Officials at robotics giant iRobot Corp say that the biggest request from the field is to make robotic vehicles that require less direct supervision from human operators. There has been a “real push toward getting not just teleoperated robots [on the battlefield] but to make some of the functionality autonomous,” says iRobot co-founder Helen Grenier. Making robots and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) autonomous is “one of the biggest requests we’re getting from the field,” she says.
NEW DELHI — Extending another invitation to India to participate in the Eurofighter program will be high on the agenda of Bernhard Gerwert, chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Eurofighter consortium, when he visits the country in the first week of August. This will be the second offer made to India. “Last year we asked India to be our fifth partner but there was no response at all,” an official said.
LIKE MAGIC: The U.S. and Australia will conduct a Multi-Autonomous Ground Robotics International Challenge (MAGIC) in November 2010 to coincide with a Land Warfare Conference in Brisbane, Australia. The event is open to international industry and academic teams to develop and demonstrate emerging unmanned technologies for current and future force requirements. In the first phase, five research grants will be awarded for technology maturation, which will be followed by a competition among teams in the final phase.
A newly upgraded ground-based missile defense and space surveillance radar at Thule Air Base, Greenland, is in a trial period but has begun operating. The massive phased-array radar, called an Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR), monitors the skies over the North Pole for ballistic missiles and conducts space surveillance daily. The Thule radar has two faces, each providing 120-degree coverage.
The first of 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) was unveiled July 8 during a ceremony at Boeing’s St. Louis facility and is slated for delivery later this month.
LONDON The British government is launching preparatory work intended to lead to a Strategic Defense Review in the next Parliament. Bob Ainsworth, the secretary of state for defense, says, “To ensure that our forces are ready to face the challenges of the future we are... announcing a process for a Strategic Defense Review in the next Parliament. As a first step this will involve a detailed examination of a range of issues.”
The German government has placed a €3.1 billion order for 405 Puma infantry fighting vehicles, with deliveries to start next year. The contract, with the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann-Rheinmetall joint venture building the Puma, was awarded after recent parliamentary approval of the deal. The contract initiates full-rate production of the vehicle and represents the biggest land systems project in Europe, the two manufacturers say.
PARIS Europe is starting definition of a cargo download spacecraft that could eventually lead to an independent manned space transportation system capability. Under a 21 million euro ($29 million), 18-month Phase A contract awarded July 7 by the European Space Agency (ESA), EADS Astrium will establish the initial design for a download capsule, known as the Advanced Reentry Vehicle (ARV), that would give Europe the means to bring experiments and other cargo down from the International Space Station (ISS) or a future successor facility.
SECOND AND THIRD: Lockheed Martin will host an official keel laying ceremony for the team’s second Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), USS Fort Worth, the third LCS built. Events will be held on July 11 at the Marinette Marine Shipyard in Wisconsin, where the vessel is being constructed. The Fort Worth was built under a new fixed-price contract the Navy established with Lockheed.
FUEL CELL UAV: California-based UltraCell plans to build fuel cell systems for the Center for Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAV) Exploitation (CUE) in its Dayton, Ohio, manufacturing plant. UltraCell will initially build 10 units based on the company’s XX25 reformed methanol fuel cell (RMFC) technology, with potential to expand production in the future. The CUE is funded by the State of Ohio Third Frontier Project, and is a collaborative effort between local businesses, academic institutions and the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton.
COUNTERFIRE: The U.S. Army took delivery July 2 of its first Lockheed Martin Non-Recurring Engineering Enhanced AN/TPQ-36 Counterfire Target Acquisition (EQ-36) radar system. Delivery of the EQ-36 radar followed live-fire performance testing this past spring at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz. The delivery comes 30 months after the Army awarded a $120 million contract for design and development of five systems. EQ-36 radar systems will replace aging TPQ-36 and TPQ-37 medium-range radars in the Army’s inventory.
U.S. government investment in civil space programs isn’t always matched with larger national interests, particularly in the post-Cold War world of interlocking national interests, says a committee of the National Research Council chaired by one of the members of the White House panel reviewing NASA’s human spaceflight programs.
Northrop Grumman is to demonstrate a ship-based laser weapon to counter the threat from swarming small boats under a $98 million contract from the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for the Maritime Laser Demonstration (MLD) program. The contract calls for a prototype laser weapon in the “tens of kilowatts” class to be tested at sea against a representative remotely controlled small-boat target by late 2010.
NEW DELHI India has opened four new centers for specialist anti-terror National Security Guard (NSG) commandos drawn from the Indian army. A center in Mumbai opened June 30, followed by a hub each in Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad on July 1. The decision to set up the hubs follows the delayed arrival of NSG teams at Mumbai when terrorists struck on Nov. 26, 2008.
AAI Corporation officially announced it will offer its Aerosonde fleet of small unmanned aircraft systems, the Mark 4.7, as a contender for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps joint Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System (STUAS)/Tier II program, adding to the growing list of official competitors. The STUAS/Tier II contract will be awarded by the end of this year, with initial operational capability anticipated for 2012, according to Rear Adm. Bill Shannon, Navy program executive officer for unmanned aviation and strike weapons.
LONDON The first of two C-130s being upgraded for the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNLAF) was test flown on July 3. The two-hour flight took place from Marshall Airport Cambridge, where the upgrade work was conducted by Marshall Aerospace.
DEFENSE DOWN UNDER: The Australian government will commission a consultancy to see how its defense planning information can be “more usefully” provided to industry, the defense minister there announced last week. “The government will consider how the [Defense Capability Plan] can be enhanced as a tool for industry, in the context of the new approach involving five yearly white papers,” Sen. John Faulkner said.
The U.S. Coast Guard, which has 11 mandated missions ranging from drug interdiction to search and rescue, says it failed to make its own performance target for defense readiness, according to a congressional report issued July 7.
UAV CONVICTION: John Reece Roth, 72, a former University of Tennessee professor convicted last year on charges he passed military technical data on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to China, was sentenced to 48 months in prison last week for violating the Arms Export Control Act. Roth was found to have illegally disclosed and transported restricted military information associated with a U.S.
TRAINER TURNOUT: Hawker Beechcraft has begun deliveries of 20 T-6A Texan II turboprop trainers to the Israeli Air Force, to replace the Fouga Magister jets used for basic and advanced training since 1960. The U.S. Congress was first notified of the potential sale in June 2008. Elbit Systems has been awarded a five-year contract, with an option for an additional five years, for operation and maintenance of the Efroni, as the T-6 will be known in Israeli service. The T-6 supersedes the Zukit, an upgraded version of the locally assembled Magister.
NAVY The Boeing Co., Huntington Beach, Calif., is being awarded a ceiling $31,635,782 cost-plus-fixed-fee term contract for Design Agent engineering services support for the AN/USQ-82(5) system as a part of DDG Modernization. The work will be performed in Huntington Beach, Calif., and is expected to be completed by July 2014. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The contract was not competitively procured. The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, Dahlgren, Va., is the contracting activity (N00178-09-C-2005).
The U.S. Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin a $23 million contract for 12 extended-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM-ERs) despite ongoing questions about the reliability of the baseline model. The contract includes the purchase of 12 JASSM-ERs, stealthy cruise missiles which are designed to travel up to 500 nautical miles to strike a ground target. Six will be used in developmental flight-tests and the remaining six are slated for operational testing, says Alan Jackson, JASSM program director for developer Lockheed Martin.
