Hope you all have a ‘blast’ this weekend…

– Christian

This article first appeared in Defense Technology International.

A few years ago, when Inferno, an acoustic device developed in Sweden, was being presented in Johannesburg, the potential customer asked if the company had any documented proof that it worked as a “sound barrier.” The answer from the makers of Inferno was no, they didn’t have any studies, but they offered to demonstrate it to the customer’s satisfaction.

Maurice Goldman, North American managing director for Inferno, says the potential customer offered two employees a month’s salary if they would stay in the room while the device went off.

One employee stayed 20 sec., the other lasted 30 sec.

That anecdotal evidence is critical to Inferno, which offers a range of products under the company name. It advertises the devices, which let out an ear-piercing noise, as sonic barriers that deter aggressors.

Even without formal studies documenting this effect, Inferno has found customers with the military, yachters and even the U.S. State Dept. Nor is it alone in the market. From local law enforcement to the high seas, acoustic devices are proving increasingly popular. Though the best known of these, the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), has been deployed on ships and by local law enforcement, there are new devices on the market, such as Inferno, that tout unique capabilities.

More than just a siren, Inferno utilizes four frequencies spread over 2–5 KHz. and 125–127 dB. to create a unique sound that is not just loud, but disorienting and potentially nauseating.

Using sound as a non-lethal device has attracted significant interest from the Defense Dept., but it comes with potential complications. Inferno’s Goldman says he was contacted by one office in the Defense Dept. that was interested in a device that mounts on top of a Stryker or a Humvee and emits 140 dB. at 40 meters (130 ft.). “That much sound would give every man, woman and child permanent hearing damage,” Goldman says. “That’s going beyond what less lethal is about.”

But used properly, Goldman sees potential applications for Inferno as a non-lethal deterrent, for example, to prevent piracy. “The use of less-lethal devices in marine applications employing acoustic technologies, such as the patented Inferno Intenso, provides an efficient tool for perimeter denial, delay and deterrence,” says Goldman. “For both the pleasure boater and commercial ventures, acoustic energy is a strong addition to any security system.”

Acoustic devices are, in fact, increasingly used as deterrents. In 2005, LRAD, developed by American Technology Corp., was famously used to thwart a pirate attack on a cruise ship off the coast of Africa. But the incident, hailed as a great success for acoustic devices, also underscored the ambiguity of whether such devices are, in fact, non-lethal weapons. More controversial has been the use of such acoustic devices to quell civil unrest. In 2007, the government of Georgia used an acoustic device to break up political demonstrations, and in September, LRAD was used against protesters at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh.

If such devices are non-lethal weapons, there’s another challenge — most evidence attesting to their effectiveness is largely anecdotal, and scientists who study the issue remain dubious about the applications. For some companies, like Inferno, anecdotal evidence has proved persuasive to customers.

Read the rest of this story, see the Eurofighter’s Baltic mission, ponder why an Afghan mission has been scrapped and see where the NYT got it wrong from our friends at Aviation Week, exclusively at Military.com.

– Christian

– Christian

You know, it’s been said that the U.S. Army is the best equipped force in the world but I’m really more amazed by what we don’t have that other armies do than what we do have, or what we want to have that others don’t.

Take, for example, the four shot 25mm XM25 Counter Defilade Target Engagement System currently in the works (the XM25 is itself an offshoot of the doomed XM29 OICW thingie).  It’s supposed to be effective out to 500 meters against point targets, will have a built in multi-spectrum electro-optical sight, and will have the ability to individually program the burst time on the launched projectiles so that they explode behind or over the target, thus defeating any frontal cover the target might have.

Sounds good on paper, and I’m sure there’s no other Army out there trying to develop a weapon specifically designed to attack a target behind cover, but the reality is, we haven’t got one of these either (yet, and I don’t see these getting issued soon either), and there are a lot of really simple weapons currently in service which could just as easily perform this mission. 

Rifle grenades:  What’s wrong with rifle grenades?  We, the American army, used the hell out of them in WWII and Korea, but they went away after that.  Were they not high tech enough, or was this one of those “no guns on jet fighters” decisions, where we decided that the types of wars we’d be fighting in the future would render these weapons obsolete?  There are any number of designs out there now that could immediately enter service with the US military as short range (<300m) anti-personnel, anti-tank (ok, anti-APC), dual purpose, individually fired munitions, yet we haven’t got any.

I understand that we have dedicated grenade launchers like the M203 now that can fill the role of the rifle grenade, but the 203 is an individually assigned weapon, and in the standard infantry squad there are only two (one per team) and in the Army’s table driven organizational scheme, if your unit isn’t authorized any (like mine) then you just go without.  With a rifle grenade, on the other hand, everyone in the unit has the capability of carrying one or two, and they can be fired by anyone (this capability would enable a commander to stockpile the grenades in a defensive position, or with a support by fire element, without disrupting unit organization by shifting grenadiers around.)

Shoulder fired weapons:  Next to the AK-47, the most common weapon carried by the insurgents is the RPG-7.  Introduced as a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon in 1961, it is now the most prolific such weapon in the world.  What is the US equivalent?  The single shot AT-4 (M136.)  The US used to have a reloadable shoulder fired weapon, the M1-M20 series rocket launchers (a.k.a “Bazooka” and “Super Bazooka”) but the Bazooka was retired from service during the Vietnam war and replaced by the M72 LAW (tanks and the new ATGMs like the TOW and the Shillelagh would eliminate the need for a short ranged infantry based AT weapon) and later the AT4. 

While designed as anti-armor weapons, as the insurgents can attest to, they also serve admirably as “pocket” artillery, and what I wonder about is why we don’t use something similar. We have a number of similar weapons (the Marine Corps has the SMAW and the M3 Carl Gustav is in service with SOCOM forces) in our inventory.  The exclusivity of the M3 especially bothers me. Of a similar weight and size of the AT4, it presents a significantly greater capability in that you can reload it and you can fire a variety of munitions through it.  Again it would be a lot easier for an infantry platoon to carry a pair of M3s and 40 seven-pound HE projectiles than it would be to carry 40 AT4s.  Yet its use is limited to SOCOM, while the regular Army has to settle for the AT4.

Read the rest of this post at Military.com’s KitUp!…

– Eric Daniel

I was shocked to see a recent post on our sister site, DoD Buzz, about a new defensive countermeasure to RPGs being developed by Textron. The system, called TRAPS uses an armored air bag to absorb the impact of an RPG, rendering it inert.

According to Greg Grant’s story, the TRAPS uses radar to detect the incoming RPG and deploy the airbag on the zone of the vehicle being targeted.

DT readers might remember my mad scientist friend David Woroner, head of Survival Consultants International, who developed a patent on a multi-layered IED protection system that uses airbags to absorb the blast wave and some of the shrapnel of an IED in an attempt to reduce the blunt force trauma of the bomb’s concussion.

Here’s a video rendering of Dave’s system…

The key to Dave’s airbag protection that differs from Textron’s is that it detects the IED blast light, which arrives at the vehicle well before the blast does and gives the system time to deploy the airbags before the blast reaches the vehicle. I know that Israeli and some US so-called “active protection” systems use radar to detect the object coming towards it, but with Dave’s system, the detection is projectile agnostic since it detects the light of detonation (or launch?) and deploys at the speed of light (with fiber optics).

At the end of the day, it’s great to see that folks are beginning to approach the armor protection dilemma with more than just layers of cold rolled steel. I hope the JLTV developers dial in on this type of protection since it would surely garner advantages in weight and deployability.

– Christian

EDITOR’S NOTE: I know it’s not “tech” but I thought I’d throw this Op-Ed I wrote your way as food for thought before I post some techy stuff later today. Hope you like the new layout!

It was a shockingly inaccurate statement that discredited an accomplished columnist. No matter where you stand on The New York Times editorialist Maureen Dowd’s political bent, it’s hard to deny her reach and talent.

But in the reactionary defense of her anointed one — President Obama — on last weekend’s Times op-ed page, she strayed far from reality and embraced a mythology made soft by the facts.

Yes, the president’s Oct. 29 trip to Dover Air Force base in the dark of night to greet a C-17 carrying fallen Americans killed in Afghanistan was a vivid example of the reality of that war and should pause to those who call for increased commitment there. And it was honorable of Obama to see for himself the human cost of his decisions — as every commander and chief should.

But to reflexively defend the photo op engineered to create news about the president’s “sobering reminder” by claiming that the man who got us into Afghanistan in the first place never faced them is just plain bunk.

I had the honor to speak with nearly a dozen families of Marines killed in Iraq and Afghanistan a few years ago as part of a project with the Military Times newspapers. We wrote a wide-ranging investigative piece on the conduct of the services during the killed-in-action notification process and the support they provided along the way.

It was an intimidating assignment, but one I cherish to this day. For, unlike Dowd, who I doubt has ever spoken with the family of a fallen servicemember, I was forced to confront the world I obliquely reported from afar — to hear the quavering voices of mothers whose sons had been obliterated by roadside bombs.

And you know who else did that very same thing dozens of times in his eight years as president? The same man Dowd falsely accuses of declining to confront the reality of his war dead.

In my conversations with those who sacrificed a son, a husband, a brother, or a boyfriend, all were universally grateful for George W. Bush’s sincere — and private — conversations with them either before or directly after an event or speech at a military base. As a routine, Bush would meet behind closed doors with family members who’d lost loved ones as part of his stop at military installations.

These were not simply pro-war, anti-war, pro-Bush or anti-Bush families — they were all of the above. Some were against the Iraq war; others were steadfast, despite their unimaginable sacrifice, for victory there. But to a man and women, these grieving Americans appreciated the president’s heartfelt compassion and deep understanding of their sacrifice — and of the weight of the decision to send potentially more of America’s young to their deaths.

So, to pull a quote from a “Good Morning America” interview of a grieving parent to make her case, Dowd winds up doing the reverse.

“Unless we can see the images and look into the eyes and the faces of those that are sacrificing, we forget,” said the mother of Army Spec. Dale Griffin who was honored by Obama in the Dover show and used as an example of Bush’s callous denial of war’s price.

But Bush looked deep into the eyes of women like Mrs. Griffin many, many times without the glare of cameras showcasing their grief for tomorrow’s front page. And in them he saw the cost of war.

Their words, not mine.

So what if Bush never solemnly saluted the caskets at Dover with the White House press corps in tow. How is it relevant that he didn’t attend one family’s private funeral of their child killed in America’s war? Talk to the parents of the dead who witnessed the former president’s remorse first hand. They’ll tell Dowd just how offensively wrong she is.

– Christian

Out with the old, and in with the new.

Change is good in the digital age, and while Defense Tech certainly hasn’t adhered to the blogger’s developmental equivalent of Moore’s law, we’re at the top of our game as far as content is concerned.

But now it’s time to step it up a notch and give that killer content a format that befits its punch. So with great excitement and pride I welcome you to DT 2.0.

In this revamped version of the world’s premier military technology blog, the changes are more than skin deep. Sure we have a new logo and layout, yes we preserved the scrolling nature of the 1.0 version, of course we kept all the categories you’ve grown to love (even legacy ones) and the colors and features are this-gen.

But more than that, we have expanded comments and discussion capabilities to feed your appetite for debate. We’ll have features rolling in throughout the next few months that expand the blog’s reach and provide richer, more vibrant content.

The site will be more secure (no more “Ugg” spam) and more agile to your feedback, so please consider yourselves a key part of Defense Tech’s continued evolution.

Thanks, and enjoy the new site!

– Christian

This article first appeared in AviationWeek.com.

The first Space Based Infrared System (Sbirs) missile warning satellite bound for geosynchronous (GEO) orbit is on track for delivery to the U.S. Air Force by the fourth quarter of calendar year 2010, according to its manufacturer.

This will be a major milestone for the $10.4 billion Sbirs program, which has undergone multiple restructurings, cost overruns and delays. Delivery of the first GEO satellite is at least 7 years later than planned and cost estimates have exceeded predictions by billions.

During a speech at this year’s Strategic Space conference here hosted by the Space Foundation, the general overseeing Strategic Command said he is worried about potential gaps in coverage for some mission areas in part because satellites are being delivered later than planned. U.S. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton used Sbirs as an example; all of the preceding Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites have been launched, and the Sbirs schedule has repeatedly slipped.

Following delivery, the integration of GEO-1 onto the rocket will take 45–60 days in preparation for launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., according to Rick Ambrose, vice president of surveillance and navigation systems for Sbirs prime contractor Lockheed Martin. GEO-1 will augment and eventually relieve satellites in the existing DSP constellation.

Thermal vacuum testing is slated for completion on GEO-1 in the middle of this month, Ambrose adds. The trials include three cycles each of hot and cold environmental testing; the satellite is on its final round of testing in cold temperatures at Lockheed Martin’s Sunnyvale, Calif., manufacturing facility, Ambrose said during a Nov. 3 interview with Aviation Week.

Following this round of tests, about 30 days will be set aside to replace some small parts with issues discovered during the trials. One example is the replacement of a part that included tin, which is not suitable for use on the spacecraft.

In the first quarter of calendar year 2010, the full-up spacecraft will undergo the Final Integrated System Test (FIST) period, a series of tests on the entire system in ambient conditions.

Read the rest of this story, see how IEDs are like Ivan’s first space shot, wonder when’s the Brit carrier coming in and see why Boeing might need Joe the Plumber from our friends at Aviation Week, exclusively on Military.com.

– Christian

Nothing like an inadvertent ejection story to keep the workday moving along. (Thanks to aviation photographer Jose Ramos who shared this with us via Facebook.)

As the plane rolled into another stomach-churning manoeuvre, the passenger was probably wishing that he was somewhere else. Then, just like that, he was.

The man, a civilian joyriding with his air force pilot friend, accidentally grabbed the eject lever while trying to brace himself. He was instantly fired through the aircraft’s perspex canopy and blasted 320ft (100m) into the sky by the rocket-powered chair. He then floated down to the ground with a parachute that opened automatically.

Experts said he was lucky to escape unharmed from the bizarre accident last week in South Africa.

Read the rest of the story here.

DT readers may remember a similar incident involving a ship driver accidently punching out of a Tomcat over the ranges of Fallon a few years back. That one happened after the pilot rolled inverted as well. The pilot got to drive a convertable F-14 back to the field after his blackshoe passenger departed.

– Ward

The issue whether to include women in U.S. Navy nuclear sub crews has come up at every annual Naval Submarine League Open Symposium since I first began attending these great conferences in 1998. This year’s, on October 28 and 29 at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner, VA, was no exception — except for one thing. Presentations by Commander, U.S. Navy Submarine Force (COMNAVSUBFOR) Vice Admiral John Donnelly, and by Commander, U.S. Navy Submarine Force, Pacific (COMSUBPAC) Force Master Chief David Lynch, made it clear that America’s sub crews are indeed gradually going co-ed, starting soon.

Implicitly, everyone up and down the disciplined naval hierarchy has already been tasked with facilitating the initiative’s success. Director, U.S. Naval Reactors (DNR) Admiral Kirkland Donald noted that not enough male Naval Academy graduates are volunteering for the Sub Force to meet the demand there for new junior officers. It is well known that some top-notch female Midshipmen have long wanted to go into subs. An open poll on Military.com about whether women should be able to serve on subs shows 78% of respondents say “No.” But while naysayer comments and dire predictions are numerous, I’ve not seen any objection to co-ed crews that hasn’t been voiced for more than a decade already.

The Powers-that-Be now demand that pragmatic solutions be devised and implemented for difficult morale/retention and logistical problems related to everything from the severe lack of mental and physical privacy on long submerged patrols, to harassment and fraternization, to differing hygiene and medical requirements and physical abilities between the sexes, to the vexing need to mitigate toxic occupational exposures for women who are pregnant while at the same time maintaining vital mission stealth and adequate watch-station manning levels. Drawing on analyses that go back to the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS) of the late 1990s, the Sub Force is not starting from scratch with these issues today. Recent submarine-medicine studies do show that first-trimester pregnancies are particularly vulnerable to contaminants such as carbon dioxide that tend to build up inside nuclear subs running deep for weeks at a time.

But — leaving aside the moral/religious implications — I do need to note that commercially available birth-control implants, some of which also suppress menstruation for months at a time, when combined with reliable pre-deployment pregnancy testing, might help limit the scope of this complication to manageable proportions.
       
At the concluding banquet of this year’s NSL Symposium, the guest speaker, Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Work, praised in high terms the long and effective track record of adaptability of the Submarine Force. (He ended by stating that “fiscal constraints” might require that the construction rate of the Virginia-class fast attack subs revert to one per year for a while longer, further challenging Sub Force and submarine industrial base adaptability alike.) While UNDSECNAV Work made no specific mention of the issue of women on subs, I infer that senior leadership stands united in expecting to see this same adaptability exemplified as the Silent Service brings women onto its very exclusive membership rolls, beginning with a few crew assignments as early as 2010.

After all, the U.S. Navy’s surface warships have been co-ed since 1993. That change brought rough spots and ongoing complications, but the net effect was deemed by Navy leadership to be definitely positive: A larger pool of talent became available for a Navy that now much better represents the nation and way of life it is sworn to defend.

Even if having a co-ed Sub Force were a politically motivated social experiment, as some objectors contend, such experiments are not necessarily a bad idea. While foreign navies with co-ed diesel subs (such as Sweden and Australia) might not be good role models due to social mores and deployment profiles differing from those in America, relevant lessons learned can be found close to home at NASA, whose astronaut corps has been co-ed for years. Space Shuttle and International Space Station crews in orbit cope with strictures in many ways similar to those prevailing deep under the sea.  Some female American astronauts have completed six-month missions on the ISS — which has only one toilet.
 
In closing, I note that many millions of thriving families include high school or college age siblings of both sexes who while at home live cheek-by-jowl and have to share bathrooms.  Fraternization is avoided, of course, by the profound understanding shared by all of us in normal society that incest violates a heinous interpersonal taboo. Perhaps a culture needs to be engendered that a U.S. Navy co-ed sub crew is very analogous to a close-knit and overcrowded family trapped indoors for the winter by record snowfalls. Crewpersons have to see each other as united by figurative blood ties, making all be  brothers and sisters or parents and kids. This turns the mere thought of hanky-panky into an ugly place where no individual or pairing dare go.

Adjusting to co-ed crews, however precisely it’s done, has to call for a community-wide effort, including chaplains, detailers, medical staff, shore support personnel, and spouse organizations. Ongoing scrutiny seems likely by the media and by outside “watchdog” entities.  How difficult will it be for the elite ranks of the active duty qualified Dolphins-wearers themselves, already subject to tight psychological screening, to adjust to this quantum leap in diversity? Beyond the somewhat traditional and mostly harmless Sailor’s bellyaching about any big change, and the predictable added turnover of both some men and some women in the early stages, I think the Silent Service will likely adapt well to this internal challenge just as it has adapted to and helped win every mortally challenging global armed conflict during its very proud 100+ year history.

– Joe Buff