the most highly classified military installations in the world. We've all heard of Area 51, but there's also an Area 52, and it has inspired plenty of wild stories of its own over the years, including what's going on underground.

UFO Conference 2007 in Las Vegas

When the Washington Post ran a cartoon in 1997 joking that Area 52 is where the government hides its elves and gnomes, it didn't realize there really is an Area 52, also known as the Tonopah Test Range. It might not house any elves, but it's where the military grapples with gremlins. For example, how to better exploit pilotless drones, or how to use parachutes to deliver nuclear bombs. The Sandia Corporation, which manages Area 52, is working on a fusion reactor, which it pointedly announced is, quote, "not from Area 51," a more secretive sister facility.

From public land, it's easy to see Area 52's large infrastructure with accommodations for thousands. The long runway was built for a fleet of pilfered Russian MiGs, which flew 15,000 missions without the public ever knowing. The first stealth wing followed the MiGs, also in total secrecy. In nearby Tonopah, residents like Jose Gonzalez say they see dozens of contrails from the base every day, most likely the transport planes carrying employees from a private terminal in Las Vegas. To work on what, though?

Jose Gonzalez told the I-Team, "When I first got here, they were talking about a plane that would go into space and land, for NASA. I don't know."

Area 52: The Secret Sister - Part 1

Designs for secret space planes have been openly discussed in aviation journals, and most look a lot like something from another planet, the kind of craft long associated with that other base, Area 51.

John Lear said, "Most people think I'm absolutely nuts. And that's okay with me."

Famed pilot John Lear, whose father developed the Learjet, helped to popularize stories about saucers at Area 51, but has also spent years poking around the perimeter of Area 52. Lear says there are other unknown facilities hidden on the test ranges. Satellite imagery tends to back him up. They're all over the place. He says the biggest secrets, though, are underground.

The John Lear Disclosure Briefing, Nov. 2003.

Lear says, "There is so much stuff underground that it's essentially all the secret stuff underground now."

Example: Lear alleges that a clean nuclear device was used to create a giant chamber under Pauite Mesa in Area 52, and that a facility capable of housing 25,000 people or troops is active out there. He says he heard part of this from a cement truck driver who worked out there.

"He said it would take four hours to get to the bottom, dump the cement, then wind his way back up. For some reason, he disappeared off the face of the earth after he told us that story," Lear continued.

Lear further alleges there's a high speed underground train that runs from Area 52 to Las Vegas, a concept that Nevada Test Site tunnel workers say is highly unlikely. And he says pilots told him there are secret runways out there that open and close like zippers.

"They'll look down and it will be forest or desert or natural landscape, and all of a sudden it will unzip like this and they will see a runway and then the landscape zips back up and it looks like normal," he explained.

There is some evidence for one of Lear's suspicions, one that harkens back to the claims of former government scientist Bob Lazar, who said he worked on flying saucers at a place called S-4, or Site 4. Nellis confirmed to the I-Team that there is more than one S-4 on the Test Range, and one of them is at TTR. Workers have claimed the S-4 inside Area 52 requires special entry. It's believed that highly advanced radar research is one project. Military watchdogs say they don't believe there's a big underground operation.

Joerg Arnu, Dreamland Resort webmaster, said, "There are underground facilities in the Nevada Test Site, but as far as I know there is no underground facilities at Tonopah Test Range."

The man who commanded the secret MiG project for ten years without any leaks says he knows of no big secret projects now but admits that such secrets can be kept at Area 52.

U.S.A.F. Colonel (Ret.) Gail Peck said, "It's the only place in the world where we can operate discreetly. Where we can do things without people watching."

The I-Team requested a tour of Area 52 but was turned down. You can get a look inside the base by checking out some declassified films produced by Sandia Labs about what goes on out there.

http://www.lasvegasnow.com/global/story.asp?s=7333994&ClientType=Printable

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 4:44am

Private navies - don't you love 'em:

Colombia's Cocaine Subs
By Noah Shachtman November 12, 2007 | 11:36:10 AM



Colombia's drug lords and narco-terrorists have an increasingly-sophisticated undersea navy. "Over the last two years, Colombian authorities and the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy have seized 13 submarine-like vessels outfitted for drug running," the L.A. Times observes. The latest: a pair of subs, found in a mangrove-covered estuary, each capable of carrying tens of millions of dollars worth of cocaine, says the London Times.

The 50ft-long submarines were found on slipways close to a river that would have allowed them to escape through Colombia’s largest port, Buenaventura, and into the Pacific Ocean. One of the vessels was ready for its maiden voyage and the second was 70% complete. They were protected by armed guerrillas and camouflaged beneath tropical leaves...

The fibreglass submarines each had a conning tower and periscope, four bunk beds and room to carry five tons of cocaine which would fetch £50m in the United States. They were fitted with diesel engines, radar antennae to navigate the western coast-line and 20ft air tubes for when they were submerged...

Captured workers described how they had sweated at gun-point to meet a Christmas deadline set by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), the terrorist group that controls up to a third of the country and trades cocaine for weapons. The workers have not been charged with any crime...

The submarines are the brain-child of Jorge Briceno Suarez, also known as Mono Jojoy, a veteran Farc commander wanted for killing missionaries and forcing children into the army. He justifies trading with US drug importers as "exporting suicide."

"The boats have become increasingly sophisticated, according to the L.A. Times, "evolving from huge tubes built to be towed by fishing or cargo boats to self-propelled vessels with ballast systems and communications equipment that leave no wake or radar profile as they glide just below the ocean surface."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/colombian-drug-.html

More examples of recent efforts in this regard:

Submarine with cocaine seized off Costa Rica
Makeshift vessel carrying 3 tons of drugs en route from Colombia to U.S.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15811689/

DIY: Cocaine-Smuggling Submarine
November 21st, 2006

http://www.vestaldesign.com/blog/2006/11/diy-cocaine-smuggling-submarine.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 6:55am

Thermobaric Grenade Brings Down the House?
By David Hambling November 13, 2007 | 11:20:00 AM



A woman and two children in Afghanistan died on Sunday, the AP reports, after their house was "destroyed" in a U.S.-led raid. But the story may not be quite so simple.

During one of the engagements, several militants barricaded themselves in a building on the compound and engaged coalition forces with a high volume of gunfire. Coalition forces used a single grenade which killed the attacking militants," the statement said. "However, the building the militants were fighting from collapsed."

The implication is that it is surprising that a building should collapse under those circumstances, that it cannot have been just the grenade which did it. The MSNBC story suggests that one of the soldiers 'lobbed a grenade', reinforcing the impression that this was one of those 'pineapple' fragmentation hand grenades that were around circa WWII. But that's not what the coalition statement says.

I suspect that the grenade involved may have been the 40mm thermobaric XM1060 fired from a launcher. This is a special cartridge developed for Afghanistan which generates a much more destructive blast than normal explosives. It was fielded in 2002 'in record time' and was very popular for use against targets in enclosed spaces such as caves.

"Commanders report that it has given them the capability needed for urban terrain and close-quarters cave operations," it was reported more recently. (My emphasis)

Thermobarics are renowned for their ability to demolish buildings, an effect of the prolonged overpressure produced by the blast. One brochure for the thermobaric SMAW-NE rocket bore the title 'thermobaric urban destruction' -- and showed what the warhead could do against buildings. In 2002, at Fort Leonard Wood, there was a demonstration of thermobaric infantry weapons with the title Bring Down The House.

Of course, there may be a different explanation. But when you give individual infantrymen increased firepower which includes the ability to demolish buildings, then a certain amount of additional collateral damage is not at all surprising.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/thermobaric-gre.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 6:59am

New Army helicopters have heat flaw
Officials say they are unsafe to fly on hot day

By Aaron C. Davis, Associated Press | November 10, 2007



SACRAMENTO - The Army is spending $2.6 billion on hundreds of European-designed helicopters for homeland security and disaster relief that have a crucial flaw: They are not safe to fly on hot days, according to an internal report obtained by the Associated Press.

While the Army scrambles to fix the problem, potentially adding millions to the taxpayer cost, at least one high-ranking lawmaker is calling for the deal to be scrapped.

During flight tests in Southern California in mild 80-degree weather, cockpit temperatures in the UH-72A Lakota soared above 104 degrees, the point at which the Army says the communication, navigation, and flight-control systems can overheat and shut down.

No cockpit equipment failed during the nearly 23 hours of testing, according to the report, prepared for the Army in July. But it concluded that the aircraft "is not effective for use in hot environments."

The Army said that to fix the problem it will take the highly unusual step of adding air conditioners to many of the 322 helicopters ordered.

The retrofitting will cost at least $10 million and will come out of the Army's budget.

Kim Henry, a spokeswoman for US Army Aviation & Missile Command at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, said that the Army began outfitting the helicopters with vents after the report was issued and that they have been effective at lowering temperatures.

The Army, however, decided it still needs to put air conditioning on many of the choppers, including all those configured for medical evacuations, said an Army spokesman, Major Tom McCuin..

Representative Duncan Hunter of California, the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, contends that the lightweight helicopter will still have too many weaknesses.

"In my view, we would be well advised to terminate the planned buy of 322 Lakota helicopters and purchase instead additional Blackhawk helicopters," Hunter said in a letter this week to Army Secretary Pete Geren.

But McCuin said, "It's certainly a concern to people out there in the field now because it's hot in those cockpits, but it's being fixed."

The Army has received 12 of the Lakotas from American Eurocopter Corp., a North American division of Germany's European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. Testing on the first six by an independent arm of the Pentagon revealed the problems. The rest of the choppers are scheduled for delivery over the next eight years.

The Lakota represents the Army's first major effort to adapt commercially available helicopters for military use. Air conditioning is standard in commercial versions of the aircraft, which have not had overheating problems. But the military usually avoids air conditioning in military aircraft to reduce weight and increase performance.

"We don't need air conditioning in the Blackhawks, so we didn't think it would be an issue" in the Lakota, McCuin said. "But when we got the helicopter into the desert, we realized it was a problem."

The Army plans to use the Lakota for search-and-rescue missions in disaster areas, evacuations of injured people, reconnaissance, disaster relief, and VIP tours for members of Congress and Army brass. All of its missions will be in the United States or other noncombat zones.

Blackhawks, Chinooks, and other helicopters will still be available for more demanding duties, such as fighting wildfires.

Guy Hicks, a spokesman for European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., declined to comment directly on the criticism of the aircraft. "We're proud of our partnership with the Army and the UH-72A, but we defer on anything to do with aircraft requirements and performance. It's the Army's program and they should address that," he said.

The Lakota has another problem; testers said it fails to meet the Army's requirement that it be able to evacuate two critically injured patients at the same time. The Lakota can hold two patients, but the cabin is too cramped for medics to work on more than one at a time, the testers said.

The report by Dr. Charles McQueary, the Defense Department's director of operational testing, said that overall, the Lakota performs better than the Kiowa or Huey and that pilots found it easy to fly.

But the report said inadequate ventilation, heat emitted by aircraft electronics, and sunlight streaming through the large windows caused cockpit temperatures to reach 104.9 degrees during a simulated mission in California.

The aircraft's safe operating limit is 104 degrees, according to the Army.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articl....have_heat_flaw/

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 7:02am

Big Armored Vehicles' Big Surprise
By Jason Sigger November 13, 2007 | 6:02:14 AM



Wow, imagine this. The Pentagon just might not need all of the big, honkin' armored vehicles that the Army and Marine Corps have demanded. The extraordinarily heavily things, costing up to $2-3 million each, just might present some operational deployment issues.

From Defense News (subscription required):

The Pentagon will store thousands of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, DoD’s [Department of Defense's] top procurement official told lawmakers Nov. 8.

“We might not need as many as we are buying. Some will be stored for a period of time,” said John Young, the defense acquisition undersecretary. “The service chiefs have indicated that these are heavy, large vehicles that might not fit well with mobile expeditionary missions.”

Young told the House Armed Services Committee and other congressional panels that he had asked service chiefs to assess their plans for the more than 15,000 MRAPs DoD intends to buy and ship to Iraq and Afghanistan by 2010.
---------
December could see the next wave of MRAP orders — perhaps several thousand vehicles, far more than previous batches, industry and government officials said. Vehicle makers had been asking the Pentagon to keep the orders large to reduce cost. DoD spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin declined to speculate on upcoming orders.

Yes, who could have foreseen that a hasty, emotional call to procure very expensive, hard-to-build defense systems -- driven by Congress to bypass the standard requirements process -- might spiral out of control?

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/who-could-have-.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 7:05am

U.S. Building Base on Top of Iraq Oil Platform
By Noah Shachtman November 12, 2007 | 9:26:00 PM



KHAWR AL AMAYA OIL TERMINAL, Iraq -- The U.S. Navy is building a military installation atop this petroleum-export platform as the U.S. establishes a more lasting military mission in the oil-rich north Persian Gulf," the Wall Street Journal reports.

While presidential candidates debate whether to start bringing ground troops home from Iraq, the new construction suggests that one footprint of U.S. military power in Iraq isn't shrinking anytime soon: American officials are girding for an open-ended commitment to protect the country's oil industry...

The new installation will house U.S., British and Australian officers and sailors. The Pentagon has said it has no intention of building permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, and Navy officials say they intend to turn over the facility to Iraqi forces as soon as they can run it on their own.

But Iraqi forces are a long way from being able to take over the mission, Navy officials say. Iraqi patrol boats are on the water assisting in sector patrols around the terminals. But they are rusting hulks. Iraqi soldiers stationed on the terminals have just recently started training with live ammunition. "They are going to need help for years to come," Adm. Cosgriff says.

So for the time being, the new base will serve as a U.S.-controlled command post straddling a major component of Iraq's creaking oil industry. From a collection of modified shipping containers, coalition officers will monitor ship traffic and coordinate the movement of coalition warships circling "Kaaot" and "Abot," as the military has nicknamed the two terminals...

The new outpost also offers a convenient perch from which to monitor Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps. Amid heightened rhetoric between Tehran and Washington over the past few years, some Iranian officials have threatened a disruption to shipping in the Persian Gulf.

The naval component of the Revolutionary Guards Corps operates from a partially submerged barge and crane visible on clear days from Kaaot. Iranian forces in the spring captured a contingent of British sailors who were participating in the oil-protection mission here and paraded them in front of cameras before letting them go.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/us-building-bas.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 7:07am

$100 Million for Worldwide, Instant Strike Weapon
By Noah Shachtman November 12, 2007 | 5:43:02 PM



The Pentagon's plan to hit anywhere on Earth, in just an hour or two, just got a $100 million boost from Congress. As the Washington Post notes, "the House-Senate conference report on the fiscal 2008 defense appropriations bill" provides a hundred large for a "'prompt global strike' program that could deliver a conventional, precision-guided warhead anywhere in the world within two hours."

The new [actually, several years old -- ed.] program, dubbed Falcon, for "Force Application and Launch from CONUS," centers on a small-launch-vehicle concept of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The agency describes Falcon as a "a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) capable of delivering 12,000 pounds of payload at a distance of 9,000 nautical miles from [the continental United States] in less than two hours... The vehicle would be launched into space on a rocket, fly on its own to a target, deliver its payload and return to Earth.

Well, eventually. Most of the Falcon work, for now, is going towards work that's decidedly less sexy -- and less creepy.

In the short term, a small launch rocket is being developed as part of Falcon. It eventually would be able to boost the hypersonic vehicle into space. But in the interim, it will be used to launch small satellites within 48 hours' notice at a cost of less than $5 million a shot.

There's a huge array of smaller programs underneath Falcon's aegis. Air-Attack.com has a round-up of what's going on with each of 'em.

Not all "global strike" programs fared quite as well as Falcon in Congress. The controversial plan to turn nuclear Trident ballistic missiles into conventionally-armed first strike weapons gets "no funding for testing, fabrication or deployment." The problem: It's basically impossible to tell a conventional and a nuclear Trident apart. Which means the weapon runs the risk of starting World War III, every time it's launched. Falcon won't be quite so similar. But, in the end, it (and nearly every other global strike option) may suffer from problems of misunderstanding.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/100-million-for.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 7:44am

Made-to-Order Camo?
By Noah Shachtman November 12, 2007 | 4:59:25 PM



Nissan says it has a new system that it promises will let drivers change the color of their car, by flipping a switch. But the military applications seem pretty obvious. Made-to-order camo, anyone?

Nissan has developed what it calls a "paramagnetic" paint coating -- a unique polymer layer which features iron oxide particles is applied to the vehicle body. When an electric current is applied to the polymer layer, the crystals in the polymer are then interpreted by the human eye as different colors.

Depending on the level of current and the spacing of the crystals, a wide gamut of colors can be selected by the driver. However, since a steady current is needed to maintain the color effect, the paramagnetic paint doesn't work when the vehicle is turned off -- instead, the vehicle would revert back to a default white color.

Speaking of which, a North Carolina company, Military Wraps, claims to have come up with a "'Photo-Real' site-specific camouflage technique." The idea is to take "photographic digital detailing and [then] print them over vinyl-adhesive wraps that are designed to match a surrounding terrain so vividly that vehicles, weapons, and equipment can seem to disappear into the surrounding battlefield environment." Sounds intriguing. But something tells me it's not quite so simple.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/made-to-order-c.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 7:47am

Last Missile-Watching Spy Sat Launched
By Sharon Weinberger November 12, 2007 | 3:30:15 PM

The U.S. yesterday launched the final satellite in the Defense Support Program (DSP), a constellation designed to detect a Soviet ICBM attack. In marking the final launch, Jeffrey Richelson, one of the leading writers (and authorities) on intelligence programs, has posted on the National Security Archive's website a number of declassified documents detailing the rich and sometimes controversial history behind this program:



The documents posted today, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research, include documents on the theoretical work behind the concept of space-based missile detection, the early doubts about the feasibility of such detection, and 1960s research and development work on the Missile Defense Alarm System (MIDAS). They also include documents on the evolution of the DSP--with regard both to its capabilities and its use for a variety of additional missions, including the detection of intermediate-range missiles, bombers flying on afterburner and spacecraft. In addition, a number of documents focus on the decades-long search for a follow-on system to DSP.

One of the more fascinating documents is this one, which details concerns (ultimately rejected) that the Soviets had tried to "blind" an early warning satellite with a laser (Sound familiar? Similar claims were made about China earlier this year).

Of course, a more current issue are concerns that delays to the Space Based Infrared satellite program, the follow on to the DSP constellation, has faced a series of delays and cost overruns.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/tomorrow-the-us.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 14, 2007, 7:53am

Video Fix: Nuclear Bomber's Parasite Fighter
By Noah Shachtman November 12, 2007 | 1:30:00 PM

The Cold War's B-36 "Peacemaker" was the largest combat aircraft ever built, and the first plane to deliver thermonuclear weapons. But with a wingspan of 230 feet, some worried that the Peacemaker would be a sitting duck for enemy attacks. So the military designed a second, teeny-tiny plane that could be deployed, in case of attack. Officially, it was known as the XF-85 Goblin.


B-36 "Peacemaker"


XF-85 Goblin

But it's gone down in aviation history as the "Flying Egg." Check out the video, and you'll see why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PisUjsXSUZU

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/video-flying-eg.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 17, 2007, 10:10am

Georgia Police Turns Sonic Blaster on Demonstrators
By Noah Shachtman November 15, 2007 | 11:43:14 AM

There's more evidence that the Saakashvili regime in Georgia is using sound weapons against opposition protestors. This English-language footage from Russia Today shows riot police rolling through the streets of Tblisi in pickup trucks, small dishes in hand. A high frequency pulse follows. "Georgian police used an acoustic gun -- it's a non-lethal weapon that disorients people for a period of time," says one "special weapons expert."

See video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MThThdEmswU

"Similar such guns are also used by the Iraq police," the Russia Today piece claims. That, I'm not so sure about. But the sonic systems -- which can also be used as a long-range "hailer," projecting sound far, far away -- have been tested out by American troops in Iraq. They were employed by the New York Police Department during the last Republican National Convention -- and by military police during Hurricane Katrina. A cruise ship even used a sonic blast to ward off Somali pirates in '05.

Reader TM points out that short-range versions of the same technology can be bought online -- for as little as $898 a pop.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/georgia-police-.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 17, 2007, 10:19am

Military's Exotic Weapons Manual
By Noah Shachtman November 15, 2007 | 9:23:00 PM



The military has a new field manual for tasers, laser dazzlers, pepper spray, and sonic blasters. Field Manual 3.22-40: Multi-Service Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for the Tactical Employment of Nonlethal Weapons looks at all kinds of weaponry and military approaches where the design is not to kill.

See Manual @:
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-22-40.pdf

"The prevalence of urbanization in many crisis-prone regions of the world creates the potential for large, vulnerable groups of civilians to be entrapped in volatile operations in urban terrain," the manual notes. So maybe it'd be better to use techniques and tools that are a bit less deadly.

But, just to be clear: "the term “nonlethal” does not mean zero mortality or nonpermanent damage; these are goals and not guarantees of these weapons," the manual adds. And it doesn't just mean some new-fangled ray gun. "Examples of NLW include a show of force, physical obstacles, blunt impact munitions, noise to create or enhance psychological effects, and using light and directed energy systems to disorient combatants."

The manual runs through all sorts of scenarios, and how NLW might apply. But Secrecy News warns that "by lowering the threshold for violent conflict and diminishing its consequences, nonlethal weapons may paradoxically encourage the outbreak of violence in some circumstances."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/military-forces.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 17, 2007, 10:33am

Cig-lighter electropulse cannons offered to US plods
Cold dead turkey strangely incapable of flight

By Lewis Page
Published Tuesday 13th November 2007 21:36 GMT

Electromagnetic weapons designed to zap circuitry have long been a favourite speculation of war-tech buffs. Consensus opinion suggests that the only energy source capable of powering a useful pulse strike is a nuclear explosion, or perhaps in the near future a largish conventional bomb. But a recent report in MIT Tech Review suggests that actually it can be done with a car alternator.

The Tech Review piece introduces us to Eureka Aerospace and its High power Electromagnetic System (HPEMS) tech, now being touted as a good idea for police in high speed chases. Apparently, a 200lb, six by three foot HPEMS module can "be attached to an automobile or aircraft carrier" (though the aircraft-carrier option might be a tad unwieldy on the freeway). It works like this:

The car's alternator serves as the system's power source [cool! You just plug it into the cigarette lighter socket, presumably]... pulses are amplified to 640 kilovolts using a 16-stage Marx generator... then converted into microwaves using... a pair of coupled transmission lines and several spark-gap switches. Finally, a specially designed antenna beams the microwave energy toward an opposing vehicle...

The microwaves get into the fleeing villains' engine compartment through some kind of unspecified gap in the metal that would typically surround it, and zap all the microcircuitry, so shutting the motor down.

Tech Review notes that this might cause some snags by frying innocent people's stuff in a crowded urban environment, but otherwise it seems to assume that the idea is a flyer.

In fact, all the signs of a tech turkey are there. The obvious customer - the US military* - funded initial research and then gave up some time ago. Even the company doesn't claim effective range greater than 15 metres, so a pursuing cop would have to get well inside safe stopping distance behind a fleeing car - just before forcing it to stop suddenly. All tests thus far have been on stationary target vehicles. The only way of aiming the directional beam is by aiming the car. Years have gone by and nothing much has changed.

Nope - this thing's a gobbler, and a cold dead one at that. The MIT tech scribes seem to have slipped up here. ®

*A mysterious outfit called the "U.S. Marine Corp [sic]" is referred to twice.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/13/....nonz_for_plodz/

The Tech Review article referred to above:

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Stopping Cars with Radiation

A beam of microwave energy could stop vehicles in their tracks.

By Brittany Sauser

Researchers at Eureka Aerospace are turning a fictional concept from the movie 2 Fast 2 Furious into reality: they're creating an electromagnetic system that can quickly bring a vehicle to a stop. The system, which can be attached to an automobile or aircraft carrier, sends out pulses of microwave radiation to disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions in a car. Such a device could be used by law enforcement to stop fleeing and noncooperative vehicles at security checkpoints, or as perimeter protection for military bases, communication centers, and oil platforms in the open seas.


Zapping the bad guys: Attached to the roof of this police car is a 200-pound electromagnetic system that can quickly bring an opposing vehicle to a stop. The system is six to eight feet long (antennae included) and almost three feet wide. It works by sending out pulses of microwave radiation that disable the microprocessors that control the central engine functions of a car.
Credit: Eureka Aerospace

The system has been tested on a variety of stationary vehicles and could be ready for deployment in automobiles within 18 months, says James Tatoian, the chief executive officer of Eureka Aerospace and the project's leader.

To bring an opposing vehicle to a halt, the 200-pound device is attached to the roof of a car. The car's alternator serves as the system's power source, whose direct-current (DC) power feeds into a power supply. This generates a stream of 50-nanosecond-duration pulses of energy. These pulses are amplified to 640 kilovolts using a 16-stage Marx generator.

The 640 kilovolts of DC power are then converted into microwaves using an oscillator that consists of a pair of coupled transmission lines and several spark-gap switches. Finally, a specially designed antenna beams the microwave energy toward an opposing vehicle through a part of the car, such as the windshield, window, grill, or spacing between the hood and main body, that is not made of metal. (Metal acts as a shield against microwave energy.)

The radiated microwave energy will upset or damage the vehicle's electronic systems, particularly the microprocessors that control important engine functions, such as the ignition control, the fuel injector, and the fuel-pump control. However, electronic control modules were not built into most cars until 1972, hence the system will not work on automobiles made before that year.

The concept of disabling vehicles' electronic system with microwaves was first tested in 1997 by the U.S. Army using bulky and heavy military equipment. But the Eureka Aerospace system is only six to eight feet long (antennae included) and not quite three feet wide. "It is much more efficient and compact than anything previously used in military vehicles," says Tatoian.

The device's peak power output is two gigawatts, although the average power emitted in a single shot is about 100 watts. Each radiated pulse lasts about 50 nanoseconds. All the test cars' engines were shut off using a single pulse at a distance of approximately 15 meters, making the total energy output 100 joules, says Tatoian. His company is currently developing a more compact high-power microwave pulse system with the goal of disabling engines at ranges from as far away as 200 meters.

"I have no doubt that if you set up a microprocessor and get a high-powered, well-focused beam of energy on [a car], you can disrupt its operation," says Peter Fisher, a professor of physics and the division head in particle and nuclear experimental physics at MIT. But to be able to deploy such a system safely will take some work, he says.

Imagine if a police officer is in a high-speed chase near a shopping mall and turns on one of these systems to stop the perpetrator: a lot of elevators have microprocessor controls, so if the officer is pointing the device in the direction of the mall, he or she could end up trapping 12 people in an elevator, says Fisher. Many other electronic systems, such as an automated teller machine or a security system, could also be disrupted.

Furthermore, Fisher cautions that, while the system may seem like an easier and more efficient solution than spike strips, it could still cause a huge accident if a car is disabled and a driver loses steering control. The system could pose a safety concern as well: radiation can burn human skin, and microwaves have long been suspected of being a cancer-causing agent.

At the moment, the most practical application for the system would be in the U.S. Army or Marine Corp, for perimeter protection of areas that are generally remote, says Fisher. Initial funding for the project came from the U.S. Marine Corp, but now Eureka Aerospace is looking to other governmental agencies for financial support as the company continues to work to make the device smaller, lighter, and more efficient. (Tatoian says that details regarding future work with the military are confidential.)

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19699/?a=f

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 17, 2007, 10:36am

Underground Object Mapping Capability from BAE Systems

The US Air Force awarded BAE Systems Electronics and Integrated Solutions, Inc. a $8 million contract to build and demonstrate an 'active electromagnetic' tomography sensor, designed to characterize complex sub-surface objects such as underground facilities or perimeter breaching tunnels. Such objects are usually concealed from conventional airborne imaging or radar based sensors.

The new technology called Airborne Tomography using Active Electromagnetics (ATAEM) is derived from field proven geophysical exploration concepts commonly used for mineral and oil exploration.

By illuminating the surface with electromagnetic energy ATAEM will interpret minute distortions of the electric and magnetic fields created by surface and sub-surface objects to detect and characterize surreptitious structures. The program elements will include the development of electromagnetic illumination sources, noise-isolated sensor payloads, and signals processing, and demonstrate them on an appropriate airborne platform.

http://www.defense-update.com/newscast/1107/news/141107_ataem.htm#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 17, 2007, 10:42am

British Nukes Armed with a Bicycle Lock Key
By Noah Shachtman November 16, 2007 | 12:01:36 PM



Well into the late 1990's, arming one of Britain's nuclear weapons required no special knowledge, and no special hardware. All that was needed was a single key, like the kind you use to open a bicycle lock.

There are no codes," former nuclear engineer Brian Burnell explains to a BBC reporter, as they stand around a "training version" of a WE.177 nuclear bomb. "You need access to the arming panel, and for that, just a strong fingernail or screwdriver would do.

Once you've opened the panel up, you only need "one key -- rather similar to a bicycle lock key...Turn it 90 degrees to the right, and the bomb's armed."

Thankfully, that's been fixed. But an even-more unnerving fact remains. The BBC alleges that British Trident nuclear submarine skippers can still launch their missiles -- without any code being sent from their commanders. According to the BBC, the Ministry of Defence said that "the safeguards that other countries built in... were not relevant to British submarines."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/british-nukes-a.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 18, 2007, 8:50am

Army Rejects Dragon Body Armor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTrTrsJu3pk

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Re: DARPArama
Post by deborah on Nov 18, 2007, 6:47pm


Quote:

Georgia Police Turns Sonic Blaster on Demonstrators By Noah Shachtman November 15, 2007 | 11:43:14 AM There's more evidence that the Saakashvili regime in Georgia is using sound weapons against opposition protestors. This English-language footage from Russia Today shows riot police rolling through the streets of Tblisi in pickup trucks, small dishes in hand. A high frequency pulse follows. "Georgian police used an acoustic gun -- it's a non-lethal weapon that disorients people for a period of time," says one "special weapons expert." See video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MThThdEmswU Continued..... http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/georgia-police-.html

These "non-lethal" weapons are becoming quite popular it seems.

And they are in fact killing people:

November 16, 2007
Video of Taser Death in Canada Sparks Probe
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/16/5283/

VANCOUVER, Canada - A video of a Polish man dying while being restrained with a taser by Canadian policemen sparked a diplomatic protest and controversy on Thursday over the use of stun guns. Canada's public safety minister ordered a review of the death of Robert Dziekanski.

The 40-year-old immigrant died on October 14 about 10 hours after he arrived at western Canada’s biggest airport here.

Dziekanski, who had traveled to Canada to live with his mother, died after a bizarre series of events that culminated in police approaching him and, in less than one minute, zapping him repeatedly with a Taser stun gun.

“I was quite shocked,” Piotr Ogrodzinski, the Polish ambassador to Canada, told AFP after viewing the video. “Perhaps (the) police officers’ reaction was not suitable to the circumstances.”

Ogrodzinski said he formally requested details from Canada of the investigation into Dziekanski’s death, and also met with the national police complaints commissioner.

The video was taken by Paul Pritchard, a Canadian traveler at the scene. It was not released for one month because police held onto it until Pritchard filed a court action to have it returned.

The video shows Dziekanski, appearing distraught and frightened, moving around furniture in the airport and at one point throwing a computer off a desk onto the ground.

He is watched by security guards who stand back and can be heard saying, “he’s speaking Russian.”

Then four officers from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada’s national police force, enter the frame. They walk toward Dziekanski and surround him. He turns away from them, raising his hands with his back to them.

In one hand he holds what looks like a stapler.

The police close in on Dziekanski and stun him repeatedly with a Taser device. Dziekanski screams and writhes on the floor, and the policemen pile on top of him and pin him down. Within minutes he falls still.

RCMP spokesman Corporal Dale Carr said an investigation by a homicide team will take another 30 to 45 days.

He urged the public to withhold their judgment of what they see on the video until the police can explain their conduct while testifying under oath at a coroner’s inquest.

“The inquest will be the venue in which the contents of the video and the actions of police will be scrutinized,” said Carr in a statement.

A preliminary coroner’s report earlier showed there were no drugs or alcohol in Dziekanski’s body, and that the cause of death was uncertain..... (continued)

The above-referenced video may be viewed here:

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/276565

Scroll down to the third paragraph in the article for a direct link.

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 19, 2007, 8:55am

Pioneering 'heat wave' gun may be used in Iraq

By Philip Sherwell in Quantico, Virginia and Jacqui Goddard
Last Updated: 9:54am GMT 19/11/2007

American commanders in Iraq are urging Pentagon chiefs to authorise the deployment of newly-developed heat wave guns to disperse angry crowds or violent rioters. But the plea for what senior army officers believe could prove a valuable alternative to traditional firepower in dangerous trouble-spots has so far gone unanswered.

The Active Denial System (ADS)

The ADS can target crowds from 750 metres away

Washington fears a barrage of adverse publicity in the suspicious Muslim world and is concerned that critics will claim the invisible beam weapons were being used for torture.

Now the US military directorate charged with developing non-lethal weapons, which has invested more than a decade developing the Active Denial System (ADS), has launched a concerted effort to convince both the public and its own bosses at the defence department of the device's merits.

"With brand new technology like this, perception is everything," said Col Kirk Hymes, a former Marine artillery officer who heads the directorate.

He added that tests were almost complete and the first ADS, also known as the Silent Guardian, could be deployed early next year if the Pentagon allows. The decision is so sensitive that it is expected to be made personally by the defence secretary, Robert Gates, who sent senior representatives to the demonstrations.
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Raytheon, the company contracted to manufacture the prototype, has also received interest from several undisclosed European countries. The machine displayed last week cost about $10 million to build, but the directorate believes that the ADS can be put into production for $2-$5 million (£1-2.5 million) per device.

Col Hymes told observers at a demonstration that the system was a safe and effective alternative to plastic bullets, which can cause injury and sometimes death and are effective only up to 75 metres.

The heatwave weapon can, by contrast, target troublemakers from 750 metres. It works by dispatching high-powered radio waves from a vehicle antenna, similar to a satellite television dish, causing the molecules in a target's skin to vibrate violently, creating a burning sensation.

"We are pretty good at shouting and intimidating people and we have been perfecting the art of lethal warfare since Cain and Abel," he said. "But in places like Iraq we are re-learning that we need a response in the spectrum between shouting and shooting. The ADS provides this."

But he added: "This is not something we want to roll out and deploy and surprise people. We know we need to educate the public."

In fact the development of the weapon only became public after the Sunshine Project - a Texas-based group that campaigns against biological and chemical weapons - pushed for disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.


In pictures: The Telegraph's Philip Sherwell is zapped by a heat wave gun

The group's director, Edward Hammond, said: "If we are not prepared to use it as a crowd control technique on our own citizens, then we really shouldn't be using it in Iraq either."

Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon intelligence officer who is senior military analyst for the Human Rights Watch campaign group, was among those invited to feel the device's impact at a recent demonstration.

He said: "If I had the option of being shot by a bullet or this, I would choose this - but still not enough is known about it. This is novel technology. We're talking about bringing science fiction into reality and it's critical to have open discussion."

He added: "People understand what happens when you get shot with a gun, but with the "pain-ray" there's still uncertainty. When it's used, the military is going to have to deal with a public backlash because I'm sure there will be claims of medical problems by the people it's been used upon, real or not."

"We are talking about young soldiers having this in their hands. If we upset the civilian population in Iraq, whether by killing, by torture or by misusing this, it will have a strategic effect on the US's ability to execute effective operations."

Col Hymes said that all ADS operators were given a six-week training course that covered sophisticated crowd control techniques as well as handling the technology.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/18/wdenial118.xml

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 19, 2007, 9:05am

US plans new space weapons against China

By Alex Spillius in Washington
Last Updated: 2:48am GMT 15/11/2007

The Pentagon is spending billions of dollars on new forms of space warfare to counter the growing risk of missile attack from rogue states and the "satellite killer" capabilities of China.

Congress has allocated funds to develop futuristic weapons and intelligence systems that operate beyond the Earth's atmosphere as America looks past Iraq and Afghanistan to the wars of the future.
The Falcon could fly at six times the speed of sound and deliver bombs anywhere in the world in minutes.


The Falcon could fly at six times the speed of sound and deliver bombs anywhere in the world in minutes

The most ambitious project in a new $459 billion (£221.5 billion) defence spending Bill is the Falcon, a reusable "hypersonic vehicle" that could fly at six times the speed of sound and deliver 12,000lb of bombs anywhere in the world within minutes.

The bombs' destructive power would be multiplied by the Earth's gravitational pull as they travelled at up to 25 times the speed of sound towards their target.

The cost of the vehicle has not been revealed, but a spokesman for the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) said a first test flight was scheduled for next year.

Loren Thompson, a leading defence analyst in Washington, said the focus of the project was attacking "time sensitive targets" in states such as North Korea and Iran, which have either developed nuclear weapons without international approval or are suspected of doing so.

"If we received intelligence that a strike was about to happen on South Korea, or on Israel, we would want to destroy that within minutes and not hours. But from most current US bases that is not feasible.

"With a hyper-sonic vehicle launching from the Middle East or Asia you could be over hostile territory within minutes," he said. "It's not just a question of can we destroy North Korean weapons, but can we get there quickly enough in the event of an imminent launch?"

Darpa is also developing a small unmanned launch vehicle that would provide "responsive and affordable" access to space, for less than $5 million per launch. The first test flight was made in March.

It would be capable of re-launching satellites that had been attacked, or acting as a fast-moving replacement for a damaged satellite with intelligence sensors of its own that could identify enemy installations.

In its 621-page report on the Defence Appropriations Bill, Congressmen from both Republican and Democratic parties said: "Enhancing these capabilities is crucial, particularly following the Chinese anti-satellite weapons demonstration last January."

In China's first successful test of an anti-satellite system, a ground-based missile fired into space shattered a weather satellite in low earth orbit. The Pentagon has also given warning that China is making greater efforts to hack into its defence computers.

Congress awarded $150 million for the Falcon project and its associated "prompt global strike" programme. A defence industry source said it was likely that hundreds of millions more were being spent on space warfare "away from the public view".

The "global strike" platform would give America the "forward presence" it requires around the world without the need for bases outside the US.

Attempts to base missile defence shields in Poland and Czechoslovakia have provoked a fierce row with Russia, while Uzbekistan, which neighbours Afghanistan, evicted the US from an air base two years ago.

• The economic cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated at $1.6 trillion (£772 billion) - roughly double what the White House has requested thus far, according to a report by Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

For the Iraq war only, total economic costs were estimated at $1.3 trillion (£627 billion) from 2002 to 2008.

FALCON HYPERSONIC CRUISE VEHICLE

Max speed: Mach 6 (4,614mph)

Payload: 12,000lbs including cruise missles, 1,000lbs penetrator munitions and independent 'kill gliders'

CRUISING ALTITUDES

Satellites: 370 miles

Space shuttle: 230 miles

Falcon: 28 miles

Concorde: 12 miles

Airliners: 6 miles

Sources: Darpa and globalsecurity.org

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht..../weap on114.xml

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 8:03am

In the Search for Loose Nukes, a Little Propaganda Goes a Long Way
By Michael Levi 10.23.07 | 12:00 AM



Catching evildoers armed with nuclear devices is tougher than it sounds. True, unexploded nukes are radioactive, but not face-meltingly so. That makes 100 percent detection impossible. So instead of trying to find a perfect protection scheme (domed cities, anyone?), clever policymakers and technologists are developing a kind of Goldilocks strategy: Neither too much nor too little detection. These admittedly imperfect plans are designed to convince terrorists that even attempting a nuclear attack is futile. Put the ideas into action, the thinking goes, then deploy a smart PR strategy to let the would-be bombers know we're onto 'em — security wonks call it "strategic communication." Others call it propaganda. Whatever — as long as we get it just right.

How to discover an atomic bomb

PDAs
Problem
Some radiation detectors work best in a network.

Plan
Use industrial-grade materials to make cheap, networked scanners the size of PDAs and blanket cities with them.

Seriously?
Lawrence Livermore National Lab is working on these connected detectors, but cost is still an issue. Getting Apple to build them into the next iPhone might also be an obstacle.

Border Guards
Problem
Terrorists might try to smuggle nuclear materials into the US across the Mexican or Canadian borders.

Plan
Equip Border Patrol officers with handheld detectors.

Seriously?
Totally. People trying to sneak across the Mexican border get through because they try again and again. Many of them end up in contact with Border Patrol at some point.

Radiography
Problem
Baddies could line a truck with detection-blocking lead and drive a bomb to its target.

Plan
Use radiography at borders to look for the lead.

Seriously?
It would work better if the Feds would buy machines that could distinguish between lead and other common materials. Some models are more effective than others.

Neutron Beams
Problem
Cracking open suspect cargo takes lots of time. And lots of things can be lead-lined.

Plan
Neutron guns! Fire a stream of these subatomic particles at an object to trigger the release of a telltale radiation signature.

Seriously?
A powerful enough beam can definitely spot hidden uranium... but it can also cause damage to nearby DNA.

Container-Based Sensors
Problem
Some container ports already have radiation detectors, but they may have only a few seconds to spot a concealed bomb.

Plan
Embed a radiation sensor in every shipping container.

Seriously?
It's less promising than it sounds. Cosmic rays can make steel-filled containers emit neutrons and confuse detectors.

CSI: Apocalypse
Problem
Nuclear-armed countries might slip nukes to terrorists.

Plan
Develop forensic capabilities to trace nuclear materials back to their sources.

Seriously?
Yup. Even a remote chance that materials could be matched to a nuclear stockpile may scare rogue states out of sharing their bombs — and becoming the target of a retaliatory strike.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-11/st_nukes#

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 8:22am

Olive Drab Goes Green: The Military Deploys Solar, Wind and Biomass Power
By Amanda Griscom Little 10.23.07 | 12:00 AM


Photo: Michael Sugrue

The Pentagon developed the Internet, created GPS, and supercharged the markets for microchips and jets. Next target: renewable energy. In December, the Department of Defense will complete the 15-megawatt solar installation shown here — the nation's largest — at Nellis Air Force Base outside Las Vegas. Operated by a computerized tracking system that follows the sun's path, the sprawling array of 70,000 crystalline silicon solar panels will generate up to 30 percent of the electricity needed by the 12,000-person facility. And solar is only one front in the military's green campaign. One of the world's largest geothermal installations, which turns Earth's heat into electricity via 166 wells bored as far down as 10,000 feet below the surface, can be found at China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station in California. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba derives up to a quarter of its power from wind turbines — one of about a dozen wind-powered US military bases worldwide. And Dyess Air Force Base in Texas is powered completely by biomass fuel generated from paper industry byproducts, making it one of the largest single-site consumers of green electricity in the world. Charge!

http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/magazine/15-11/st_nellis#

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 9:00am

Anthro Wars Heat Up
By Sharon Weinberger November 22, 2007 | 9:38:00 AM



The conflict between anthropologists and the military took an altogether different turn this week with Ann Marlowe's withering portrait of the Human Terrain System. Her critique is not sitting well with proponents of the military's attempt to incorporate anthropology into military doctrine. Human Terrain has faced criticism from academics, who oppose embedding anthros in military units, but Marlowe's article, published in the Weekly Standard, represents a blow from the other side of the political spectrum. Human Terrain supporters are striking back at the article, and at Marlowe. And some of it is gets ugly.

Joshua Foust writing at the Conjecturer, points to Marlowe's "long history of heroin addiction" (documented in a book Marlowe wrote). Yes, Google is wonderful, but it's not clear how this is relevant to debates over human terrain.

Dave Dilegge, writing in the Small Wars Journal, calls her an "accidental tourist." He writes: "My major exception is that a rank amateur, on the basis of a relatively brief visit to a war-zone can proclaim that the Human Terrain System is a solution in search of a problem and is contrary to sound COIN [counterinsurgency] theory and practice."

Beyond that, Dilegge questions Marlowe's logic:

The majority of Marlowe’s assertions is single-sourced and not attributable to those directly involved in the HTT, excepting a brief meeting with [program bosses] Dr. McFate and COL Fondacaro, and is based on uninformed opinions on a very new capability that has not been afforded an opportunity to get out of the starting gate.

S*** happens, Marlowe’s embed was screwed up and early mistakes might have occurred in the establishment of a HTS reach-back capability. Go figure, the prudent COIN practitioner learns and adjusts – does not throw out the baby with the bathwater. That is what the lessons learned process she identified does for a living – if we did it perfect at the onset there would be no need to learn lessons.

There is so much more to address in Marlowe’s careless assertions – and I will – but for now I’ll leave it with her claim the Human Terrain System, and by extension cultural knowledge, is a solution in search of a problem.

Every source Marlowe cited on the cultural issues, this site, FM 3-24, and the lessons leaned process (to include those of the Army, Marine Corps, and Joint Forces Command) have come down hard on the critical need for not only cultural knowledge but also the capability of acting on that knowledge on the ground and in harm’s way.

Dr. Montgomery McFate, who Marlowe seemed to take personal issue with, was a contributing author to the doctrine she implied is somehow contradictory to the HTS program. I don’t get that – at all.

Marlowe’s experience in Afghanistan was a mere snapshot in time and her article does an injustice to our efforts to get this thing right. I am sorry the HTS did not live up to her expectations of a “slam dunk” success from the get-go. There are many examples of capabilities that cut their teeth in combat, did not fare well initially, but went on to become shining examples of American military ingenuity. I believe the HTS will follow in those footsteps.

Marlowe criticized Human Terrain propopents, in part, for being amateurs when it comes to Afghan culture. So Human Terrain defenders accuse Marlowe of being an amateur when it comes to military theory. That's understandable, but what is beginning to characterize the Human Terrain debate is name calling.

Attacking critics' or proponents' character is only going to make this debate worse.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/ann-marlows-whi.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 9:11am

Company Uses Pulsed Power to Blast IEDs
By Sharon Weinberger November 21, 2007 | 9:00:00 AM

Everyone has a gadget for stopping improvised bombs, ranging from the exotic to the ordinary.

In Texas, one company is looking at pulsed power to fry electronics:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx5PENBIlOM

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/everyone-has-a.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 9:25am

Navy: Let's Play "Sim Iraq"
By Noah Shachtman November 20, 2007 | 3:49:46 PM



When I mentioned the other day that the armed forces were funding all kinds of "Sim Iraq" projects, I meant it as a metaphor -- a way to describe the military's new breed of simulations of a society's cultural, political, and economic landscape.

The Navy, it turns out, has a "Sim Iraq" in mind, too. A literal one. The service has issued a call for a developers to build "a highly interactive, PC-based Human, Social and Culture Behavioral Modeling (HSCB) simulation tool to support training for military planners for handling insurgencies, small wars, and/or emergent conflicts."

We are looking for innovative ideas that explore and harness the power of “advanced” interactive multimedia computer game technologies (e.g. "sim games”), that offer single or multi-player interaction via single computer, network or internet. The system should incorporate the best-practices of the videogame industry, including intuitive controls, story-telling, user-feedback (for performance assessment), scenario editing, and high-quality graphics & sound.

But don't think you can just use the Unreal engine to gin up some pixelated Mesopotamia. "Although, high-quality 3-D graphics and 3-D interaction are desirable, we will not be considering games based on first-person shooter (or equivalent) technology for this solicitation," the Navy notes. "The current solicitation is not aiming to build entertainment, but a highly accurate and advanced simulation platform."

The Navy is also looking for a second set of programs, to help commanders get a feel for the local culture in a hurry.

The aim is to better understand the socio-cultural context in which these military missions operate. What is needed is a Rapid Ethnographic Assessment program: New models and methodologies to improve and augment the data collection efforts being undertaken in these missions. This capability will ensure that military analysts will not just collect data, but also be able to know what data matters, in order to make sense of tribal, ethnic and social class relationships, understand environmental factors (for example, the control of water in arid climates), land rights, disputes, the role of religion in everyday life, and the structure of the elites, to name but a few examples relevant to military operations. Candidate methodologies include: cognitive anthropology, social network analysis, other methodologies with a structuralist focus, linguistics, applied anthropology, development anthropology, and computational approaches. This effort will provide analysts with new capabilities for analyzing ethnographic data in ways that are informed by ethnological theory and modern anthropological approaches. A rich, scientifically sound, description of society and the relationships of the various parts of society, will be the result of rapid ethnographic assessment.

The Rapid Ethnographic Assessment program complements on-going efforts to improve data collection on culture and society. This program will provide a more comprehensive, scientifically sound framework for understanding the individual social facts that are being collected. Because all of culture is too large a concept for the limited time and funding of this effort, it is expected that the proposal writer concentrate on one, significant scenario in one, actual culture. Example: Power structure in Afghanistan, Tribal structure and political affiliation in Sudan, Humanitarian relief in Pakistan, Reconstruction in Iraq.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/culture-modelli.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 9:29am

South Korea's 'Shrapnel' Rifle
By Sharon Weinberger November 20, 2007 | 2:19:57 PM

According to a local news report, South Korea is developing some sort of new-fangled "shrapnel-bullet firing rifle", which I assume is really a badly translated (or misunderstood) term for air-burst munition (but gun nuts out there, feel free to correct me).



The state-funded Agency for Defense Development (ADD) has developed a new rifle that fires special bullets that explode over targets and scatter shrapnel, a report said Tuesday.

"The specially designed bullets blow up over enemy soldiers and disperse deadly fragments,'' the Yonhap news agency reported, quoting an unidentified source. The rifle will be mass produced from next year after test trials, the source said.

The easy-to-carry rifle is equipped with laser scope, as well as optical and night sight functions, he said.

"The development of the rifle is remarkable in terms of its size, weight and fire power,'' the source said. "The rifle is expected to be a best seller on the global market.''

The rifle will reportedly be used in urban operations.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/south-koreas-sh.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 9:44am

Terror Gets A Short Stare

Since 9-11 TSA and DHS have been besieged with detector proposals for ferreting out passengers attempting to conceal explosives and hazardous substances beneath their clothing. They have run the gamut of technical ambition, most bad, many ugly, and variously plagued by poor signal-to-noise ratios and alarming false positive rates. Some that work do so more by brute force than technical elegance- what can't you detect with a MR scanner, a sawed off synchotron and a megabuck array of single crystal gadolinium scintillators ?



Few of the black boxes on offer have seen practical deployment, so I was pleasantly surprised by a gizmo in prototype production by the British ex-MOD firm, Qinetiq.

This sub-terahertz gadget relies on the short end of the ambient millimeter wave spectrum to illuminate the difference between what people are made of and what they may be carrying. Advances in high electron mobility indium phosphide semiconductor detectors and a MIMIC amplifier allow a simple dielectric lens (the white-domed top of the hooded cocktail shaker in the photo) to give passengers the once over at a few hundred gigahertz, to see if they are plain vanilla humans, or packing liquid or solid contraband that does not match the dielectric properties of flesh, blood, and bone.

The dielectric lens and a boresighted video camera ( the cocktail shaker's dark spout ) afford a magnified directional view fed to an internal millimeter wavelength horn antenna and a one dimensional scan train not much more complicated than a bar code reader. Discrimination is afforded by proprietary AI firmware that presumably has total recall of what people look like over several wavelengths, allowing comparison of the real-time background illumination with what emanates from a target up to several hundred feet away.

If a passenger's millimeter wave profile lights up as anomalous, security people come into play to see what he or she may be hiding. This is a very simple system , but MIMIC devices lend themselves to phased arrays, and the technology could grow into a sophisticated imaging system if this early embodiment delivers high passenger throughput and few false positives. A larger roadside version can detect concealed passengers in soft-sided Brit lorries, but here in the land of metal truck bodies , it will probably be debuting in airports rather than Ro-Ro terminals.

http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2007/11/terror-gets-a-s.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 9:55am

Video: Lockheed's Secret Airship Flies
By Sharon Weinberger November 20, 2007 | 9:43:51 AM

Airships may suffer some insurmountable problems, but after watching this video, I understand why little things like cost and engineering don't stop people from building them.

Airships are just great to watch. This is video of Lockheed's P-791, a hybrid airship built on the company's dime by its secret Skunk Works unit. The closely held project was first revealed by Aviation Week & Space Technology reporter Mike Dornheim (who died in a tragic accident last year).

See video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Xs0mvJLK0

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/airships-but-af.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 23, 2007, 10:00am

Video Fix: Built Like A Tank, Fast as Crotch-Rocket
By Noah Shachtman November 21, 2007 | 3:20:00 AM

Forget the secret blimp. Ditch the slithering bio-bot. The hottest video you'll see on DANGER ROOM today is this one right here, for an early prototype of the Howe Brothers' Rip Saw vehicle.

Shaped like a mini-tank, with the giddy-up of a motorcycle (0-50 in 3.5 seconds), the thing blasts over ditches, cruises through water -- and crushes unsuspecting houses. Yours for a mere twenty two hundred grand:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_iup2jXQqI

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/post.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 24, 2007, 1:39am

Russian Air Force to adopt Su-34 "flying tank"
19:59 | 16/ 10/ 2007



The Su-34 design incorporates several crucial concepts: high maneuverability and speed, heavy payload extended flight range:



http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20071016/84180029.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 9:50am

The Most Dangerous Object in the Office This Month: The Photonic Disruptor
By Miyoko Ohtake 11.27.07 | 12:00 AM



This laser is borderline illegal. With an output of 105 milliwatts, it's 21 times more powerful than your average presentation pointer. It was designed for SWAT and military use in nonlethal takedowns. The adjustable-focus green ray will do permanent retinal damage to anyone within about 60 feet, visually disorients people up to 1,150 feet away, and illuminates objects almost 2 miles out. Alternative uses: melting plastic, lighting fireworks, and settling heated disagreements over Wired kitchen queue-cutting on Burger Thursdays.

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/15-12/st_dangerous

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 10:30am

Mogadishu's Wheeled Battlecruisers
By David Axe November 26, 2007 | 6:18:00 PM



MOGADISHU, Somalia - Super-tough, nearly bomb-proof trucks are all the rage in Iraq these days. But in Africa, these "Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected" vehicles, or MRAPs, have been standard for thirty years. The armored rides with the v-shaped hulls first hit the road in the 1970s during a brutal war in what is now Zimbabwe. Today, they’re the truck of choice for another bloody conflict: the 17-year-old series of civil wars and invasions and insurgencies in Somalia.

I went riding with the Ugandans today. Fifteen hundred of them deployed to Mogadishu eight months ago under an African Union banner, and with U.S. funding, in a bid to seize and hold the key infrastructure that some future international force would need to begin stabilizing the embattled city – a “bridgehead,” according to Captain Paddy Ankunda.

This ain’t your typical peacekeeping mission: within moments of stepping foot on Somali soil at the seaport, the Ugandans got mortared – and the attacks have continued. Roadside bombs, suicide bombers, mortars, rockets, snipers and insurgent infantry assaults – the range and intensity of threats makes Mogadishu “like Baghdad,” Paddy says. So when the Ugandans roll out, they roll out under armor, in RG-31 Nyala minesweepers and what appears to be an open-top, single-crew variant of the Casspir -- the smaller predecessor of the American 25-ton Buffalo monster truck.


RG-31 Nyala


Casspir

U.S. MRAPs are fairly lightly armed: usually just one .50-caliber machine gun, often in a remote-controlled turret. Ugandan MRAPs are like wheeled battlecruisers. The RGs sport two machine guns; the Casspirs have three, plus a rifleman with his AK-47, crouched in the armored bed beside the turret gunners.

“We have the arsenal,” Paddy told me last week when I ran into him at the airport. He was explaining why I shouldn’t believe press reports saying one of his camps had been briefly overrun by insurgents. In fact, the bad guys got gunned down outside the walls.

The Ethiopians are the most feared army in Mogadishu, but the Ugandans are probably the best-protected – and rightly so. Theirs is essentially a defensive mission, holding onto that key real estate, hoping and praying for the day when the U.N. wakes up and sends its own peacekeepers. That'll let the widely hated Ethiopians leave. And that might begin the slow process of returning peace to Mogadishu.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/african-peaceke.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 10:34am

November 28, 2007 4:11 PM PST

Virtual shooting gallery on wheels
Posted by Mark Rutherford


(Credit: VirTra Systems)

If your fair-weather friends are getting bored with your in-home theater, bowling alley, and bevy of indentured pedicurists, you may want to step up to a VirTra Systems' mobile live-fire training simulation trailer.

The trailer is based on the Houston company's IVR (immersive virtual training) simulation technology and offers a three-lane marksmanship simulator and "full-featured judgmental-use-of-force scenario" with both laser-based and live-fire training, including full auto in anything up to .50 caliber. Depending on your preferred quarry, it's available in either a police or military version.

"We remain committed to offering the training community innovative, high-tech, immersive small-arms training simulation products at extremely competitive prices," retired Major Gen. Perry V. Dalby, VirTra Systems' chief executive officer, said in a press release. The company sells "situational awareness" training equipment and virtual-reality systems to military and other clientele, such as General Motors and Red Baron Pizza.

The live-fire trailer is reasonably priced at between $250,000 and $500,000, depending on accessories.

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13639_1-9825092....bj=MilitaryTech

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 10:39am

Uh Oh... Killer Drone "Structurally Complete"
By Noah Shachtman November 28, 2007 | 12:51:00 PM

The Navy's killer drone program is picking up steam. The unmanned combat air systems demonstrator, or UCAS-D, is now "100% structurally complete," according to its manufacturers at Northrop Grumman. Testing of the flight software in underway. Now it's on "subsystems installation," "failure detection," "accommodation testing"... oh, and paint, too. Northrop is aiming towards have the first one completed in 2009.



The Navy only decided to build UCAS-D a few months ago, as Lew Page notes. But Northrop engineers are working with the same design they were using for a Darpa /Air Force / Navy killer drone effort that was canceled. "We're finishing a programme started seven years ago," a Northrop executive told Flight magazine. Lew adds:

The $635m UCAS-D contract will see Northrop produce a brace of aircraft and - if successful - prove that they can operate from US Navy carriers, traditionally considered one of the more demanding flight environments for human-piloted jets.

"The performance of the aircraft isn't an issue anymore," Rand Corp. analyst David Ochmanek tells the L.A. Times. "The sole remaining issue that hasn't been addressed -- because it is so difficult -- is landing them and having them take off."

After the jump: some hot CGI action, showing how the UCAS-D might look in flight -- and one the carrier deck: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dobrNcrdRxw

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/ucas-d-up-runni.html#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 10:47am

BAE Sports Most Powerful Railgun Ever
Jason Mick (Blog) - November 27, 2007 1:36 PM


An older 8-megajoule U.S. Navy railgun. (Source: Office of Naval Research)


BAE's new 32-megajoule functional railgun ups the firepower and includes a nice looking barrel. (Source: Office of Naval Research)


The 32-megajoule gun will require massive capacitors to store enough power to fire a slug. (Source: Office of Naval Research)

BAE's new BFG 32-megajoule railgun annihilates its competitors

Like some super weapon from a video game, BAE's 32-megajoule Electro-Magnetic Laboratory Rail Gun (32-MJ LRG) design juts prominently into the air, its massive barrel letting everyone know that it means business.

While rail guns still are far from being used in practical warfare, BAE has been continuously laboring to slowly transform this fantastic premise into reality. BAE, known for its fighting vehicles such as the Bradley, is one of the foremost pioneers in high-tech weaponry. Recently the company debuted a semi-autonomous version of its Bradley fighting vehicle, known as the Black Knight.

The company has also been hard at work researching how to create a railgun that packs a serious punch.

Earlier this year General Atomics, a rival research company, demonstrated a 8-megajoule railgun, which fired shells at Mach 7. Until now 9-megajoule railguns were the most powerful models in existence.

BAE is looking to blow these "peashooters" away after it announced a railgun four times more powerful. A functional prototype of its railgun has been delivered to the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va. and is currently being installed at the Center.

The Navy plans to install special capacitors to fuel the beast's appetite for destruction.

The device operates similarly to previous railguns, using electric force to propel a nonexplosive solid projectile along a series of magnetic rails. The device requires a staggering 3 million amps of power to fire.

Incredibly, the device is only the initial offering from BAE. It hopes to soon meet the Navy's goal of a 64-megajoule weapon capable of being mounted on a warship. Such a weapon would draw a current of approximately 6 million amps.

With such high power requirements, such a design is technically feasible when placed on a nuclear-powered vessel. Dr. Amir Chaboki, program manager for Electro-Magnetic Rail Guns at BAE Systems, states, "The power is available. The challenge is how you use it."

Chaboki believes the ideal ship platform would be the Navy's electrically propelled DDG 100 Destroyer, which has an operating power of 72 MW, approximately.

One challenge is that the destructive force and mechanics of the device can easily damage the gun in its current state. A few shots can dislodge the rails or even damage the gun barrel.

BAE is constantly improving upon its designs, though and sees the 32-megajoule cannon as a key milestone in its goal of deploying a 64-megajoule cannon, on ship, within 13 years or less. Such a cannon would be able to fire at speeds in excess of Mach 7 at targets as far as 220 miles away using cheap metal slugs. Such a cannon could unleash a silent deadly barrage that would hit the enemy harder and would give less warning than a traditional missile strike.

For now there are great technical obstacles that need to be overcome in making the gun hardy enough to withstand multiple firings in a deployment system and be able to efficiently manage the tremendous power it needs. However, that takes nothing away from BAE's moment of glory as the creator of the first 32-megajoule railgun, undisputedly the most powerful projectile weapon in existence.

http://www.dailytech.com/BAE+Sports+Most+Powerful+Railgun+Ever/article9791.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 11:15am

Miami Police Enlists Drone
By Sharon Weinberger November 28, 2007 | 12:50:29 PM

Police in Texas want to use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to spot speeders, and now Miami cops are also looking at drones for SWAT Teams. A local TV station reports that law enforcement there are looking at Honeywell's ducted-fan Micro Air Vehicle:



The capability of the unit is phenomenal," said Miami-Dade Detective Juan Villalba.

The unmanned aircraft will be used during SWAT team and tactical operations, especially when officers need video of a heavily armed suspect.

The Miami-Dade police department has not yet taken possession on its drone, but the Houston police department has and is already conducting tests.

Miami-Dade hopes to use grant money to pay for the MAV. Officials said the units are pricey. Depending on the complexity of the system, they can cost several thousand dollars to more than a million.

Apparently police in Miami and Houston are first in line for drones because they've both received FAA clearance; a big hurdle for operating UAVs in domestic airplace.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/miami-police-bu.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 11:17am

Army Buys Up Robot Air Force
By Sharon Weinberger November 28, 2007 | 5:14:09 PM

Last month, there was a vigorous debate over a radical, and I believe ultimately misguided, proposal to disband the U.S. Air Force. The Army, however, seems to have its own solution: it's going to buy its own damned air force. Writing at Aviation Week's Ares blog, Bill Sweetman reports on Army plans to buy 540 armed drones:



According to [General Atomics-ASI's Steve] May, the Army is looking at acquiring as many as 45 complete Sky Warrior systems once full-rate production starts in 2011 - each with 12 air vehicles, 540 UAVs in all. The Sky Warrior resembles the USAF MQ-1L Predator but is heavier and more powerful, routinely carrying eight Hellfire missiles.

As Bill also notes, Air force reps at the conference were, well, unhappy. I can only imagine.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/army-buys-own-a.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Nov 30, 2007, 11:19am

IED Solution: Fry 'Em
By Sharon Weinberger November 29, 2007 | 12:54:56 PM

It's wonderful that all across America, inventors are thinking about ways to help the military defend itself against improvised explosive devices. I'm sure some of the ideas are novel and worth trying. That said, I kind of wonder about the utility of this invention, which would place a huge electrical generator in a Humvee to "electrocute" the ground in front of the vehicle, pre-exploding IEDs:



An apparatus for neutralizing explosive devices at a safe distance from the vehicle equipped with the device. The main components are a diesel engine-generator that is placed in the cargo area of a high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle (HMMWV) or towed behind the HMMWV or lifted above a mine field by a helicopter. Connected to the electrical box of the generator is a version of a circuit known as a single wire earth return circuit. One lead of the circuit is grounded at a distance in front of the HMMWV so as to send electricity into the ground. The second lead of the circuit is grounded at the rear of the vehicle completing the circuit.

As the HMMWV approached a buried explosive device, the electricity flowing from the generator, into the front lead, which is in a conduit reaching yards in front of the HMMWV, is allowed to flow into the ground in yards in front of the HMMWV. The electricity will explode the explosive device before the HMMWV reaches it. Injuries to the crew will be lessened if the explosive device is exploded a distance in front of the HMMWV when compared to it being detonated by a terrorist directly underneath the HMMWV.

I can think of more than a few problems with this invention. For starters, a few yards is not a safe distance for many IEDs.

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/ied-solution-fr.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 2, 2007, 4:41am

China Targeting All 'Enemy Space Vehicles' Including GPS
Special To World Tribune
East-Asia-Intel.com
11-29-7

China's anti-satellite and space warfare program includes plans to destroy or incapacitate 'every enemy space vehicle' that passes over China.

The annual report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, released last week, listed among Beijing's goals that of ensuring that Chinese space weapons are "conducted covertly so China can maintain a positive international image." China has called for a ban on space weapons at the United Nations.

The report said that China also is developing civilian technology that can be applied to military space programs and is acquiring the "ability to destroy or temporarily incapacitate every enemy space vehicle when it is located above China," the report said.

The Chinese also plan to attack U.S. global positioning system (GPS) through various means, including anti-satellite weapons, high-energy weapons, high-energy weather monitoring rockets and ground attacks on earth-based stations.

One section of the report, based on public and classified briefings, concluded there was a need for more information about Chinese activities and intentions.

Research from nearly 100 Chinese sources identified 30 proposals and recommendations by Chinese military leaders "regarding the development of space and counter-space weapons and programs."

The military is also developing stealth satellites and a space program that will "provide key support for Chinese combat forces."

"Some of these proposals appear to have been implemented already, as evidenced by January's kinetic anti-satellite test and earlier laser incidents involving American satellites," the report said.

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/ea_china_11_29.asp#

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 2, 2007, 5:29am

U.S. Pursuing New Spy Satellite Program

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2007 (AP) The U.S. is pursuing a multibillion-dollar program to develop the next generation of spy satellites, the first major effort of its kind since the Pentagon canceled the ambitious and costly Future Imagery Architecture system two years ago, The Associated Press has learned.

The new system, known as BASIC, would be launched by 2011 and is expected to cost $2 billion to $4 billion, according to U.S. officials familiar with the program. They discussed details on condition of anonymity because the information is classified.

Photo reconnaissance satellites are used to gather visual information from space about adversarial governments and terror groups, such as construction at suspected nuclear sites or militant training camps. Satellites also can be used to survey damage from hurricanes, fires and other natural disasters.

The new start comes as many U.S. officials, lawmakers and defense experts question the high costs of satellite programs, particularly after the demise of the previous program that wasted time and money.

The National Reconnaissance Office spent six years and billions of dollars on Future Imagery Architecture, or FIA, before deciding in September 2005 to scrap a major component of the program. Boeing, the primary contractor, had run into technical problems in the development of the electro-optical satellite and blew its budget by as much as $3 billion before the Pentagon pulled the plug, according to industry experts and government reports.

"They grossly underestimated the cost of the program," as well as the technological feasibility of FIA, said John Pike, a space expert who heads GlobalSecurity.org. FIA "was a hallucination," he said.

The Defense Department is in the initial stages of preparing the new program for bidders. The Pentagon's classified "request for information" on the technology was issued this fall to industry. Comments were due two weeks ago. A solicitation for proposals is expected next spring.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is conducting an analysis of the system's potential capabilities that is to be completed this month.

Officials said the Pentagon is considering a range of options, but the new program is expected to be significantly less ambitious than the one it is meant to replace. Options include developing an entirely new photo imagery satellite or a derivative of a commercial imagery satellite, buying a commercial satellite or leasing existing satellite capacity.

U.S. commercial satellites currently can make out the outline of 2-foot-long object from space. In April, a satellite will be launched with the ability to see a 16-inch object. By 2011, that capability is expected to narrow to nearly 10 inches.

Industry officials said the contract probably will be for a commercial or commercially derived spacecraft because of the time and budget constraints and the government's apparent desire to maintain control of the satellite.

The U.S. military has a $1 billion contract with two commercial satellite companies to buy space imagery. Each $500 million contract pays for a satellite, its launch and insurance and roughly $200 million in photo imagery.

"We would look forward to reviewing any new government acquisition request since we give the government more eyes in the sky and high quality imagery at a fraction of the cost," said Mark Brender, vice president for communications at GEOEYE, one of the imagery companies under contract with the Pentagon.

The canceled Boeing satellite under FIA was supposed to provide both broad area views of the Earth and the ability to home in on a single target with a high-powered telescope on a single satellite. Those capabilities currently are provided by different satellites, according to an industry official.

When the Pentagon canceled the program in 2005, it hired Lockheed Martin to cobble together a space craft from spare parts from the current generation of secret electro-optical reconnaissance satellites to cover a potential gap in coverage.

The nation's classified network of satellites represent some of the most expensive government programs and receive almost no public oversight. Because of their multibillion-dollar price tags, sensitive missions and lengthy development schedules, spy agencies go to great pains to keep details from becoming public.

The House and Senate intelligence committees have criticized the Pentagon and intelligence agencies' management of space programs. Half the programs have experienced cost growth of 50 percent or more. The Defense Department spends about $20 billion annually on space programs.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/30/tech/main3561086.shtml

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 5, 2007, 9:26am

Russia to showcase new-generation subs at maritime exhibition
21:36 | 03/ 12/ 2007



MOSCOW, December 3 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will present its new-generation Amur-1650 class submarine at an international maritime exhibition in Malaysia, Russia's state-controlled arms exporter said on Monday.

The Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace (LIMA) 2007 exhibition will take place on December 4-8 at the Mahsuri International Exhibition Center (MIEC).

"The submarines will include Project 636 [submarines] with an integrated missile complex, Club-S, and the next-generation Amur-1650 submarine," Rosoboronexport said in a press release.

The Project 677 or Lada-class submarines have been designed to engage surface ships and submarines as well as to perform surveillance, mine laying, and special operation forces deployment missions.

Long range anti-ship missiles, rockets, torpedoes and mines can be fired from the torpedo tubes at the bow.

The ninth edition of the biennial LIMA is expected to be the biggest ever with more than 250 companies from 26 countries taking part in the aerospace exhibition alone.

They include Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Hong Kong, India, Germany, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore and Spain.

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20071203/90765627.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 7, 2007, 2:33am

'Flying Fish' Unmanned Aircraft Takes Off And Lands On Water


'Flying Fish' unmanned aircraft takes off and lands on water. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Michigan)

ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007) — Flying fish were the inspiration for an unmanned seaplane with a 7-foot wingspan developed at the University of Michigan. The autonomous craft is believed to be the first seaplane that can initiate and perform its own takeoffs and landings on water.

It is designed to advance the agency's "persistent ocean surveillance" program.

Engineering researchers from U-M recently returned from sea trials off the coast of Monterey, Calif., where they demonstrated the craft's capability to DARPA officials.

"The vehicle did very well," said Hans Van Sumeren, associate director of the U-M Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratories. "To take off and land in the water was a big effort. We did it 22 times."

The researchers named the robotic plane Flying Fish after its inspiration. Guy Meadows, director of the U-M Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratories, conceived of the design while out on the water. "I saw these fish pop up and soar over the waves," Meadows said.

That got Meadows and his colleagues looking at sea birds for a design for their craft.

"We studied sea birds seriously," Meadows said. "They're all about the same size---about 20 pounds with a 2-meter wingspan. It turns out that, aerodynamically speaking, that's a sweet spot to be flying close to the water. Our plane is about the size of a large pelican."

Flying Fish, an electric vehicle, drifts until its onboard Global Positioning System tells the craft it has floated too far. That triggers the takeoff sequence, which gets the plane airborne in just 10 meters. Other GPS coordinates trigger the landing sequence. The craft accomplishes both in simple ways, explained Ella Atkins, associate professor of aerospace engineering and associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science.

The flight pattern is, for the most part, a recording of a graduate student's piloting of the plane. That means the takeoff is blind, Atkins explained. The plane takes no measurements of its surroundings. The waves would confuse it.

"Most people wouldn't do it this way," Atkins said. "The plane puts the motors on at full throttle and sets the pitch elevator enough to break out of the water. Then it counts and pitches forward. We believe that if we had done it any other way, we would have basically dived into the ocean on takeoff because the plane would have detected huge oscillations due to the waves."

The landing is basically a shallow descent.

"When it impacts the water, it goes, 'Oh, there's the water,'" Akins said. "The boat has very well-designed pontoons. Because it doesn't have a flat bottom, it cuts into the water like a diver, as opposed to belly-flopping."

The craft was a collaborative effort among researchers in the departments of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Aerospace Engineering.

Next, the team plans to outfit the plane with solar power and add more sensors.

Meadows is also a professor of naval architecture and marine engineering and a professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences.

Funded by the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071205190838.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 7, 2007, 9:05am

BrahMos to increase production of Russian-Indian cruise missiles
06/ 12/ 2007



NEW DELHI, December 6 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian-Indian joint venture BrahMos will buy a manufacturing plant in southwestern India to increase production of its supersonic cruise missiles, an Indian military source said Thursday.

In 1998, Russia and India established a joint venture, BrahMos Aerospace, to design, develop, produce and market a supersonic cruise missile. Sea-based and land-based versions of the missile have been successfully tested and put into service with the Indian Army and Navy.

The source said India's Defense Research and Development Organization, which represents the Indian side in the BrahMos venture, and the government of the Kerala state had signed a memorandum of understanding on the acquisition of a plant currently owned by state-run company Kerala Hightech Industries Limited.

He said the plant has all the facilities and over 250 qualified personnel to launch production of the [BrahMos] cruise missiles.

The contract on transfer of the plant's ownership to BrahMos will be signed January 1, 2008, the source said.

The Brahmos missile, named after India's Brahmaputra River and Russia's Moskva River, has a range of 180 miles and can carry a conventional warhead of up to 660 pounds. It can hit ground targets flying at an altitude as low as 10 meters (30 feet) and at a speed of Mach 2.8, which is about three times faster than the U.S.-made subsonic Tomahawk cruise missile.

Work is currently underway to create aircraft- and submarine-based BrahMos missiles.

The airborne version could be installed on the Sukhoi-30MKI air superiority fighters of the Indian Air Force.

Experts estimate that India might purchase up to 1,000 BrahMos missiles for its Armed Forces in the next decade, and export 2,000 to third countries during the same period.

In 2000, Russia and India signed a 10-year program on military-technical cooperation, which currently lists about 130 R&D and production projects, including the joint development of a fifth-generation multirole fighter.

http://en.rian.ru/world/20071206/91245076.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 7, 2007, 9:11am

$1B In Military Equipment Missing In Iraq

Exclusive: Report Shows Vehicles, Machine Guns And More Meant For Iraqi Forces Unaccounted For

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6, 2007



Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News investigative unit. Auditors for the Inspector General reviewed equipment contracts totaling $643 million but could only find an audit trail for $83 million.

The report details a massive failure in government procurement revealing little accountability for the billions of dollars spent purchasing military hardware for the Iraqi security forces. For example, according to the report, the military could not account for 12,712 out of 13,508 weapons, including pistols, assault rifles, rocket propelled grenade launchers and machine guns.

The report comes on the same day that Army procurement officials will face tough questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee regarding their procurement policies. One official, Claude Bolton, assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology has already announced his resignation on the heels of sharp criticism of army contracting. Bolton’s resignation is effective Jan. 2, 2008. The Army has significantly expanded its fraud investigations in recent months.

Inspector General Report (1.95 mb):
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/IG_Report_Security_Forces_Fund.pdf


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/06/iraq/main3584247.shtml

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 9, 2007, 1:10am

Artificial Jellyfish, Explosives Sensor Among Projects Being Developed At Undersea Technology Center

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2007) — Artificial jellyfish, explosives sensors and seabed batteries are among the diverse research projects under way just nine months after the creation of a Center of Excellence in Undersea Technology in collaboration with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Rhode Island.

When researchers at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport began to investigate how to create a covert network of widely-distributed underwater sensors, they imagined attaching the sensors to artificial jellyfish that could maintain their place in the water while passing information from one sensor to the next.

So the scientists turned to the Center of Excellence in Undersea Technology at the University of Rhode Island, which was established last January in partnership with NUWC to collaborate on a wide range of innovative research and education initiatives. The Center linked NUWC with two URI oceanographers and a Providence College expert in jellyfish locomotion to explore this novel idea.

“To maximize the utility of these sensor systems and deploy a large number

of them, it’s important to put them on an inexpensive platform. That’s where the jellyfish idea came from,” explained Malcolm Spaulding, director of the Center and a URI professor of ocean engineering. “An artificial jellyfish would need to be made of simple materials and be acoustically transparent. The key is understanding how jellyfish move and whether they can stay in one place despite tidal currents and waves.”

While still in its early stages, this project is a unique example of the diverse initiatives under way just nine months after the Center of Excellence was established.

“Rhode Island and the rest of southern New England has a wealth of marine and defense companies and an abundance of oceanography and ocean engineering researchers to call upon for assistance on almost any underwater project that could be imagined,” Spaulding said. “We’re one of the hubs of undersea technology research in the country.”

Among the other projects in progress are:

* a chemical sensor that can detect minute quantities of explosives in the water (a mine on the hull of a ship or a diver carrying a bomb, for instance);
* a battery that uses the chemical reactions from bacteria living in the seabed to generate small amounts of electricity to power offshore sensors or other devices;
* an emergency radio beacon powered by a seawater battery that harvests the motion energy of waves to extend the life of the signal; and
* a non-toxic method of preventing organisms from fouling underwater equipment and vehicles.

One of the Center’s initial projects, led by the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) and involving a number of Rhode Island-based businesses, was the first phase of the development of a prototype of an undersea perimeter defense system that will detect, classify and respond to undersea threats against critical infrastructure like ports and military facilities on shore.

In addition, testing began this fall in Narragansett Bay on an integrated system of undersea sensors and data management tools that are being linked to oceanographic measurement devices and underwater vehicles in a high-tech project called the Ocean Response Coastal Analysis System. Initial demonstrations of the project, led by URI Marine Research Scientist Al Hanson, have shown the capability to monitor dissolved oxygen levels using remotely controlled sensors deployed on bottom-mounted vertical profilers and autonomous underwater vehicles. When completed in five years, it will provide real-time data, analysis and visualizations of a wide range of coastal conditions and observations. Further testing is planned for the spring.

“Few of these projects would have advanced as quickly as they have without the support of the Center of Excellence to coordinate funding, formation of research teams, and associated administrative details,” said Spaulding. “The Center has become a vital vehicle for fostering collaboration between academic institutions, industry and the Navy.”

Funding for these projects comes mostly from NUWC, with additional support from URI, RIEDC, the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071208145842.htm

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Re: DARPArama
Post by deborah on Dec 9, 2007, 2:24pm

December 9, 2007
Army's vision of combat in the future is technologically close at hand
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/12/09/armys_vision_of_combat_in_the_future_is_technologically_clo se_at_hand/

EL PASO - A $200 billion plan to remake the largest war machine in history unfolds in one small way on a quiet country road in the Chihuahuan Desert.

Jack Hensley, one of a legion of contractors on the project, is hunkered in a slowly moving sport utility vehicle, serving as target practice for a baby-faced soldier in a Humvee aiming a laser about 700 yards away.

A moment later, another soldier in the Humvee punches commands into a computer transmitting data across an expanse of sand and mesquite to a site 2 1/2 miles away. On an actual battlefield, this is when a precision attack missile would be launched, killing Hensley almost instantly.

For soldiers in an experimental Army brigade at the sprawling Fort Bliss base, it's the first day of field training on a new weapon called the Non-Line of Sight Launch System, or NLOS-LS, a box of rockets that can automatically change direction in midair and hit a moving target about 24 miles away. The Army says it has never had a weapon like it.

"It's not the Spartans with the swords anymore," says Emmett Schaill, the brigade commander, peering into the desert-scape.

In the Army's vision, the war of the future is increasingly combat by mouse clicks. It's as networked as the Internet, as mobile as a cellphone, as intuitive as a video game. The Army has a name for this vision: Future Combat Systems, or FCS. The project involves creating a family of 14 weapons, drones, robots, sensors, and hybrid-electric combat vehicles connected by a wireless network. It has turned into the most ambitious modernization of the Army since World War II and the most expensive Army weapons program ever, military officials say.

It is also one of the most controversial. Even as some early versions of these weapons make their way onto the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, members of Congress, government investigators, and military observers question whether the Defense Department has set the stage for one of its biggest and costliest failures. At risk, they say, are billions of taxpayer dollars spent on exotic technology that may never come to fruition, leaving the Army little time and few resources to prepare for new threats..... (continued)

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 15, 2007, 6:31am

'Harmless' Area Denial Weapons Facts...And Burns
By Ted Twietmeyer
12-12-7

Here are some facts about the active denial weapon, and what the DoD has called a "mishap" when a serviceman was injured. From the known information, we can clearly see this weapon is far more harmful than we are being told. The energy required to power this weapon is enormous, and may indicate that the military is using (or plans to use) zero point energy to power it.

* The weapon does not generate a small amount of "harmless" microwave power. It generates 100 THOUSAND WATTS of microwave power. This is equivalent to more than 100 microwave ovens. This is the equivalent energy of ONE THOUSAND 100 WATT light bulbs. Who would put anyone in front of such energy? And who would be stupid enough to push the button to activate it? To put this in perspective, just 100 watts of microwave power are used to send signals to television satellites 22,500 miles out in space. And even 100 watts of microwave power is considered unsafe. Satellite dishes on remote hookup trucks usually have a radiation symbol on them to warn people of the risk. One hundred watts of microwave power is more than enough energy to cause cataracts in the eyes. It is still unknown if this weapon can cause cataracts.

* A very large power source for this weapon is required. It is known that the beam can be turned on continuously for at least 4 seconds, which was used on reporters during a demonstration. To generate 100,000 watts of power requires the electrical equivalent of 134 horsepower. In fact, more power is actually required because the gyrotron that generates this power requires far more energy to power it than what is generated by it.



GYROTRON SIMILAR TO THAT USED IN THE WEAPON [6]

Though not described here, the window is made of diamond. The small yellow zig-zag line shows the path of the microwaves which are collected. An interaction takes place between the electrons from the electron gun and the super conducting magnet, creating super high frequency microwaves. Only a portion of the electrons emitted from the electron gun become microwaves. The remaining energy is lost and travels to the top end of the tube, which is called a collector.

One paper written in 2004 [1] claims gyrotron efficiencies of just 6.3%. Yet a patent claims a theoretical efficiency of 75% is possible.[2] If we assume an efficiency of perhaps 50%, this would require no less than the equivalent of 268Hp to power the weapon at 100% full power. This figure is conservative, and does not include any additional energy losses in the weapon or power to operate the aiming or control system. It has been claimed that there are plans to put this weapon on an unmanned aerial vehicle like an RPV. This would appear impractical because of the tremendous electrical power required. However, a zero point energy power generator could make this possible, and it may be exactly what they have in mind. These generators are not fiction, and are not within the scope of this report.

* A 12 page report [3] on the "mishap" (a term NASA uses when they have an "accident") has 2 pages deleted and several other pages heavily edited.

* Athough almost no details have been released on the injured serviceman, but here is what we do know:

* The injured servicemen was exposed to high power in the millimeter region, with exposure from some or all of the weapon's 100 kilowatts. It has also been divulged that he received 2nd degree burns. What percentage of his body was burned is not known.



BURN EXAMPLES (left to right)
1st degree burn, 2nd degree burn which the serviceman has, and 3rd degree burn. [4]

* Cost to treat this serviceman's injuries was not trivial at $17,748.00. This probably indicates a large burned area which may also have included his face. His burned skin will be blood-red as shown in the example above (center.) His long term prognosis is unknown. The microwaves have burned away the outer layer of the skin exposing the dermis. This can also expose nerves and create considerable long-term pain and possible scarring.

* Testicles reside outside of the body for a specific reason. Sperm does not survive long at temperatures inside the body. Sperm survives inside a female long enough to achieve conception, but not much longer because of internal body temperatures. Exposure to heat and microwave energy could very well sterilize the serviceman, and also anyone who is exposed to the beam. It's unlikely any of this will ever be divulged, as it will be unpopular with public opinion of this "non-lethal weapon." This may also be in a portion of the text deleted from the publicized version of the DoD report.

* When this weapon was first announced, it was stated by the DoD that it is harmless and only penetrates a fraction of an inch into the skin. To damage the testicles or alter DNA permanently, a brief exposure to high power microwave energy could be more than enough. Skin on the scrotum is some of the thinnest skin on the human body. Did the DoD knowingly or unknowingly sterilize participlant or damage their DNA during that demonstration? This is also unknown. In that video of the demonstation no women were present. [5] Why? Perhaps this weapon IS harmful to females, and this is why they were not part of the demonstration.

This report is based on a mishap report obtained under the Freedom of Information Act [3] as well as other public information.

Ted Twietmeyer
www.data4science.net
tedtw@frontiernet.net


REFERENCES

[1] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/ iel5/9315/29616/01345957.pdf

[2] http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4370621.html

[3] http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/files/Scan0519-2.pdf

[4] http://bioe.eng.utoledo.edu/adms_staffs/akkus/4740_2004_WEB/www/ Uses.htm&h=232&w=450&sz=13&tbnid=OVohN-6TEnfliM:&tbnh=65&tbnw=127&prev =/images%3Fq%3D2nd%2Bdegree%2Bburn%2Bphoto%26um% 3D1&start=2&sa=X&oi=images&ct=image&c

[5] http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/11/seven-months-af.html

[6] http://jolisfukyu.tokai-sc.jaea.go.jp/fukyu/mirai-en/img/honbun/ 3-14.jpg

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 15, 2007, 6:39am

New Document Reveals Military Mystery's Powers
By David Hambling December 10, 2007 | 1:35:00 PM



For years, no military program has sparked more fevered speculation from conspiracy theorists than the mysterious High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP. And for years, the Pentagon has been pooh-poohing speculation that the enormous collection of transmitters, radars, and magnetometers in Alaska was some sort of superweapon.

But, it turns out, the conspiracy theorists may not have been entirely off-base, after all.

Since its inception, there's been a huge range of opinion on what HAARP actually does: everything from a giant mind control facility to a space nuke countermeasure to a weather controller to an ionosphere-boiling mad science experiment to the mother of all pork projects has been suggested. But now that the program is actually up an running, military managers say the electronics array has much more benign use. "HAARP's main job is to produce radio waves to probe the ionosphere," an Air Force Research Laboratory officer said in October.

Which is true -- up to a point.

A drive by Clifford Stone on the X-Files-esque uber-site Above Top Secret to use the Freedom of Information Act to turn up UFO-related documents has led to the release of a fascinating report, HAARP: Research and Applications: http://foia.abovetopsecret.com/ultimate_....pplications.pdf It's from the Air Force Research Laboratory and Office of Naval Research, and it lays out the uses the military see for HAARP. Turns out the Pentagon wants some military bang for their buck from the program.

HAARP can actually perform a lot of militarily important functions, all involving the interactions of radio waves with the high atmosphere, magnetosphere and ionosphere.

The document points out that "on the higher frequency end (VHF/UHF) transionospheric propagation is a ubiquitous element of numerous civilian and military communication systems, surveillance and remote sensing systems." In other words, messing with the ionosphere means you can shut down VHF radio, TV and radar signals at will. As radio hams know, the reflection and refraction effects of the ionosphere make a huge difference to long-range radio reception, and HAARP provides the only means of influencing that.

Another interesting feature is how HAARP can influence the 'auroral electrodynamic circuit', a natural flow of electricity with ranges from 100,000 to 1 million megawatts ("equivalent to 10 to 100 large power plants"). Messing with the electrical properties of the ionosphere means some of this tremendous flow of power can be changed at the flick of a switch. In effect, the natural flow can be modulated to create a gigantic low-frequency radio transmitter.

Which is extremely interesting to military types. Extremely low frequency, or ELF, waves can be used for submarine communications and for probing the planet; because of the way they propagate, HAARP can cover "a significant fraction of the Earth." The document says that the waves can be used for "seabed exploration" and even locating mines underwater, not to mention "underground target detection."

HAARP can also "induce precipitation of energetic particles" in the ionosphere, which "could impact the operation and lifespan of satellites." While this is mainly about protecting satellites from particles from solar flares or nuclear explosions, the phrasing suggests that it might be able to have a subtle negative impact on satellites as well.

At the High Frequency range, HAARP also has some useful tricks, including being able to "enhance ground-to-ground and satellite-to-ground links that would otherwise be marginal or absent." Its ability to create a radio-reflective layer means it can create new over-the-horizon capabilities for radio and radar systems. It can even act as a HF radar emitter itself.

The third band is optical and near-optical: HAARP can make lights in the sky. While we have looked at the effect of creating high-altitude plasmas before (as possible anti-missile defence), the document notes that it can also produce "airglow with megawatt power…in the IR [infrared] region of the spectrum." This has "significant military implications for IR detection and countermeasures." The picture with this shows the IR glow below a satellite, suggesting that the system may be able to blank out the view of IR satellites selectively. Given that such satellites are the best way of detecting the launch of ICBMs, this is a significant capability.

All in all, it's a set-up that can do a lot more than just basic research. And while this may not seem much compared to weather modification, remember that these are just the capabilities they're willing to make public...

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/secret-document.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 15, 2007, 6:41am

Pain Ray: Don't Hold Your Breath
By Noah Shachtman December 10, 2007 | 2:40:32 PM



The head of the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate continues to insist that his pain ray is going to be shipped out to Iraq, soon. But he still hasn't been able to clear the biggest hurdles to sending the "Active Denial System" to war: the Defense Department bureaucracy, and a squeamish public.

At a conference the other day, Inside Defense notes, Col. Kirk Hymes said that he "would anticipate within the first half of 2008, we may see this [Active Denial] system deployed to Iraq.”

But, he added, that the skin-heating weapon “still hasn’t been accepted by the government yet. Raytheon [the manufacturer] is still finishing up the final tweaking, if you will, to get it to where the government will accept it.”

Once that has been done, the government will conduct a capabilities and limitations assessment and then make a decision “once we verify that the environment is still such that it’s needed in Iraq,” Hymes said.

In other words, don't hold your breath.

Troops in Iraq have asked for the pain ray, over and over again. It's still stateside -- in large part, because of a (completely understandable) fear that Active Denial would be seen as a tool for torture. As the AP noted in August, "The main reason the tool has been missing in action is public perception. With memories of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal still fresh, the Pentagon is reluctant to give troops a space-age device that could be misconstrued as a torture machine."

And what's true for soldiers goes double for cops. Which is why the idea that the Pima County or the L.A. Sheriff's Department is about to start using the pain ray -- as this article suggests -- just doesn't fly. Sure, the system has a high-profile advocate in L.A.'s Commander Sid Heal, who has called the weapon the "Holy Grail of crowd control."

UPDATE: David Hambling says, "As it happens, US cops can use it, and very probably will. An article coming up in Wired News soon will explain why... Also, I have a piece on why it's not as safe as they say, coming up in the Guardian newspaper this Thursday."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/active-denial-a.html#more

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 15, 2007, 11:10pm

RAND: Russians Top U.S. in Paranormal Research (Updated)
By Noah Shachtman December 13, 2007 | 3:31:00 AM

Watch out, America: those damn Ruskies are kicking our butts in figuring out how to use the paranormal to win the Cold War.

That was the conclusion, at least, of a 1973 RAND Corporation study, put together "in response to request by the Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency." RAND reviewed all of the day's American and Soviet scientific literature into everything from telekinesis to yoga, and concluded:

(1) Soviet research is much more oriented toward biological and physical investigation of paranormal phenomena than is U.S. research, which is dominated by psychologists;

(2) although visible U.S. and Soviet level of effort appear roughly equal, over forty years of research in the United States have failed to significantly advance our understanding of paranormal phenomena;

(3) if paranormal phenomena exist, the thrust of Soviet research papers appears more likely to lead to explanation, control and application than is U.S. research;

So, c'mon eggheads! Get to it! We can't let the Reds open up a psychic gap!

After the jump: Some diagrams of where Soviet and American paranormal research went down, during the Cold War.





UPDATE: The CIA was peering deep into Soviet paranormal research, too. AT passes on this awesome 1972 report: http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/SovParapsych.pdf

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/rand-russians-t.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 15, 2007, 11:30pm

US gov silent robot white (?) helicopter prangs itself

Groundbreaking technology

By Lewis Page → More by this author
Published Wednesday 12th December 2007 13:56 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/12/....ck_crash_a160t/

A revolutionary* new robotic whisper-mode helicopter under development in America has crashed, according to reports.
The A160T robot whisper-copter

The US government's silent robot helicopter.

Not black! What were they thinking?

The A160T "Hummingbird" unmanned chopper was under development by US aerospace colossus Boeing for the Pentagon deathboffin bureau, DARPA (the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the Special Operations Command. Likely end-users would include top-secret American special-forces units operating undercover.

The design features a new variable-speed rotor configuration which Boeing believes will offer improved range, speed, height and the ability to "operate much more quietly than current helicopters".

Given this background, Boeing's choice of colour scheme seems at odds with popular culture to say the least. White is the new black when it comes to silent government helicopters, seemingly.

However, it appears that the you-didn't-see-us crowd may have to wait a while for their new ride. Flight International reports that the sole flying A160T prototype was destroyed in a crash on Monday during trials in California. The cause of the wreck is unknown thus far. Apparently this was the turbine-powered T model's tenth flight, though there was an earlier test programme involving basic piston-engined A160s. (That version suffered three crashes in 36 sorties.)

Flights of the (literally - cough) groundbreaking new helicopter will be suspended while an investigation takes place. There is apparently one further A160T in existence, but it is only being used for ground testing at present.

The Flight report is here:

Boeing A160T Hummingbird UAV crashes
By Graham Warwick

Boeing has suspended flights of its A160 Hummingbird after the 10 December crash of the long-endurance unmanned helicopter at Victorville in California. The cause of the crash is not known.

The turbine-powered A160T, vehicle A008, was flying at 5,000ft (1,500m) above mean sea level - about 2,300ft above the ground - before it crashed and was destroyed, the company says.

A Boeing-led accident investigation team is being formed and flight operations have been suspended until the cause of the crash has been determined. The vehicle was one of three A160s on flight status at Victorville, says Boeing.



The A160T made its first flight in June and had completed nine flights. It is the first crash of the turbine-powered Hummingbird, but the earlier gasoline-engined A160 has crashed three times in 36 flights since January 2002.

Development work on the unmanned helicopter has been funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Special Operations Command.

Boeing says it has a second A160T at its facility in Irvine, California facility that is configured for flight, but is being used as a ground test vehicle. The A160T is powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada PW207 turboshaft.

The Hummingbird is equipped with an optimum-speed rotor that can be slowed by up to 50% to extend endurance. The rigid rotor system and lightweight, low-drag airframe are also designed to enable ranges up to 2,500nm (4,600km) and ceilings up to 20,000ft.

Boeing is aiming to demonstrate at least 18h endurance with the A160T and says the UAV is designed to exceed 24h with a 135kg (300lb) payload. The unmanned helicopter completed a 12h flight in October.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/200....av-crashes.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 15, 2007, 11:34pm

U.S. Police Get Weapons That Shoot Around Corners
By Sharon Weinberger December 14, 2007 | 2:20:52 PM

It looks like police in Ohio will be the first U.S. law enforcement officials to get the Israeli Corner Shot weapon, which can shoot around corners:



Using a video monitor to see that target, the officer can fire a round at a 90-degree angle while staying protected behind cover.

"Expose a weapon, expose a lethal threat, without exposing any part of your body," said Capt. Mike Shearer. "So it's looks like a very nice weapon."

Shearer was the first officer to fire the system during a familiarization exercise last week with the SWAT team. Shooting around a barricade, Shearer easily positioned the weapon so that he could engage multiple targets via a small television monitor instead of having to stick his head out around the corner.

"On the screen, there's a nice crosshair," Shearer said. "So you do have a nice clear picture, a nice crosshair to look through. This weapons platform is going to be a very, very useful tool for the Akron Police Department."

Apparently, Corner Shot execs provided the gun to police in Akron because they're thinking of opening up a distribution center in Ohio. Normally, I wouldn't think Akron would be first in line to buy the weapon, which is meant for SWAT teams/counter-terrorism missions.

Here's a video that demonstrates Corner shot in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQeu9J43jXU

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/12/us-police-get-g.html

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 15, 2007, 11:50pm

Iranian scientists develop country's most powerful supercomputer

By Antone Gonsalves
11 December 2007 11:22AM

Iranian scientists claim to have used 216 microprocessors made by Advanced Micro Devices to build the country's most powerful supercomputer, despite a ban on the export of U.S. computer equipment to the Middle Eastern nation..

Scientists at the Iranian High Performance Computing Research Center at the country's Amirkabir University of Technology said they used a Linux-cluster architecture in building the system of Opteron processors. The supercomputer has a theoretical peak performance of 860 giga-flops, the posting said. A giga-flop is a billion calculations per second.

The disclosure, made in an undated posting on Amirkabir's Web site, brought an immediate response Monday from AMD, which said it has never authorized shipments of products either directly or indirectly to Iran or any other embargoed country.

"AMD fully complies with all United States export control laws, and all authorized distributors of AMD products have contractually committed to AMD that they will do the same with respect to their sales and shipments of AMD products," the company said. "Any shipment of AMD products to Iran by any authorized distributor of AMD would be a breach of the specific provisions of their contracts with AMD."

Enforcement of export bans is handled through the Office of Foreign Asset Control, which is part of the U.S. Treasury Department. Officials were unavailable for comment.

The Iranian system will be used for weather forecasting and meteorological research. Iranian scientists developed software for systems management and monitoring, but use a medium scale computer model called MM5 for creating atmospheric simulations and weather forecasts. MM5 is freely available and supported by a division of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the U.S. Other software includes the Advanced Regional Prediction System that was initially developed at the University of Oklahoma, under a program of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center.

Besides weather forecasting, supercomputers are used in the oil and gas industry, drug making, computer assisted design and the aerodynamics industry, as well as in scientific research. The Iranian research center built the country's first supercomputer in 2001. Another supercomputer was built in 2003 for processing satellite images for the Iranian Space Agency.

The Iranian supercomputer falls far behind the world's fastest computers. In November, the BlueGene/L System, jointly developed by IBM and the U.S. Department of Energy was ranked No. 1 in the world with a benchmark performance of 478.2 teraflops. A teraflop equals a trillion calculations per second.

http://www.itnews.com.au/Tools/Print.aspx?CIID=99158

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Re: DARPArama
Post by bigbunny on Dec 20, 2007, 9:51am

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