The Tomahawk is among the most widely used and effective conventional weapons in the US arsenal, especially since we began covertly launching them from the safety of submerged submarines during the Cold War. Recently, Raytheon debuted the latest upgrades to its newest generation of Tomahawks—cruise missiles smarter and more adaptable than ever before.
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While the Phalanx has proven an immensely effective self-defense system for the US Navy, it’s far from a watertight solution. To intercept incoming threats that the Phalanx can’t handle, the US Navy is investing in a rotating missile-launcher that lobs a baker’s dozen of self-propelled missiles at anyone dumb enough to engage.
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Even though Iran has backed away from from its threats to lace the Strait of Hormuz with mines, militaries around the world (the US included) continue to employ the devices in large numbers—as much as 200 times as often as any other kind of maritime weapon. So, to augment the DoD’s aging fleet of Avenger-class vessels and empower the new fleet of Littoral Combat Ships, Raytheon has developed the helicopter-launched Airborne Mine Neutralization System.
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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.
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Though you may think drones do all the fighting these days, actual soldiers on the ground are still used to call in airstrikes. Sometimes it’s still necessary to visually confirm targets before the flyboys create a smoking crater. Though the army has toyed with smartphones and other means to connect soldiers, Raytheon has created a new JTACs (Joint Tactical Air Controller system) prototype for ground forces to let them separate friendlies from enemies and relay the information to strike forces. The system consists of a chest-worn computer, heads-up monocle viewer and wrist-worn display, which together let the solider select a target merely by looking at it and pressing a button. They can also tag friendly forces the same way or send update situational data to the rest of the team, whether they’re on the ground or flying a fighter overhead. That assistance from the ground will make it easier for those at the yoke to differentiate between friendlies and targets.
We tried the prototype ourselves in a limited, 2D environment here at the 2013 Paris Air Show and, without any help getting set up, were able to tag targets as red diamonds and friendly forces as amber squares. Everything we did was also displayed on second screen, simulating the ability to send live updates to other soldiers or the base. Impressive as it was, the whole thing is merely a prototype for now, though, that could eventually change. The military AR system is part of a larger platform called AWARE, which Raytheon hopes to eventually deploy. For a detailed explanation about how it works, check out the video after the break.
Filed under: Wearables
Death by ICBM was a near constant threat to both sides during the Cold War. America’s answer: a long-range, phased-array early warning system designed to find, identify, and track these sea-launched ballistic missile threats. It worked so well, the Air Force still uses it. More »
When Raytheon isn’t busy building a railgun or tinkering with exoskeletons, it apparently spends some time coding software to help keep tabs on what folks are doing online. The Guardian got ahold of a video from 2010 that reveals a Raytheon employee demoing such software with the moniker Rapid Information Overlay Technology, or Riot for short. Instead of sifting through streams of tweets and Foursquare checkins to figure out a person’s haunts and schedule, Riot collates data for users and displays it in everything from maps (saved in .kml files) and charts. Riot is even savvy enough to pull out location information saved in the exif data of photos posted online. One visualization feature in the program arranges a target’s info in a spider web-like view and highlights connections between them and people they’ve communicated with online.
According to The Guardian, Raytheon shared the Riot tech with the US government and “industry” organizations in 2010 through a research and development initiative that aimed to build a national security system that could analyze “trillions of entities” online. Raytheon says it hasn’t sold the software to any clients, but we think this is a fine reminder that your friends, family and secret admirers may not be the only ones interested in your tweets and check-ins. Head past the jump to catch a video of Riot in action.
Filed under: Internet, Mobile, Alt
Source: The Guardian
Defence specialist Raytheon has an automated data harvesting process which can track you with pin-point accuracy and even predict where you’re going. Until two days ago it was top secret—but now a leaked video shows exactly what it can do. More »
Raytheon does not only work on swarm boat weapons and intercepts missiles, but they also have software that will help the government monitor TV broadcasts around the globe, round-the-clock, while performing an instantaneous translation as well as analysis. Sounds like magic? Actually, we are surprised to hear that this Raytheon system has been deployed operationally since 2004 by the Department of Defense, where it is used for a range of purposes such as open-source intelligence, information operations, public affairs and PsyOps. There is no need for any hardware setup, fancy software installation processes or onsite administration or maintenance, making it a snap to run anywhere in the world.
The thing is, did it manage to anticipate the kind of escalating negative sentiment towards Americans due to foreign media coverage concerning the film “Innocence of Muslims” which offended many of the Islamic faith? We will never know, considering many have already died including a US diplomat.
Known as the BBN Broadcast Monitoring System, it will automatically capture foreign media and deploy state of the art technology to translate, transcribe and analyze those video and audio streams in real time. Program director Prem Natarajan, head of speech and language processing at Raytheon BBN Technologies, said, “Machines are good at looking for things and humans are good at analyzing … [it’s the] perfect bionic combination. The machine does what it’s good at and the human does what it’s good at.”
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Raytheon JLENS swarm boat weapon touted, Raytheon High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile tested successfully,
Raytheon, one of the active defense companies out there that have seem to made their fair share of waves in the news recently, has touted the successful testing of their Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System (JLENS) against naval swarm boats sometime in the middle of this year. The JLENS’ ability to target swarm boats in the Great Salt Lake were put to a drill, and it passed the test with flying colors, using the radar’s ability to track multiple fast and high speed vessels while giving a ship commander the situational awareness of all possible threats which he might face in the open seas.
The JLENS system is comprised of a couple of aerostats which can float up to 10,000 feet off the ground, delivering radar and communication capabilities so that one has a bird’s eye view on over-the-horizon threats, while delivering details and information to a gamut of weapons systems. When will JLENS be able to see action on the battlefield? It is rather hard to tell, but I do wonder what kind of defense mechanisms that JLENS has against attacks from missiles and RPGs.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Raytheon High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile tested successfully, Law Enforcement In-Car Laptop Computer Systems debut,
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