Military Technology in 2009

[Newearthman Profile Website]

by Staff Writers
Minneapolis MN (SPX) Nov 11, 2009
Alliant Techsystems was awarded a $4 million Integration and Demonstration (I and D) contract by the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command. ATK was one of three companies awarded an I and D contract to develop an alternative warhead for the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS).


Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Nov 30, 2009
Israel is sticking to its guns on a demand the United States allow it to integrate its own electronic warfare suite in Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, even though the Americans have given the green light to install other Israeli systems in the jet.
Israel wants to buy an initial batch of 25 F-35s, enough for one squadron, in fiscal 2012 and would like to acquire another 50.



Pilots flying the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will have an astonishing array of technology encasing their heads - enabling them to see right through their own aircraft fuselage to the ground below.

A series of cameras on the outside of the stealth warplane feed high-resolution images into the helmet, including infra-red images at night, which are then projected on to the inside of the pilot's visor.
Special sensors inside the cockpit track the movement of the helmet, so that when the pilot turns his head his view of the skies or ground outside changes accordingly.
When he looks down he sees not his own feet on the cockpit floor but the ground below, slipping past at hundreds of miles per hour.
On-board computers also feed in essential flight and combat data on to the display, as well as superimposing target symbols to locate enemy and friendly aircraft or ground targets, even if they are too far away to see with the naked eye.
The supersonic Joint Strike Fighter is due to replace the Harrier jump jet, and is being developed jointly with America.
Britain is due to buy 150 aircraft at around £10billion, or £66million each.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... z0YeinhJSH

New Army Rifle Fires Laser-Guided Smart Bullets With Onboard Targeting Chips

[Newearthman Profile Website]

Sighted: A Secret US Aircraft in Afghanistan

Since April, a steady string of reports have detailed sightings of a mysterious, unidentified UAV prowling the skies above Kandahar. Grainy, Loch-Ness-Monster-like photos revealed a flying-wing-type aircraft with stealth features.

Now, the French blog Secret Defense has published the clearest photos yet of the secret plane, and the mystery has only deepened.

The plane pictured above is clearly a next-generation UAV, but the question of which next-generation UAV it is has led to some debate. At first look, Steve Trimble of The DEW Line thought it resembled Lockheed's Polecat. However, Popsci's resident UAV expert Eric Hagerman pegged the mysterious drone as Boeing's X-45. Then again, John Pike of GlobalSecurity.net noted "for every UAV program we know about, there's one that we don't know about," suggested the new UAV may be part of some previously unannounced program.

In many ways, the confusion only highlights the uniformity of the next generation of UAVs. Both the X-45 and the Polecat incorporate stealth features, resemble the flying-wing shape first perfected by the B-2, and have just enough development behind them that battlefield testing doesn't seem unreasonable.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... ystery-uav

http://www.apacheclips.com/media/11755/UAV,_the_X-47B/

a completed X-47B Navy Unmanned Combat Air System, the first of two fighter-plane-size UAVs that Northrup Grumman will produce for the U.S. Navy. The second will follow in 2009. The Navy hopes to start flying the X-47Bs next year. The UAV is expected to have the ability to take off from and land on an aircraft carrier, and the Navy plans to start those trials in 2011.

The X-47 was designed to be adept at long-range surveillance because of its large range and high flight ceiling. And despite being a beast—it will have a 62-ft wingspan and weigh around 45,000 pounds at takeoff—the X-47B is designed for stealth.

[Newearthman Profile Website]

SR-72 BLACKSWIFT

The new hypersonic project, dubbed Blackswift, shares the same take off and land normally approach. It aims for a more achievable speed of a Mach 6. Blackswift came from a DARPA project called Falcon that originally intended to build a family of hypersonic test vehicles.
Details of the project point to the famed Lockheed Skunk Works as the main contractor for the vehicle. Reports are saying information gleaned from several sources point to Blackswift being a fighter sized unmanned .
The propulsion system to take Blackswift to the Mach 6 speeds is a hybrid power plant consisting of a combination turbine engine and ramjet. The turbine engine would take the up to Mach 3 where the ramjet would kick in and carry the craft up to the Mach 6 cruise speed. Blackswift reportedly doesn’t have the backing of the at this time, which will obviously be crucial to the project reaching maturity.

Ten years after the retired the SR-71 spy plane, Lockheed Martin’s legendary Skunk Works appears to be back at work developing a new Mach-6 reconnaissance plane, sources said.
The has awarded Lockheed’s Advanced Development Projects arm a top-secret contract to develop a stealthy 4,000-mph plane capable of flying to altitudes of about 100,000 feet, with transcontinental range. The plan is to debut the craft around 2020.
The new jet — being referred to by some as the SR-72 — is likely to be unmanned and, while intended for reconnaissance, could eventually trade its sensors for weapons.
The new would offer a combination of speed, altitude and stealth that could make it virtually impervious to ground-based missiles, sources said. Even the SR-71 is said to have evaded hundreds of missiles fired at it during its long career, although some sustained minor damage.
But experts say enormous challenges remain. First, the SR-71’s top speed was about 2,200 mph. Pushing a plane at twice that speed in the thin air of the upper stratosphere would require exceptionally powerful engines. Second, friction at high speeds could reduce stealth

[Newearthman Profile Website]

The Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton


In 2007 the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center assumed respon­si­bil­ity for the man­age­ment of the Exoskeleton project from DARPA. The Natick project is cur­rently funded through FY 2009 and its goals are as follows:

1) In con­junc­tion with the U.S. Army Combined Arms Support Command, develop a set of per­for­mance spec­i­fi­ca­tions for a full body Exoskeleton that will be the basis for a require­ment for a ver­sion of the Exoskeleton that can assist Soldiers in accom­plish­ing phys­i­cally demand­ing tasks asso­ci­ated with load­ing and unload­ing sup­plies and heavy materiel, and per­form­ing vehi­cle maintenance.

2) Improve the human inter­face, bio­me­chan­i­cal effi­ciency and ergonomic accept­abil­ity of the Exosketeton.

3) Develop com­pact, portable, effi­cient, safe power sources.

4) Reduce the cost and ruggedize the system.

5) Demonstrate reli­a­bil­ity and safey for use by Soldiers.


It is claimed to be the "first ballistic, full exoskeleton body suit of armor," Trojan is made from high-impact plastic lined with ceramic bullet protection over ballistic foam, and features storage compartments from everything from morphine to gun holsters or emergency lights. There's even a solar-powered fresh-air system and a drinking tube attached to a canteen in the small of the back. He says he can mass-produce them for about $2000. Just imagine seeing a convoy of U.S. Marines wearing these puppies - probably enough to scare the bejeevees outta those dang Iraqi insurgents.

[Newearthman Profile Website]

March 10, 2009
China Launching Tiangong Space Station at the end of 2010
If everything goes smoothly, China will launch Tiangong-1 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center at the end of 2010, said Zhang Jianqi, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of China's Manned Space Engineering Program.
Space.com reports that China is openly acknowledging that the new Tiangong outpost will involve military space operations and technology development.
Tiangong-1, weighing about 8.5 tons, has a support module and an experiment module which can carry much heavier loads than the Shenzhou spacecraft series. Tiangong-1 is also equipped with a spacecraft docking system.

Tiangong-1 is a target spacecraft China is developing for the next step in its space program-- the construction of a space station.

Zhang also disclosed that after the successful launch of "Tiangong-1," China will successively launch the Shenzhou-8, Shenzhou-9 and Shenzhou-10 spacecrafts to meet and dock with "Tiangong-1."

Its main mission will be to serve as the target for carrying out space rendezvous and docking experiments, to guarantee the working and living conditions of taikonauts as well as their safety during their short-term parking orbit. It will also carry out space application and aerospace medical experiments, space science experiments and technical testing of the space station, and basically establish a space experiment platform that can carry out short-term manned missions and long-term independent and reliably-operated unmanned missions.

"After completing the above tasks, we will start the third step, in which we will go all out to build a long-term manned space station by 2020." Zhang said, after that, "Tiangong-1" will be upgraded to a cargo spaceship. The cargo spaceship will not only have rendezvous and docking functions, it will provide refueling for the space station. The first launch of the cargo spaceship will take place at Hainan's Wenchang Satellite Launch Center.

[Newearthman Profile Website]

You would think that an unpiloted space plane built to rocket spaceward from Florida atop an Atlas booster, circle the planet for an extended time, then land on autopilot on a California runway would be big news. But for the U.S. Air Force X-37B project — seemingly, mum's the word.

There is an air of vagueness regarding next year's Atlas Evolved Expendable launch of the unpiloted, reusable military space plane. The X-37B will be cocooned within the Atlas rocket's launch shroud — a ride that's far from cheap.

While the launch range approval is still forthcoming, SPACE.com has learned that the U.S. Air Force has the X-37B manifested for an April 2010 liftoff.

As a mini-space plane, this Boeing Phantom Works craft has been under development for years. Several agencies have been involved in the effort, NASA as well as the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) and various arms of the U.S. Air Force.

Over the last few months, I've been in touch with DARPA, Boeing, the Pentagon, the U.S. Air Force Space Command, as well as NASA itself. Either you get a "not in our portfolio" or are given a "go to" pass to another agency. Just a few weeks ago, I even commandeered a face-to-face "no comment" from a top Pentagon official for Air Force space programs about X-37B.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,569143,00.html

[Zegtelzegtel Profile]

Awesome threat man thanx for that.
I think this is only the stuff they bring out, imagine what they have in their laboratotiezzz....

wtf people 0 replies....

[G3n3sis Profile]

Great new developments, the first full body armour suit reminds me of the space marines of Warhammer

It will be interesting to see how China's new longterm space station will look when its finished.

[Cornbread714 Profile]

It is claimed to be the "first ballistic, full exoskeleton body suit of armor," Trojan is made from high-impact plastic lined with ceramic bullet protection over ballistic foam, and features storage compartments from everything from morphine to gun holsters or emergency lights.

I'm glad there's morphine, because I would need a lot of it before I'd dress up in that ridiculous suit. Who is that guy, anyway? Mike Ditka?

[Newearthman Profile Website]

http://www.defenceweb.co.za/index.php?o ... ea&id=4885

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems division (GA-EMS) has successfully fired multiple rounds for the first time in a prototype of its new Blitzer electromagnetic railgun air defence prototype system.

These tests were performed at the US Army Dugway Proving Grounds under a contract with the Office of Naval Research. Testing is scheduled to continue through to the second quarter of next year and will culminate with the launch of tactically relevant aerodynamic rounds, GA-EMS says in a statement.

GA-EMS adds Blitzer will provide transformational, leap-ahead air defence capability against a number of threats for both naval and land-based applications.

With a muzzle velocity of more than twice that of conventional systems, Blitzer provides significant increases in standoff and lethality at lower cost without the need for propellant or high explosives.

"These tests are an important first step toward demonstrating the viability of a revolutionary technology that will significantly improve the safety and protection of our warfighters at sea and on land," says GA-EMS Division Vice President R. Scott Forney III.

"GA's internal investment in prototype development of both the energy pulse power system and Blitzer electromagnetic railgun continues to demonstrate our commitment to complement our customer's efforts with transformational electric platform technologies. Confirmation of the electromagnetic design increases confidence in related launcher and all-electric technologies."