Military news update & weapon

2011-08-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

The J-20 was one of the stealth fighter programs under the codename J-XX that was launched in the late 1990s.It was designated “Project 718”,and won the PLAAF endorsement in a 2008 competition against a Shenyang proposal that was reportedly even larger than J-20.Two prototypes have been built as of the end of 2010.

On 22 December 2010, the J-20 was under-going high speed taxiing tests outside the Chengdu Aircraft Design Institute with no confirmed flight tests.The J-20 made its first flight, which lasted about 20 minutes, on 11 January 2011.

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has testified that the United States has known about the program for a "long time" and that the test flight was not a surprise.

Flight testing

The J-20 made its first flight, lasting about 15 minutes, on 11 January 2011. A Chengdu J-10S served as the chase aircraft.After the successful first flight, a ceremony was held. The test pilot of the J-20, Li Gang, Chief designer Yang Wei and General Li Andong (Deputy-Director of General Armaments Department, and Director of Science and Technology Commission of General Armaments Department of the PLA since 2000) attended the ceremony.

China thus became the third nation in the world to "develop and test-fly a full-size stealth combat aircraft demonstrator", after the United States and Russia. The Guardian reported that experts, on the one hand, expressed "surprise" at the speed with which the aircraft was developed, but on the other hand "said the country's military prowess was still relatively backward and way behind that of the US" and that its military interests were limited to its region.

The first test flight coincided with a visit of United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to China, and was initially interpreted by Pentagon officials and media pundits as a possible signal to the visiting delegation from the U.S. However, after meeting with senior Chinese officials including Chinese President Hu Jintao, Secretary Gates remarked, "The civilian leadership seemed surprised by the test and assured me it had nothing to do with my visit."Jin Canrong, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing who specializes in China-U.S. relations, suggested that President Hu's ignorance of the test raises questions about the nature of civilian control of the Chinese military.However, as Michael Swaine, an expert on the PLA and United States – China military relations, explained, although it's possible and even likely that "senior officials in the [Chinese] leadership did not know that this flight test would occur on this precise day," this is not necessarily evidence of a military-backed effort to insult Secretary Gates' delegation or embarrass President Hu. Rather, decisions regarding the production, development and testing of such military aircraft are routinely managed by engineers and low-level officials more than by senior civilian or military leadership. Coupled with the fact that there was relatively limited coverage of the event in Chinese media initially, it is likely that the test may not have been considered a significant enough event to warrant notification to President Hu.

A second test flight of an hour and twenty minutes took place on 17 April 2011. On 5 May 2011, a 55 minute test flight included retraction of the landing gear.

The full initial test program of 10 to 20 test flights is expected to take years to complete.

Technology transfer

Globalsecurity.org states that China probably declined to participate in joint development and production of new fifth generation fighter with Russia given the belief that Russia stood to gain more from Chinese participation. Chinese leaders may have determined that their design was superior to the Russian PAK FA.United States House Committee on Armed Services chairman Howard McKeon said on the J-20 "my understanding is that they built it on information that they received from Russia, from a Russian plane, that they were able to copy". MiG spokeswoman Yelena Fyodorova has denied that any of the project 1.44 materials had been provided to China.

Balkan military officials told the Associated Press that China and Russia may have adopted some stealth technology from a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, which was shot down by the Serbian military in 1999 during the Kosovo war. If Chinese experts used the F-117 stealth coatings, the result would be decades behind current American state-of-the-art. However, Chinese test pilot Xu Yongling said that the J-20 was a "masterpiece" of home-grown innovation, he also said the F-117 technology was already "outdated" even at the time it was shot down, and could not be applied to a next-generation stealth jet. Janes editor James Hardy agrees that it was unlikely China would have learned much from the wreckage.

Retired USAF General Thomas G. McInerney has suggested that the J-20 design may have been based on cyber-espionage of the Lockheed Martin FB-22 project.

A federal prosecutor has suggested that China may have used technology from the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit for their stealth aircraft which was supplied by Noshir Gowadia.

Chief of the Air Staff of the Indian Air Force Pradeep Vasant Naik has suggested that the J-20 is entirely reverse engineered with no Chinese R&D involved, and questioned if the practice was ethical.^[38]The Deccan Chronicle has called Naik's comment an "unusual outburst of helplessness" as China surpasses Indian air power.

Russian military commentator Ilya Kramnik conjectures that China is still 10 to 15 years behind the United States and Russia in fighter technology and may not be able to manufacture all the advancedcomposite materials, avionics and sensor packages needed for such aircraft, and could instead turn to foreign suppliers.However, he speculates that China may be able to produce the J-20 at a cost 50% to 80% lower than US and Russian fifth-generation jet fighters, and that potential customers may include Pakistan, the Middle East, Latin America, Southeast Asia and the richest countries in Africa. Konstantin Sivkov of the Academy for Geopolitical Issues argued that the US is correct to be alarmed at the progress of Chinese military technology. Mikhail Pogosyan, head of theUnited Aircraft Corporation, has claimed that the Chinese program is more a demonstration and that they lack the scale and experience to complete the project.

Bill Sweetman speculates that China will have problems meeting its production requirements, as it has several other jet fighter projects in production. Aviation Week raised the question of whether the aircraft is a prototype, like the Sukhoi T-50, or a technology demonstrator similar to the Lockheed YF-22.

China's first manned submarine sets new record

2011-08-24T06:54:00.000-07:00

The Jiaolong, China's first manned deep-sea submarine, reached a depth of 5,000 meters during its second test dive at 6:07 a.m. Beijing time on July 26, 159 minutes after it entered the water. It dived to 5,057 meters below sea level 10 minutes later, setting a new Chinese deep dive record and marking a milestone in the country's history.

Ji Guo, a senior official of the State Oceanic Administration, said that since the Chinese Academy of Engineering held a conference on the development of China's manned deep-sea submarines about 10 years ago, Xu Qinan and other experts as well as related departments have actively cooperated with one another. They have made unremitting efforts to design and produce China's first manned deep-sea submarine.

The vessel was only able to dive to 1,000 meters underwater at the initial stage, but now can reach a depth of over 5,000 meters. The Jiaolong will soon conduct a record-breaking 7,000-meter test dive.

Important step for China toward great deep-sea power

How should we regard the significance of this ongoing marine experiment ?

Ji believes that exceeding the depth of 5,000 meters indicates that China has made a breakthrough in the high-tech marine realm. and it means that China is already able to reach 70 percent of the deepest regions of the world's oceans. And it is also a significant technological leap of China's marine exploration.

"Of course, this successful deep-sea diving will offer technical supports for China to fulfill its international duties."

Ji explained that the latest round of deep-sea diving was carried out in an ore district of 75,000 square kilometers at the international seabed of the Pacific. China has the right of priority to prospect for and exploit the ores in this district. And while enjoying the right, China is also responsible of making specific investigations and environmental evaluations for this district. That is also one of the tasks of the Jiaolong in this deep-sea diving.

The successful marine experiment this time also attracted the attention of many international media. The U.S. Wall Street Journal said predicted that the Jiaolong's crossing of the 5,000-meter mark will become a remarkable event in the competition between China and the United States in the high-risk technological realm.

The Japan Times commented that it only took China 10 years to realize the dream of its ancestors and join the club of great deep-sea powers.

The U.S. Nature magazine said that it was a historic moment in China's natural exploration and the new depth reached is a milestone of China's engineering technology.

The U.S. Philadelphia Trumpet newsmagazine said that after the successful experiment of reaching the depth of 5,000 meters, China will march forward to the even deeper limit of 7,000 meters in 2012. If it succeeds, it means China will be able to explore 99.9 percent of the world's oceans.

By Zhang Baoshu from People's Daily Overseas Edition, translated by People's Daily Online

SSN-774 Virginia-class New Attack Submarine [NSSN]

2011-08-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

SSN-774 Virginia-class New Attack Submarine [NSSN]

Virginia is intended to be a submarine comparable in most respects to its immediate predecessor - the Seawolf - but in a more affordable configuration. The missions of Virginia include Covert Strike Warfare, Anti-Submarine Warfare, Covert Intelligence Collection/Surveillance, Covert Indication and Warning and Electronic Warfare, Anti-Surface ShipWarfare, Special Warfare, Covert Mine Warfare, and Battle Group Support.

The New Attack Submarine is designed for multi-mission operations and enhanced operational flexibility. SEAWOLF (SSN-21)-Class quieting has been incorporated in a smaller hull while military performance has been maintained or improved. Compared with the Seawolf, the NSSN is slower, carries fewer weapons, and is less capable in diving depth and arctic operations. On the other hand, the NSSN is expected to be as quiet as the Seawolf, will incorporate a vertical launch system and have improved surveillance as well as special operations characteristics to enhance littoral warfare capability. While the 688-I submarines are noisier than the improved Russian Akula class, the Seawolf is quieter than Akula and the projected Russian SSN-P-IX class. At her top speed, Virginia-class makes less noise than the 688-I submarines do at 5 knots.

The primary design driver for the NSSN is acoustic quietness equal to that of the Seawolf, even at the cost of reducing maximum top speed. With a focus on the littoral battlespace, the New Attack Submarine has improved magnetic stealth, sophisticated surveillance capabilities, and Special Warfare enhancements.

The New Attack Submarine is engineered for maximum design flexibility, responsiveness to changing missions and threats, and affordable insertion of new technologies to ensure that it will continue to be the right submarine well into the 21st Century. Integrated electronic systems with Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) components facilitate state-of-the-art technology introduction throughout the life of the class and avoid unit obsolescence. The Navy has never attempted such a large-scale integration effort on a submarine. While the BSY-1 and BSY-2 systems did have some level of integration, the NSSN combat system will have to be totally integrated. Both the BSY-1 combat system for the Improved Los Angeles-class and the BSY-2 combat system for the Seawolf-class submarines had problems that resulted in late delivery and increased costs.

The Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) electronics packages also promote maximum flexibility for growth and upgrade. Coupled with the Modular Isolated Deck Structure (MIDS) and open-system architecture, this approach results in a lower cost and effective, command and control structure for fire control, navigation, electronic warfare, and communications connectivity.

The New Attack Submarine's sonar system is state-of-the-art and has more processing power than today's entire submarine fleet combined to process and distribute data received from its spherical bow array, high-frequency array suite, dual towed arrays, and flank array suite.

The New Attack Submarine's sail configuration houses two new photonics masts for improved imaging functions, and improved electronics support measures mast, and multi-mission masts that cover the frequency domain for full-spectrum, high data-rate communications. The sail is also designed for future installation of a special mission-configurable mast for enhanced flexibility and warfighting performance.

Virginia is capable of targeting, controlling and launching Mark 48 Advanced Capability torpedoes, mines, and Tomahawk missiles. Its sonar capability is expected to be similar to Seawolf's, and its electronic support suite and combat control system represent improvements over legacy systems. The external communications system will be an improvement over legacy systems, providing full, high data rate interoperability with U.S. and allied forces. These characteristics support intelligence and strike capabilities.

The Virginia Class (SSN 774) submarine Non-Propulsion Electronics System was integrated outside of the ship's hull. Sonar displays and processors; Navigation and Combat Control Architecture; Data Distribution and Display, Electronic Support Measures, Onboard Team Trainer; Total Ship Monitoring; and Submarine Regional Warfare systems were all electronically integrated on a rafted system and inserted into the Virginia hull.

SUKHOI PAK FA

2011-08-24T06:39:00.000-07:00

The Sukhoi PAK FA is a twin-engine jet fighter being developed by Sukhoi OKB for the Russian Air Force.

The current prototype is Sukhoi's T-50.The PAK FA, when fully developed, is intended to be the successor to the MiG-29 and Su-27 in the Russian inventory and serve as the basis of the Sukhoi/HAL FGFA being developed with India. A fifth generation jet fighter, the T-50 performed its first flight 29 January 2010.Its second flight was on 6 February and its third on 12 February 2010. As of 31 August 2010, it had made 17 flights and by mid-November, 40 in total. The second prototype was to start its flight test by the end of 2010, but this was delayed until March 2011.

DARPA Falcon HTV-2

2011-08-24T06:34:00.000-07:00

DARPA’s Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) program is a multiyear research and development effort to increase the technical knowledge base and advance critical technologies to make long-duration hypersonic flight a reality.

The ultimate goal is a capability that can reach anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

Falcon HTV-2 is an unmanned, rocket-launched, maneuverable aircraft that glides through the Earth’s atmosphere at incredibly fast speeds—Mach 20 (approximately 13,000 miles per hour). At HTV-2 speeds, flight time between New York City and Los Angeles would be less than 12 minutes.

The goal of the second flight is to validate current assumptions and increase technical understanding of the hypersonic flight regime. More than 20 test assets will collect continuous flight data to achieve this goal.

FROM http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/TTO/Programs/Falcon_HTV-2.aspx

Introduce New US Navy ship : USS New York (LPD-21) (part 1)

2010-04-18T00:18:00.000-07:00

USS New York (LPD-21), the fifth San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, is the sixth ship of the United States Navy to be named after the state of New York. The New York has a crew of 360, and can also carry up to 700 Marines. The ship is notable for using steel that was salvaged from the World Trade Center, after it was destroyed in the September 11 attacks.

The ship is the first to be designed fully from the CAD-screen up to support all three of the Marines' primary mobility capabilities — the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), Landing Craft Air Cushion and MV-22B Osprey.

Shortly after 11 September 2001, Governor of New York George E. Pataki wrote a letter to Secretary of the Navy Gordon R. England requesting that the Navy bestow the name USS New York on a surface warship involved in the War on Terrorism in honor of September 11's victims.

The contract to build the New York was awarded to Northrop Grumman Ship Systems of New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2003. The New York was under construction in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina in 2005

World Trade Center steel

7.5 short tons (6.8 t) of the steel used in the ship's construction came from the rubble of the World Trade Center; this represents less than one thousandth of the total weight of the ship. The steel was melted down at Amite Foundry and Machine in Amite, Louisiana, to cast the ship's bow section. It was poured into the molds on 9 September 2003, with 7 short tons (6.4 t) cast to form the ship's "stem bar" — part of the ship's bow. The shipyard workers reportedly treated it with "reverence usually accorded to religious relics", gently touching it as they walked by. One worker delayed his retirement after 40 years' work to be part of the project.

Aircraft

At the stern of the ship the landing deck is able to accommodate two Sikorsky CH-53E Sea Stallion helicopters, six Bell AH-1W Super Cobra helicopters, four Boeing CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters or two Boeing Bell MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

The hangar deck provides aviation maintenance facilities and is sufficiently large to accommodate one Sea Stallion, two Sea Knight, three Super Cobra helicopters or one MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. The hangar doors are constructed by Indal Technologies. Each blast-resistant door weighs 18,000kg and has three horizontal folding panels.

USS San Antonio began flight operations testing with the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor and CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter in June 2006.

DIMENSIONAL PORTAL INCURSION AT THE LHC ( Part 2)

2010-04-17T23:34:00.000-07:00

Blue glowing ball 'must be a response' from the FIFTH DIMENSION

According to our contact, approximately 3 and a half minutes after the tiny and incredibly brief supersymmetry event in the ATLAS instrument, a much larger and apparently stable transdimensional "door" flowered into existence within the ATLAS cavern, suspended mid-air slightly to one side of the Collider's magnets and the ATLAS itself. The portal, described initially as a "glowing, bluish, spherical object about 2 metres in diameter", was spotted on CCTV by ATLAS boffins - no personnel are allowed in the cavern during beam operations for radiation safety reasons.

"There's no way that the LHC could have generated such a large 'door', or sustained it so long," our source wrote in a hasty email early this morning.

"There's no technology we know of that could do that, and even if there was the entire human race doesn't have access to enough energy to power it."

"We think it must be a response to the supersymmetric energy discharge from our side," he added, enigmatically.

We followed up with more questions, but haven't received any further response as of publication. Enquiries through official channels elicited a boilerplate denial, but that means nothing - CERN spokesmen have attempted to hush up major incidents at the LHC before.

Events at the LHC since the early hours of this morning remain unclear. However it appears that the Swiss government may have called in outside help. Online enthusiasts reported sightings of unidentified soldiers in combat equipment on various CERN webcams, before all imagery was abruptly replaced with stock footage showing routine scenes - in many cases with telltale evidence such as apparently months-old newspapers or magazines, or clocks and watches showing times at variance with reality.

Meanwhile unconfirmed reports have it that various elite special-forces units belonging to the member nations of CERN have been despatched to Geneva. Elements of the British SAS are thought to have arrived at CERN headquarters just hours ago, joining French GIGN and German GSG9 operatives at the scene. It is thought that members of the elite Swiss police "Stern" tactical unit descended into the underground complex housing the ATLAS experiment early this morning, and have not returned.

One anonymous Reg informant - in a message originating from an IP address registered to CERN at Geneva - has reported explosions, gunfire and screams coming from the access shafts leading down to the ATLAS cavern 70 metres below ground level. Others have described heavy helicopter traffic at the complex, the arrival of several unmarked military transport planes at the adjacent Geneva airport in the early hours of this morning, and in one case "a blue vertical beam like a searchlight" intermittently shining up from the ATLAS facility before cutting out.

British Ministry of Defence spokesmen this morning couldn't deny that UK elite troops are in Switzerland fighting as part of an international taskforce to resist a hyperdimensional invasion. However they refused to give any details.

"It is MoD policy that we never comment on Special Forces operations," said a spokesperson.

More reports are coming in on this story: we may or may not be able to publish them.

thank you.

from the register

DIMENSIONAL PORTAL INCURSION AT THE LHC ( Part 1)

2010-04-17T23:18:00.000-07:00

Elite troops confront 'response' to 7 TeV collisions

April Fools In shock news, it has emerged that recent record-breaking increases in particle ring energy achieved at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - the most powerful atomsmasher ever assembled by the human race - have caused a hyperdimensional portal leading to an inhabited parallel universe to open up deep beneath Switzerland, in what may be the opening move of a cross-continuum invasion campaign.

A secret international task force of special-forces troops is said to be assembling at the Collider to deal with a 'response' from the fifth dimension to a hyperdimensional energy discharge emitted from the LHC.

The opening of the dimensional gateway is being kept subject to a governmental news blackout to avoid a global panic. However, keen amateur LHC-watching enthusiasts, familiar with the many internal websites used to run and monitor the mighty Collider, stumbled across imagery last night confirming that a "supersymmetric" event had taken place following a particle collision inside the huge, subterranean ATLAS instrument cavern.

Supersymmetry, in layman's terms, is a phenomenon called for by a theory in physics which states that there are actually ten dimensions rather than the humdrum four of the space-time we can normally perceive. This has now been proven to be correct.

According to the data accompanying the picture, one of the unprecedentedly powerful 7 tera-electron-volt (TeV) collisions which began at the LHC just two days ago generated a pair of supersymmetric particles which then broke down via muon decay. This caused a small 283 giga-electron-volt energy discharge to be emitted transversely out of our four-dimensional spacetime and into the fifth dimension.

So much had long been expected by physicists. Sergio Bertolucci, Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN, told the Reg last year that he anticipated the opening of hyperdimensional "doors" during high-energy LHC collisions.

"Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it," said the physicist, on that occasion.

Bertolucci expected that such doors would be sub-subatomic in size, and only exist for ultra-tiny instants of time - 10^-26 seconds - in line with the data passed to us by the LHC-watchers.

Excited by the supersymmetry tipoff, we here on the Reg hyperboffinry desk contacted a high-level insider source at CERN in Switzerland regarding the event - and found we didn't know the half of it.

US Marines team on proper flying car project

2010-04-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

Big news for flying-car lovers today, as US military boffinry chiefs have unveiled full details of their plan to produce an excellent flying Humvee or sky-jeep type vehicle - and have a prototype flying by 2015. The Register said

Plans for the so-called "Transformer TX" were revealed in Pentagon budget documents last year, but details were sketchy. Now a full announcement (pdf) has been made, inviting proposals both from companies or organisations capable of designing the entire vehicle and others who would develop enabling technologies.

One need hardly add, of course, that the military boffinry shop in question is none other than DARPA: the agency which, just occasionally, produces the technological equivalent of the complete works of Shakespeare - but which also cranks out a hell of a lot of monkey sonnets.

In this case, the federal techno bad boys of DARPA have decided to have a crack at a real, no-shit flying car: and probably not just an ordinary car, but an off-road one to boot. They don't want a light plane that you can drive on a road, like the Terrafugia Transition. They don't want a paramotor, either. According to the Transformer TX announcement issued yesterday:

The Government’s envisioned concept consists of a robust ground vehicle that is capable of configuring into a VTOL [Vertical Take Off and Landing] air vehicle with a maximum payload capability of approximately 1,000 lbs.

The sky-jeep should be able to carry four fully-equipped troops, or alternatively one stretcher and one medic. It should be no bigger than 30 feet long by 8.5' wide and 9' high in ground configuration - on the order of two Hummers nose-to-tail - and should have wheels and suspension giving "road performance similar to an SUV" and "capable of handling light off-road travel".

In addition to being a capable ground vehicle, the TX should be able to lift off and land "without forward motion" and thereafter climb at least one unit upward for every six moved forward at sea level, or a minimum of 1:10 at higher altitudes. It should cruise in forward flight mode at speeds "representative of a light single-engine aircraft" and be able to achieve altitudes of 10,000 feet.

from The Register

Mobile Nuclear Reactors for Military

2010-04-17T17:22:00.000-07:00

   Making U.S. Navy carrier groups and Army bases more self-sufficient and energy-efficient could mean turning to mobile nuclear reactors. The Pentagon's DARPA scientists have put forth the modest proposal of deploying miniature reactors to convert hydrogen and carbon into military jet fuel, as well as providing power.
   That plan could fit well with the U.S. Navy's "Green Strike Group" concept for biofuel and nuclear-powered vessels. The Register points out that nuclear-powered aircraft carriers could make use of seawater to make JP-8 jet fuel from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, courtesy of work by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
   This gets trickier for U.S. military land bases that lack easy access to carbon feedstocks or massive quantities of water, but DARPA does hint at making use of the sewage lakes that have accumulated next to some bases in Afghanistan. Still, trucking in huge amounts of water could prove unwieldy.
   The U.S. military has already begun deploying green technologies that aim for self-sufficiency for reasons beyond environmental concerns -- running fuel convoys puts U.S. warfighters in harm's way of insurgent ambushes and roadside bombs.

DARPA ultimately hopes for portable nuclear reactors that can provide 5 to 10 megawatts of electricity and produce 15,000 gallons of JP-8 or road fuel every day -- about enough fuel to top off a Chinook helicopter a dozen times, according to The Register.
Perhaps the biggest technical challenge is creating such small nuclear reactors in the first place. But at least Microsoft founder Bill Gates and others have already begun backing plans for shrinking nuclear power to portable sizes.

2008-08-19T12:33:00.000-07:00

Facts about military aircrafts

Bombers
B-1 Lancer
B-2 Spirit
B-52H Stratofortress

Fighters & Attack
A-10 Thunderbolt
AC-130 Gunship
AV-8 Harrier

Chengdu J-10

Dassault Rafale

Typhoon EF-2000 Eurofighter

SU-47 Berkut