This Memorial Day, remember the brave Americans who have given their lives for freedom and bear in mind these words from the World War II Memorial: “Americans came to liberate, not to conquer, to restore freedom and to end tyranny.”

I’ll be commemorating Memorial Day by visiting Arlington National Cemetery, the Marine Corps Memorial (aka the Iwo Jima Memorial), the WWII, Korean, and Vietnam War Veterans Memorials in Washington DC.

I plan to tour the the Capitol and U.S. Botanic Garden first, then head across the Mall to the Washington Monument. From there it’s the Thomas Jefferson, FDR, Korean War Veterans, Lincoln, Vietnam Veterans, and National WWII Memorials (about four hours walking time).

Time permitting, I’ll cross the Memorial Bridge and visit Arlington National Cemetery and the Iwo Jima Memorial.

Only problem with this itinerary is it doesn’t leave time to see the National Memorial Day Parade which starts at noon. However it turns out, I’ll be taking my camera along and will post the photos.

Hope the weather cooperates (supposed to be 90 and sunny).

Tags: blog | weblog | memorial day | patriotism | armed_forces

The Wall Street Journal provides this fascinating glimpse at some of the unmanned drones being developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works

Lockheed is shedding its ambivalence and busily developing concepts for newfangled drones. One drone would be launched from, and retrieved by, submarines; another would fly at nine times the speed of sound. A third, which is off the drawing board but not quite airborne, has wings designed to fold in flight so that it could rapidly turn from slow-speed spy plane to quick-strike bomber.

Lockheed is drawing its drones from the same well that produced its stealth fighters: the company’s secretive Skunk Works unit. And the unmanned craft are just as radical as some of the unit’s past creations. “You have to throw out conventional aerodynamics,” Skunk Works head Frank Cappuccio says of the so-called morphing drone, with the folding wings.

As it pursues cutting-edge technologies, Lockheed – maker of the world’s costliest fighter plane, the F-22 – also wants to throw out conventional economics. The drone ideas it has disclosed are relatively inexpensive, more in the spirit of trailblazing models made in Israel than the $57 million Global Hawk unmanned spy jet made by Northrop Grumman Corp. at the same Mojave Desert airfield where the Skunk Works sits.

The U.S. arsenal should have plenty of room for both types. The fiscal 2007 Pentagon budget unveiled yesterday proposes boosting spending on unmanned aircraft to $1.7 billion next year. A separate long-term Pentagon blueprint calls for a quantum leap in drones, from hand-launched planes for battlefield surveillance and pilotless scout helicopters to long-range unmanned bombers that military planners expect to make up nearly half of the Air Force’s future strike fleet.
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[The] Skunk Works these days devotes some 40% to 50% of its own research funds to unmanned aircraft, Mr. Cappuccio says. Quietly, Lockheed has already contributed to the drone revolution. Skunk Works developed flight-control systems for the Dragon Eye, a five-pound, hand-launched reconnaissance drone used by Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003.

It also designed and delivered the seven-pound Desert Hawk within 127 days of receiving an Air Force request. The total cost for the first six drones and laptop-computer control system was less than $400,000, Mr. Cappuccio says. To date, Lockheed says it has supplied 126 Desert Hawks, which are used for surveillance to protect U.S. bases in Iraq.

The Skunk Works’s new concepts, like the morphing drone, are more ambitious. With funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, the Skunk Works set out to develop a plane whose wings can fold inward in flight so it can transform from a slow, loitering aircraft into a speedy plane that swoops in to drop a bomb. The project tests the viability of new materials for aircraft skins and “smart” controls that enable the plane to morph within “10 to 20 seconds without falling out of the sky,” Mr. Cappuccio says.

Read the whole article.

Tags: aircraft | news | blog | weblog | military | surveillance | airplanes | drones | war

From The Australian comes this article on the upcoming deployment of electric reactive armor:

Britain’s sci-fi tanks to fend off attack with force-field

The British Army’s next class of armoured vehicles will be protected by a “force-field” of electrified armour that will vaporise rocket-propelled grenades.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has signalled that the electric armour, invented at the ministry’s scientific research centre, will transform armoured warfare, enabling vehicles to be more lightly protected and more easily moved around the world.

It will also confound repeated claims from military experts that “the tank is dead” because it is too cumbersome for conflicts expected as part of the war on terror. The new armour will allow Western armed forces to regain the upper hand against terrorists and insurgents armed with the ubiquitous RPG7 rocket-propelled grenade, which can penetrate most current heavy armour.

The invention is just as effective against the “shaped charge” roadside bombs used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, using technology allegedly supplied by Iran.

The armour is also much lighter, with about two tonnes of it reckoned to provide protection equivalent to that of 20 tonnes of conventional armour.

The army’s Challenger 2 tank, which weighs 63 tonnes, and the 25-tonne Warrior armoured vehicle had to be ferried by sea to the Persian Gulf for the Iraq war – a complex process taking many weeks.

The new vehicles – which are expected to enter service early in the next decade – will be smaller and lighter, enabling them to be moved by C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft.
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The British electric armour is made up of several layers, the first of which is an earthed bullet-proof outer skin.

The second skin is live, although insulated, and has several thousand volts of electricity flowing through it, powered by the vehicle’s battery.

The third skin is the normal vehicle hull. When an RPG7 grenade hits a tank with standard armour, its conical warhead fires a jet of hot copper into the target at about 1600km/h.

This can penetrate more than 30cm of conventional solid steel armour.

On the electric armour, the grenade penetrates the insulation on the live second skin, creating a sudden surge in electricity that vaporises the copper stream in the same way that a surge burns out a fuse wire.

The effect is to leave the inner hull intact and the crew safe, with the vehicle capable of taking repeated hits.

Electric reactive armor should be more effective than explosive reactive armor because it can provide protection even if struck repeatedly in the same location. Explosive reactive armor can be pierced if it is struck by a tandem-charge weapon that has two or more stages of detonation.

Tags: military | weapons | technology | science | news | blog | weblog

From a Space Review article by Taylor Dinerman:

America’s new ray guns

Few issues in military technology have been subject to as much confusion, disinformation, and ignorance as the subject of lasers and other directed energy weapons. For example, long after the Pentagon had abandoned work on it, opponents of the missile defense program would use the hydrogen bomb-powered x-ray laser concept, known as Excalibur, as an example of the kind of fantastic weapon that would never work. To ordinary Americans, the whole idea of beam weapons seems more like science fiction.

In fact, according to a new book by Doug Beason, The E Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change The Way Future Wars Are Fought, published by Da Capo Press, such weapons are on the verge of being deployed (or, according to some sources, already have been.) Some of the better known weapons include the Air Force’s Airborne Laser (ABL), an anti-missile laser mounted inside a Boeing 747 and designed to shoot down medium range ballistic missiles in the boost phase of their flight. Another even more controversial system is the Active Denial System (ADS), a non-lethal crowd control weapon that uses high-powered microwaves to inflict serious, but temporary pain, on anyone affected by the beam.

…Over the last few decades, there has been any number of military laser demonstration projects. The power and sophistication of these systems improved to the point that, by the early 1990s, the Department of Defense decided to go ahead with an operational anti-missile weapon, the ABL.

The ABL is a chemical oxygen-iodine laser mounted on a Boeing 747 and designed to shoot down Scud-type missiles in their initial boost phase at ranges of more than 100 kilometers. The US Air Force hopes to build seven of these aircraft so that a team of four could provide ongoing 24-hour-a-day coverage of an enemy launch area over a period of some weeks. The ABL program does not involve any major scientific or technological breakthroughs—it is the first of its kind and, as such, has run into the normal delays and difficulties.

The true potential for this weapons system can, so far, only be guessed at. As Beason points out, “The only problem is that no one knows for sure what other missions the ABL is capable of performing.” In one interesting scenario, the author speculates how it might be used against a terrorist cruise missile attack on a US city. Other possibilities might even include “tickling” space debris in low Earth orbit (LEO), in order to bring it down sooner than would otherwise be the case. Serious experimentation will begin no sooner than 2008. Only last month did the USAF review board give the go-ahead to actually install the laser mechanism in the prototype aircraft.

The ABL is not the only laser weapon the Defense Department is working on, though it is the most advanced. In the mid-1990s, after Israel’s pullout from southern Lebanon, the US and Israel began collaborating on a laser system that would shoot down small artillery and mortar shells as well as short range rockets of the Katyusha type. Referred to as the Mobile-Tactical High Energy Laser (M-THEL), an early, immobile, version has been in testing since the late 1990s. While the experiments have been successful, turning it into an operational system will be a long and expensive process. Israel would like to have such a weapon in the very near future for use against rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon.

Aside from lasers, high-powered microwaves (HPM) is the other type of directed energy weapons now coming into use. HPM systems originated with the Air Force’s Advanced Concepts group. They tried—and failed—to make artificial lightning bolts. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers who were working on the charged particle beam concept found that HPMs could be generated and could in fact produce some, but not all, of what they had been hoping to achieve.

Read the whole article.

Tags: war | lasers | weapons | technology | blog | weblog

In Robert A. Heinlein’s novel “Starship Troopers,” the mobile infantry wore armored suits that used feedback to monitor and amplify a wearer’s movements. A soldier in a suit could leap over tall buildings, carry heavy weapons, crush steel, and yet pick up an egg without obliterating it. Since Heinlein first wrote about them, similar powered suits have appeared in Joe Haldeman’s “The Forever War,” dozens of Japanese anime, and the movie Aliens. Now, according to MachineDesign, DARPA has invested $50 million in research to develop an exoskeleton that will enable a soldier to carry 200 lbs in a backpack over rough terrain.

…One recipient, a design team at the University of California, Berkeley, is under the lead of Mechanical Engineering Prof. H. Kazerooni. They’ve completed work on their first prototype, Bleex 1 (for Berkeley lower extremity exoskeleton) and are working on Bleex 2.

Bleex 1 consists of a pair of hydraulically powered leg braces, more than 40 electronic sensors, a control computer, and an internal-combustion engine providing power from an attached backpack. The plastic and carbon-fiber braces are affixed rigidly to the soldier through a customized pair of standard Army boots, with more compliant and giving connections at the chest and waist. These looser connections prevent blisters and abrasions.
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Key to controlling Bleex 1 is the lack of operator controls. Instead, Berkeley researchers clinically analyzed the human gait and programmed the robotic legs to follow that pattern. The wearer simply moves his limbs, and the suit detects that movement and powers the suit to follow. The backpack load is almost entirely supported by Bleex. But because the device is so sensitive to inputs, it is almost unstable, says Kazerooni. The operator is needed to provide balance.

“The pilot is not ‘driving’ the exoskeleton,” says Kazerooni. “Instead, the control algorithms in the computer constantly calculate how to move the exoskeleton so that it moves in concert with the human.”
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The next-generation device, Bleex 2, should be unveiled soon. The biggest change, and challenge, is devising a new power source. For example, it could use a hybrid power source instead of just a gas engine, which might cut down on weight and noise. Weight reduction is a major goal of the team and Bleex 2 should tip the scales at half the weight of Bleex 1. In tests, Bleex 2 let operators carry 200-lb loads and run faster than 6 fps. The Berkeley team is also working on extending the range, flexibility, and agility of the system.

Read the whole article.

Technorati tag: bleex

From the Associated Press comes this article suggesting that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are no longer able to control Al Qaida.

Osama bin Laden may no longer have operational control of his terrorist network, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan said Monday. Ryan Crocker said bin Laden cannot communicate with his followers because he likely is hiding in a remote area, Pakistan’s Geo Television and state-run PTV reported after the ambassador met with local journalists.

…Geo, Crocker also doubted suggestions that bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had effective control of al-Qaida, saying the fact that he issues occasional video and audio taped statements does not prove anything.

The al-Qaida No. 2 was last heard from on a tape that surfaced Sunday, urging all Muslims to take up arms and saying a refusal to join the fight against Jews and Christians would lead to the defeat of militant Islam.

He said the global Islamic community had “no hope for victory” until all Muslims signed on to the al-Qaida-led jihad. His comments were contained in a 48-minute tape entitled “Impediments to Jihad.”
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Bin Laden and al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the mountainous area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, though there has been no hard evidence of their whereabouts for years.

Bin Laden has long been considered by intelligence officials and terrorism experts to be more of an inspirational figure and financial backer for al-Qaida, with day-to-day operations falling to underlings, including al-Zawahri.
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In October, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, retired Vice Adm. Scott Redd, said bin Laden cannot communicate with his followers the way he had in the past because “the more you communicate … the more vulnerable you are.”

More evidence that America and our allies are winning the Global War on Terror.