Thursday, January 31, 2008

Electromagnetic Railgun: An Innovative Naval Program

 

When fully operational, the electromagnetic railgun (EMRG) will:

  • Deliver hypervelocity projectiles at Mach 5 on impact in support of Marines and ground forces.
  • Strike within 5 meters of a pinpointed target from distances in excess of 200 nautical miles.
  • Maximize damage through kinetic energy from longer range while minimizing risks to crews and ships.

Because of its design, EMRG uses electrical energy to deliver a time-critical strike rather than the chemical agents in warheads and propellants that can place crews and ships in jeopardy. EMRG represents significant advances in Navy and Marine Corps capabilities, extends the range of Marine Corps combat capability and distributed operations, and improves safety aboard sea vessels. The electromagnetic railgun is just one more leap-ahead technology catapulted by scientists at the Office of Naval Research.

Electromagnetic Railgun: An Innovative Naval Program

 

Friday, January 25, 2008

Challenging Military Transformation



But in Desportes’ view, future wars will be against an enemy that seeks to outflank the Western technical and industrial armory. That undercuts the effectiveness of the transformation effort, which assumes a state enemy with a hierarchy of decision-makers and physical assets suitable for precision bombing.


“This typically American approach focuses on the destruction of the enemy rather than the search for better paths to obtain the political result,” Desportes writes. “It is about conducting technically perfect strike operations rather than transforming these operations into strategic success.”


Transformation has been ineffective against nonstate entities like the Taliban, now fighting from caves, insurgents triggering roadside bombs in Iraq and suicide bombers. In Afghanistan, small groups of combatants avoid attacking in open ground.


One of the book’s central messages: Military planners’ focus on mobility, strike and communications, if devoid of political awareness, may win battles but end up losing wars. Thus, while precision-strike weapons are necessary, they are insufficient to winning the war, because stand-off weapons destroy but cannot occupy territory and control population.


Technology is useful, but troops must be able to fight without sophisticated networks, because such systems are vulnerable to cyber attacks.


A network-enabled approach is valuable because it allows troops to be more cost-efficient, but a network-centric Army is one that is geared to destruction, and therefore counterproductive in the strategic sense, in Desportes’ opinion.





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Bomb-laden 'Reaper' drones bound for Iraq - USATODAY.com

 

The MQ-9 Reaper, when compared with the 1995-vintage Predator, represents a major evolution of the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV.

At five tons gross weight, the Reaper is four times heavier than the Predator. Its size — 36 feet long, with a 66-foot wingspan — is comparable to the profile of the Air Force's workhorse A-10 attack plane. It can fly twice as fast and twice as high as the Predator. Most significantly, it carries many more weapons.

UNDER THE RADAR: Air Force ramps up in Iraq

While the Predator is armed with two Hellfire missiles, the Reaper can carry 14 of the air-to-ground weapons — or four Hellfires and two 500-pound bombs.

"It's not a recon squadron," Col. Joe Guasella, operations chief for the Central Command's air component, said of the Reapers. "It's an attack squadron, with a lot more kinetic ability."

"Kinetic" — Pentagon argot for destructive power — is what the Air Force had in mind when it christened its newest robot plane with a name associated with death.

"The name Reaper captures the lethal nature of this new weapon system," Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, said in announcing the name last September.

General Atomics of San Diego has built at least nine of the MQ-9s thus far, at a cost of $69 million per set of four aircraft, with ground equipment.

The Air Force's 432nd Wing, a UAV unit formally established on May 1, is to eventually fly 60 Reapers and 160 Predators. The numbers to be assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan will be classified.

The Reaper is expected to be flown as the Predator is — by a two-member team of pilot and sensor operator who work at computer control stations and video screens that display what the UAV "sees." Teams at Balad, housed in a hangar beside the runways, perform the takeoffs and landings, and similar teams at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, linked to the aircraft via satellite, take over for the long hours of overflying the Iraqi landscape.

American ground troops, equipped with laptops that can download real-time video from UAVs overhead, "want more and more of it," said Maj. Chris Snodgrass, the Predator squadron commander here.

The Reaper's speed will help. "Our problem is speed," Snodgrass said of the 140-mph Predator. "If there are troops in contact, we may not get there fast enough. The Reaper will be faster and fly farther."

Bomb-laden 'Reaper' drones bound for Iraq - USATODAY.com

YouTube - Mi-28N 'Night Hunter' - mobile killer on land and air

 

YouTube - Mi-28N 'Night Hunter' - mobile killer on land and air

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

.. REAPER UAV ARMED SPY DRONE ..

I've reported on the Reaper before but this is a more in-depth view of what it does.

Merlin helicopter

This is the digital age with another view of data links and robust engineering design.

USN VESSELS

It's amazing how much these ships have changed since the Vietnam era. Watch the video and see a new world.

Alamo

This this is a view of day to day life in a military camp. So much is like WWII but so much plastic and electronics. They didn't have either in 1942. No automatic washers either.

A-10 Target Practice, Ft. Polk, LA

Notice the sound of the gun is not what we grew up with. .. No more rat-a-tat-tat. Now, just a bip and its over.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

A plane you can print - tech - 21 July 2006 - New Scientist Tech

 

The Skunk Works thinks a technique called 3D rapid prototyping, or "3D printing", is the best way to lower costs.

Finely focused lasers

In rapid prototyping, a three-dimensional design for a part - a wing strut, say - is fed from a computer-aided design (CAD) system to a microwave-oven-sized chamber dubbed a 3D printer. Inside the chamber, a computer steers two finely focused, powerful laser beams at a polymer or metal powder, sintering it and fusing it layer by layer to form complex, solid 3D shapes.

The technique is widely used in industry to make prototype parts - to see if, for instance, they are the right shape and thickness for the job in hand. Now the strength of parts printed this way has improved so much that they can be used as working components.

About 90% of Polecat is made of composite materials with much of that material made by rapid prototyping.

"The entire Polecat airframe was constructed using low-cost rapid prototyping materials and methods," says Frank Mauro, director of UAV systems at the Skunk Works. "The big advantage over conventional, large-scale aircraft production programmes is the cost saving in tooling as well as the order-of-magnitude reductions in fabrication and assembly time."

By mixing composite polymers with radar-absorbing metals, it is thought that the aircraft can be built with a certain amount of stealth characteristics already built in.

A plane you can print - tech - 21 July 2006 - New Scientist Tech

Polecat UAV

Lockheed Martin has pulled the lid off of a secret, stealthy, high-flying drone. Built and flown by its famous "Skunk Works" division, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) could serve as a model for a new generation of robotic aircraft that hits targets halfway around the world.
With a 90-foot wingspan and a tailless design, the "Polecat" UAV looks like a smaller version of the B-2 stealth bomber. And like the B-2, the drone has been built to be stealthy and sneaky. But the twin-engine Polecat is "90 percent composite materials, rather than metal," the L.A. Daily News notes. "The vehicle is also made from less than 200 parts," adds Aviation Week. "Adhesives are used rather than rivets, decreasing the amount of labor needed to construct it -- that approach also contributed to a lower radar cross section inherent in the design."




from user225937.vodpod.co

Predator Drones

The future of warfare lies within what looks like an overgrown toy airplane. Watch as we dissect the Predator system, from the Ground Control Station in Las Vegas to a Ku Band satellite in orbit, then back down to the Predator in-flight over the battlefield.

Find more at www.geospatial21.org




from user225937.vodpod.co

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

ABC News: Drones Rule Iraqi Skies

AP Exclusive: Military's Use of Unmanned Drones That Can Watch, Hunt Insurgents Surges in Iraq

unmanned

In this undated image provided by the US Air Force Ben Roserug and Jim Dooley unload an AGM-114 Hellfire missile from an MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle after a mission in May at Balad Air Base, Iraq. The military's reliance on unmanned aircraft that can watch, hunt and sometimes kill insurgents has soared to more than 500,000 hours in the air, largely in Iraq, The Associated Press has learned. Pentagon officials said that even as troops begin to slowly come home this year, the use of Predators, Global Hawks, Shadows and Ravens will not likely slow. (AP Photo/U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Jonathan Steffen, HO)

ABC News: Drones Rule Iraqi Skies