If you thought your great aunt Edna was bad, you should meet the super-hoarders at the Pentagon. A new Reuters investigation reveals that various defense agencies can’t stop buying stuff they already have. Like, many, many billions of dollars’ worth of stuff.
     |
While Iran’s been busy bragging about mass producing the American ScanEagle drone that crash landed there last year—and giving the Russians a copy—some less than intimidating footage is trickling out of Tehran. It looks like Iran’s newest drones are pretty rickety.
| |
There are plenty of drone variants available, but Lockheed Martin is pushing the boundaries of drone warfare thanks to their Transformer TX drones, which will be able to transport cars to and from the battlefield.
The Transformer TX is being developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division, and the drone will be able to transport cars, storage containers, and even pods filled with soldiers.
It started out in 2010 with a concept that would attach to cars, but evolved into a solution to ferry larger pieces of tech to the battlefield remotely. It will use a pivoting ducted fan propulsion system with no exposed rotor, and this should allow it to take off and land vertically in an area about half of that of a helicopter.
Currently, the team is finalizing its design before building a working prototype. If DARPA accepts the prototype, the drones could be delivered for flight by 2015.
[via IEEE Spectrum via Gizmodo via The Verge]
Swords may be driven into ploughshares when they’ve finished their fighting, but tanks are often left to rust, in graveyards of military vehicles or on the battlefields where they fell.
| |
Turbulence. A minor bother for us, but a huge issue for enlisted seamen. So-called “ducts” in the lower atmosphere can wreak all sorts of maritime havoc; trapping radar and causing radio comms to travel further than expected and into the hands of the enemy. The Office of Naval Research‘s Ocean Battlespace Sensing Department (rad name, right?) isn’t satisfied with using balloons to keep track of the ducts anymore, and is deploying drones instead, including Insitu’s ScanEagle shown above. The result should be a greater understanding of how atmospheric conditions affect radar and communications, which could ultimately provide a tactical advantage — at least while we wait on those 100-kilowatt lasers.
[Image credit: Wikimedia Commons]
Filed under: Alt
A still-chilling consequence of post-9/11 America is that we remain all too aware of the fact that we could be attacked at any moment. And so with worst case scenarios in mind, the military is constantly upgrading our defense systems in increasingly creative ways. Washington DC is next in line. It’s getting blimps.
| |
UAVs and UUVs may be unmanned, but they still need a ride to the mission area. Cue the Hydra: an undersea troop-carrier that transports drones. Unlike a submarine, this submersible can operate in shallow waters and charge the batteries of its pilot-free payloads as well as transmit collected data. Even more impressive, it can launch its flight-worthy passengers without surfacing. If this sort of thing turns your crank, head over to John’s Hopkins University next month to catch a presentation from DARPA. If your security clearance is high enough, you can even snag a special classified meeting after the regular Joes leave.
Filed under: Transportation
Via: sUAS News
Source: Fed Biz Opps
The US Department of Defense is spending a cool $23 billion over 4 years to build up its cyber defenses -including a secure 4G wireless network. Neat.
| |
If the music‘s anything to go by, pretty much everyone was on something in the ’60s — and that includes the engineers. BAE Systems has recently dug up some totally batshit-crazy ideas that were seriously being kicked around by its ‘crack’ team of engineers, and they’re both totally ridiculous and dangerously awesome.
| |
The US Navy’s quieter way to spy, the Ion Tiger, just bested its own 2009 flight record with a key assist from liquid hydrogen. The unmanned aerial vehicle had previously relied on 5000-psi compressed hydrogen for fuel, but for its latest flight test the Naval Research team swapped that out for a new cryogenic tank and delivery system that relies on the liquid stuff; a choice made for the element’s increased density. With that one significant change in place, the craft was able to outperform its last endurance run of 26 hours and two minutes by almost double, lasting 48 hours and one minute in a flight made mid-April. Spying: it’s not only good for the government, it’s good for the environment, too.
Filed under: Robots
Source: US Naval Research Laboratory
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
