International Military Discussion

Craig Alpert · Post by **Craig Alpert** » 25 Sep 2010 08:42

Russia developing laser weapons - military chief

Russia is working on a military laser system, the chief of Russia's Armed Forces General Staff said on Wednesday.

"Work on laser weapons is underway across the world, and that includes us," Gen. Nikolai Makarov said.

It is "too soon yet" to speak about the specifications of the Russian laser system, he added.

According to some media reports, Russia has been developing an airborne laser - the so-called flying laser - to disable enemy reconnaissance and data processing systems, as well as shoot down missiles in flight.

Seems like this is the new fad!!!

Venkarl · Post by **Venkarl** » 28 Sep 2010 06:07

tons and tons of bundersheer and ksk pictures...some from afghan ops.

http://shed-o-love.com/images/kraut/

sorry if posted already.

Craig Alpert · Post by **Craig Alpert** » 29 Sep 2010 04:18

US army gears up for Iron Man

In another case of real life taking inspiration from science fiction, scientists at a US-based defence technology firm have developed a robotic exoskeleton based on the Iron Man comic book character. On Monday, Raytheon Sarcos unveiled its creation dubbed the XOS 2 at its research facility in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Meant for the military and built from a combination of sensors, actuators and controllers, and powered by high-pressure hydraulics, the futuristic suit will enable its wearer to easily lift over 90 kg several hundred times, or even repeatedly punch through three inches of wood, its developers said.

"With XOS 2, we targeted power consumption and looked for ways to use hydraulic energy more efficiently," said Dr Fraser M Smith, vice president of operations for Raytheon Sarcos.

"That's resulted in us being able to add capabilities while significantly reducing power consumption by at least 50% when compared to its predecessor XOS 1," he said, referring to the earlier iteration that was developed around eight years ago as a proof of concept.

Raytheon believes the robotic suit will help with the many logistics challenges faced by military personnel.

"Our goal is to get the suit ready for fielding so that we can take some of the strain off the soldiers. Repetitive movement and exertion can cause injuries. We want to lighten the soldiers' load," said Rex Jameson, a test engineer for the XOS 2.

....................

Carl_T · Post by **Carl_T** » 02 Oct 2010 10:29

I wonder if in the US, a fighter pilot were to come out of the closet. Under DADT would they discharge him from the military?

Carl_T · Post by **Carl_T** » 02 Oct 2010 10:39

Wow that is crazy.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 07 Oct 2010 07:03

Why defense spending won't go down much

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/201 ... _down_much

JimmyJ · Post by **JimmyJ** » 07 Oct 2010 16:40

Minister: Russia to buy weapons abroad

Russia will buy foreign and possibly U.S. arms because the domestic industry has failed to modernize, Russia's Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has said.

"Our weapons often do not meet the required standards," he said. "We are acting as consumers in this situation ... our producers want to issue outdated models but we don't want to buy them."

The Kremlin wants to completely overhaul the Russian armed forces. Moscow plans to radically cut the number of officers and overall troops to create a more modern and mobile force and has vowed to replace its Soviet-era equipment.

However, Russian officials are unhappy with the domestic industry and have in the past urged firms to step up their product portfolio and internal procedures to become more competitive.

JTull · Post by **JTull** » 08 Oct 2010 18:10

UK and France in talks over warheads
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/86783318-d252 ... abdc0.html

An agreement being negotiated by the UK and France would see British nuclear warheads serviced by French scientists and break with half a century in which neither country has collaborated on its independent deterrent.

Ahead of a summit in three weeks, the governments are close to agreeing that Britain would use a French laboratory to help maintain and service its 160 nuclear warheads, officials in both countries say.

A deal to share the secrets of their nuclear programmes would boost powerfully defence collaboration between the countries and save money at a time when their defence budgets are under stress.

Britain and France run completely different deterrent systems with all details kept secret. The scheme would give Britain access for the first time to France’s Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, which maintains about 300 warheads in the French force de frappe.

In effect, the CEA would service UK nuclear warheads, raising concerns among politicians in both countries about whether their governments were maintaining an independent deterrent.

According to a person familiar with the negotiations, Britain has consulted the US over the proposed move. A US-UK treaty forbids Britain from sharing its nuclear secrets with another country because the UK deterrent, built on the Trident D5 missile, is in large part based on US technology.

François Heisbourg, a French defence analyst, said sharing warhead research would assume “that the British break their very special relationship with America in that field”. This would require considerable “confidence on the US part”.

Defence chiefs have ruled out schemes such as joint submarine patrols by France and Britain in the Atlantic. London and Paris believe that collaborating on warheads would make sense.

France and Britain are signatories to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and therefore forbidden to conduct destructive tests.

As warheads decay or are modified, scientists need to establish through computer simulation how their potential functioning has changed.

France would charge the UK for access to CEA facilities. But the UK would avoid having to build its own expensive simulation laboratories to maintain the effectiveness of the warheads it possesses.

“If we don’t share some of these capabilities, we will lose them,” said a British defence insider.

“But making progress is easier now than it was. France is in Nato and many of the issues that divided us in the past – such as the Iraq war – have now disappeared.”

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 09 Oct 2010 11:04

deep cuts proposed in royal navy - if followed through it would essentially be a sea denial type of navy. of the two CVF carriers, I doubt the 2nd one will get completed and put in service due to funding issues.

http://news.scotsman.com/news/Defence-c ... iclepage=2

It is understood that the navy has offered to slim down the fleet to just 12 surface ships, leaving it with six Type 45 destroyers and six Type 23 frigates.

The submarine fleet would be reduced to seven Astute hunter-killers plus the four Trident nuclear submarines.

When the two carriers are included this would reduce the fleet by half from its current total of 42 ships.

Such a cut would see the fleet reduced to its lowest ebb since King Henry VIII.

In modern terms, it would see the Navy reduced to the size of the Italian navy and end up at around half the size of the French navy.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 09 Oct 2010 11:06

the british cos like RR, BAE systems, vickers and others have useful naval technologies. they will need to find new markets for such things or downsize.

Gerard · Post by **Gerard** » 10 Oct 2010 18:48

Why world's most powerful military man matters to you

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 13 Oct 2010 15:15

Keeping the Pacific Pacific

The Looming U.S.-Chinese Naval Rivalry

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ ... ic-pacific

Philip · Post by **Philip** » 13 Oct 2010 15:18

X-posted in the Indo-Israel td.

Historic gallant action by Indian troops in Palestine.IN's CNS pays tribute.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Naval-chi ... 12249.aspx

Naval chief visits Haifa; pays homage to fallen Indian soldiers
Press Trust Of India
Haifa, October 13,

Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Nirmal Verma today visited the memorial of fallen Indian soldiers, who showed exemplary courage in the liberation of this Israeli city during World War I, and paid tribute by laying a wreath. He was joined at the ceremony by his Israeli counterpart Eliezer Marom on whose invitation he is paying a four day visit to Israel to promote "service to service cooperation". A large number of Indian soldiers sacrificed their lives in this region during the World War I, and nearly 900 were cremated or buried in cemeteries across Israel.

A unique ceremony commemorating their sacrifice was observed this year of September 22 as part of the Haifa Day celebrations. The Indian army commemorates September 23rd every year as Haifa Day to pay its respects to the two brave Indian Cavalry Regiments that helped liberate the city in 1918 following a dashing cavalry action by the 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade.

In the autumn of that year, the Brigade was a part of the Allied Forces sweeping northwards through Palestine in what is seen as the last great cavalry campaign in history. "No more remarkable cavalry action of its scale was fought in the whole course of the campaign. Machine gun bullets over and over again failed to stop the galloping horses even though many of them succumbed afterwards to their injuries", is how the Official History of the War 'Military operation Egypt and Palestine: volume 2' describes the Indian troops bravery.

Captain Aman Singh Bahadur and Dafadar Jor Singh were awarded the Indian Order of Merit (IOM) and Captain Anop Singh and 2nd Lt Sagat Singh were awarded the Military Cross (MC) as recognition for their bravery in this battle. Major Dalpat Singh (MC) is known in the annals of history as the "Hero of Haifa" for his critical role in the Liberation of the city.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 13 Oct 2010 17:05

Russia, India to hold joint antiterrorism drills

Russia and India will conduct joint antiterrorism exercises on Indian territory on October 15-24, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday.

Russia is sending more than 200 troops from its 34th mountain brigade, based in the North Caucasus, to join the Indian troops in the INDRA 2010 drills.

"During the upcoming exercise, the Russian and Indian military personnel will form a joint task force, and plan and carry out a series of mock antiterrorism missions in the mountains," the ministry said in a statement.

The Russian troops will be equipped with lightweight Permyachka Infantry Suits, which protect at least 80 percent of the body surface from small-caliber bullets and low-speed shrapnel.

Some pics of Permyachka Infantry Suits
link

Craig Alpert · Post by **Craig Alpert** » 15 Oct 2010 05:33

India, Vietnam Agree To Boost Defense Ties

Hanoi, Vietnam (AHN) - India has agreed to boost defense relations with Vietnam. The agreement came during a meeting between Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony and Vietnamese Defense Minister Gen Phung Quang Thanh in Hanoi.

Under the agreement, New Delhi has vowed to provide assistance to Hanoi in modernizing its military might.

The two ministers also discussed in detail the ways to boost bilateral cooperation in different fields and how to train military personnel. Antony later held a brief meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung a day after Tuesday's conference of Asia-Pacific Defense Ministers in Hanoi.

In November last year, the two nations had signed a defense cooperation memorandum and the latest discussions in Hanoi centered on the ways intensify its implementation under that agreement.

The two nations were apparently satisfied with the progress they made so far as they agreed to exchange expertise on defense-related information technology and English-language skills.

Neither of the sides, however, clarified whether India would apply the same model of cooperation with Vietnam that it has with Indonesia in the defense-related IT sector. Vietnam also remained silent on whether it would seek India’s expertise in pilots’ training of for Russian-made combat aircraft as its southeast Asian neighbor Malaysia did recently.

Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to visit Hanoi for the India-ASEAN summit and the EAS meeting later this month.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 15 Oct 2010 17:45

Iranian Missile Enhancements Appear in N. Korea

Dmurphy · Post by **Dmurphy** » 16 Oct 2010 15:25

India v/s Russia in South America?

Russia to deliver 35 tanks to Venezuela - Putin

old article:
A first: Foreign interest in Arjun tank

Seeking to build up its armoured warfare capabilities to crush a potential threat from Venezuela, its Latin American neighbour Colombia has shown interest in buying India’s indigenous Main Battle Tank (MBT) Arjun.

Carl_T · Post by **Carl_T** » 16 Oct 2010 19:09

Is there really a "reluctance to export military equipment" as per the article? Quite curious.

amol.p · Post by **amol.p** » 21 Oct 2010 15:22

U.S. plans $60B, 20-year arms deal with Saudi Arabia

The Obama administration has notified Congress of plans for a multiyear, multibillion-dollar weapons deal with Saudi Arabia.

The deal, worth up to $60 billion over 20 years, will include the sale of 84 F-15 fighter aircraft and almost 200 helicopters, and the upgrading of 70 older-model F-15s.

The deal also includes trainers, simulators, generators, spare and repair parts, and other related elements of program support, according to the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Pentagon unit charged with executing the program and processing the transaction.

Some of the prime contractors involved are Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Electric, according to DSCA Public Affairs Officer Charles Taylor.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/10/20/us ... tml?hpt=T2

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 23 Oct 2010 22:13

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 24 Oct 2010 04:55

Wrist flex: This prototype made for the U.S. Army is worn on the wrist and incorporates a thin, lightweight flexible OLED display.
Credit: Universal Display

http://www.technologyreview.com/computi ... 7/?ref=rss

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 25 Oct 2010 19:58

Armchair Warriors

Civilian strategists often think they understand the use of force better than their generals do. Here are 10 cockamamie military schemes that thankfully never came to pass.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... r_warriors

shynee · Post by **shynee** » 26 Oct 2010 22:55

US to build £8bn super base on Pacific island of Guam

The US is building an £8 billion super military base on the Pacific island of Guam in an attempt to contain China's military build-up

The expansion will include a dock for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a missile defence system, live-fire training sites and the expansion of the island's airbase. It will be the largest investment in a military base in the western Pacific since the Second World War, and the biggest spend on naval infrastructure in decades.

Beijing's naval build-up is also intended secure the sea lanes from the Middle East, from where China will import an estimated 70-80 per cent of its oil needs by 2035 supplies it fears US could choke in the event of a conflict.

Experts agree China does not currently have the capability to challenge US supremacy in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. "China has a large appetite", says Carl Ungerer, an analyst at Australian Strategic Policy Institute, "but it hasn't got enough teeth".

"China's charm offensive is over", says Ian Storey, an expert at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, "and its given way to what you might call an adolescent foreign policy. The country's flexing its muscles, letting us know it won't be pushed around".

The US is also investing another £126 million on upgrading infrastructure at the British-owned Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia, 700 miles south of Sri Lanka. Key among the upgrades at Diego Garcia, which are due for completion in 2013, will be the capability to repair a nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine which can carry up to 154 cruise missiles striking power equivalent to that of an entire US aircraft carrier battle group. Diego Garcia, which has served as a launch-pad for air strikes on Iraq and Afghanistan, is already home to one third of what the US navy calls its Afloat Prepositioned Force equipment kept on standby to support military deployment anywhere in the world.

VinayG · Post by **VinayG** » 28 Oct 2010 11:29

SORRY IF I POST THIS IN THE WRONG THREAD BUT THIS ARTICLE IS WORTH READING

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010 ... ntPage=all

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 28 Oct 2010 20:45

Russian Special Forces: trials not everyone will endure

Airavat · Post by **Airavat** » 02 Nov 2010 06:25

Defence groups urge France-UK tie-up

Tuesday’s summit will see Britain and France engage in an unprecedented degree of co-operation on military deployments, with both states co-ordinating the refits of their future aircraft carriers so that one is always at sea.

BAE, Dassault and many of their peers say the development of unmanned military aircraft is critical for the industry’s future. But they have worried that budget constraints across the continent could mean European governments end up buying this equipment off the shelf from US companies, rather than developing the technology by giving work to European companies.

Industry leaders also believe it is essential for companies in both countries to begin research and technology for a new generation of fighter aircraft. “We know we will one day face the huge challenge of replacing France’s Rafale and the Eurofighter Typhoon,” said one defence figure. “Either there will be a new American plane or something created in Europe. So we have to organise options we give to governments.”

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 02 Nov 2010 15:56

France and Britain to Sign Defense Deals

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/world ... itain.html

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was traveling to Britain on Tuesday to initiate defense agreements promising cooperation including a joint rapid deployment force, shared use of aircraft carriers and joint efforts on nuclear research.

wig · Post by **wig** » 03 Nov 2010 20:37

american newsmagazine time reports on entente frugale for britain and france and the signing of two agreements

france and britain combine forces
the new understanding between Britain and France that will see the two countries setting up a Combined Joint Expeditionary Force, putting their aircraft carriers at each other's disposal and sharing facilities for research and evaluation of their nuclear arsenals

Britain and France will have one aircraft carrier apiece, likely to be out of service for refitting about a third of the time. "You know, in France sovereignty is as touchy a subject as it is in Britain," said Sarkozy, swiftly illustrating the point with a touchy response to a British journalist who wondered what would happen if the U.K., finding its aircraft carrier out of service on the occasion of a crisis and hoping to dispatch France's aircraft carrier to battle instead, encountered French resistance. "If you, my British friends, had to face a major crisis, do you imagine we would sit there with our arms crossed?" asked the President, with a theatrical moue of anger and incredulity.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/ ... 07,00.html

Craig Alpert · Post by **Craig Alpert** » 09 Nov 2010 05:15

New helmets and armour for British troops in Afghanistan

So much for IA and their "scooter like" helmets! Guess they are facing a tough competition with the Brits now

darshhan · Post by **darshhan** » 09 Nov 2010 13:39

This is actually interesting.SAS and Delta Force are taking dogs on Airborne missions and that too HAHO jumps.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11 ... more-34956

Dogs have been involved in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts since the start; pooches are NATO’s best bomb detectors, for instance. But the canines are taking on new wartimes roles – as paratroopers in Afghanistan and as improvised explosive devices in Iraq.

Members of Britain’s Special Air Service (SAS) special forces have begun parachuting into enemy strongholds in Afghanistan with Taliban-seeking German shepherds strapped to their chests. Once on the ground, the dogs hunt for Taliban insurgents in buildings and — with cameras strapped to their heads sending back video — act as forward scouts for the British special forces unit. The work is every bit as dangerous for the dogs as it is for their human counterparts, The Guardian reports. Eight SAS paratrooper pups killed in combat thus far.

Though the missions are officially secret, earlier reports of the pups’ training shed some light on how the British special forces are likely using them. SAS pooches are trained for High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) jumps, in which parachutes are deployed at a high altitude and long horizontal distance away from a target location in order to allow jumpers to glide in without detection. The SAS dogs are trained to jump tethered to their handlers from heights as high as 25,000 feet and up to 20 miles away — or a 30 minute glide — from a target location. At that height, the lack of oxygen puts them at risk for hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, so the dogs are fitted with special masks to give them breathable air. The Brits reportedly borrowed the tactic from America’s super-secret Delta Force, which first trained dogs to make HAHO jumps.

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 16 Nov 2010 16:38

The $912 Billion Nightmare

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the U.S. government paid $188 billion to service the national debt. With the federal government now borrowing a staggering 40% of the money it spends, that number is rising rapidly. It will reach $250 billion this year and, if left unchecked, $912 billion by 2020, at which point the nation will be spending more money on interest payments than defense. That’s a pretty scary scenario – and a compelling reason why President Obama and the next Congress must act to bring the deficit under control.

Last week, the chairman of Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the national debt issued a proposal that calls for, among other things, cuts to defense spending, curtailment of entitlement programs and higher taxes. Lexington Institute analyst Loren Thompson says the blueprint – the first salvo and what is likely to be long and ugly debate in Washington – removes “any illusions that defense spending will be off the table when the new Congress turns to dealing with the deficit next year.”

Thompson, in a Nov. 12 post in his Early Warning blog, notes that if defense spending were left untouched, entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid would have to be cut in half to balance the budget. That’s not going to fly, considering that some lawmakers oppose any cuts to popular budget-busting entitlements.

Thompson also makes a plea that the details of deciding what to cut should be left to Pentagon policymakers. He notes that the deficit commission proposal contains basic errors in its defense assumptions, such as listing an incorrect number of F-35s the Air Force is buying.

Although any cuts will be painful, it’s better to take them now than to let the budget crisis spiral out of control. But finding a solution is going to require compromise between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. Given the noxious political environment in Washington, it is far from assured that our “leaders” are up to the task.

Singha · Post by **Singha** » 16 Nov 2010 16:41

^dogs

ha ha - low tech time proven soln instead of discovery channel MAVs and tracked spiders that were supposed to do all this.

darshhan · Post by **darshhan** » 16 Nov 2010 20:52

Must read.Assasination technology being developed by Americans.Pentagon is rapidly mastering Manhunting technologies and skills.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... re-anytime#

Not since the end of the Cold War has the Pentagon spent so much to develop and deploy secret weapons. But now military researchers have turned their attention from mass destruction to a far more precise challenge: finding, tracking, and killing individuals.Every year, tens of billions of Pentagon dollars go missing. The money vanishes not because of fraud, waste or abuse, but because U.S. military planners have appropriated it to secretly develop advanced weapons and fund clandestine operations. Next year, this so-called black budget will be even larger than it was in the Cold War days of1987, when the leading black-budget watchdog, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), began gathering reliable estimates. The current total is staggering: $58 billion—enough to pay for two complete Manhattan Projects.
Where does the money go? Tracking the black budget has always been a challenge. Constantly shifting project names that seem to be randomly generated by computers—Tractor Cage, Tractor Card, Tractor Dirt, Tractor Hike and Tractor Hip are all real examples—make linking dollar amounts to technologies impossible for outsiders. But there are clues.
According to Todd Harrison, an analyst at the CSBA, the allocations for classified operations in the 2011 federal budget include $19.4 billion for research and development across all four branches of the military (funding for the CIA, including its drone strikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is contained within the Defense Department black budget), another $16.9 billion for procurement, and $14.6 billion for “operations and maintenance.” This latter category, Harrison notes, has been expanding quickly. This may suggest that many classified technologies are now moving from the laboratory to the battlefield.
In fact, the rise in classified defense spending accompanies a fundamental change in American military strategy. After the attacks of September 11, the Pentagon began a shift away from its late Cold War–era “two-war strategy,” premised on maintaining the ability to conduct two major military operations simultaneously, and began to focus instead on irregular warfare against individuals and groups. That strategic shift most likely coincides with an investment shift, away from technology that enables large-scale, possibly nuclear, war against superpower states and toward technology that helps military planners hunt and kill individuals. Each branch of the military uses different language to describe this process. Pentagon officials have spoken openly about their desire to use advanced technology to “reduce sensor-to-shooter time” in situations involving “time-sensitive targets.” The head of U.S. Special Operations Command talks about “high-tech manhunting,” while Air Force officials describe plans to compress the “kill chain.”
Even inside the Pentagon, few people know the precise details of the black budget. But by combining what is known about Pentagon goals and what is known about the most recent advances in military technology, we can begin to sketch its general contours.
The first link in the kill chain: finding the person to hunt. Particularly in Afghanistan and Pakistan, this type of intelligence gathering is increasingly done using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). According to the New America Foundation, a nonprofit think tank, the U.S. conducted 45 drone strikes in Pakistan in the first six months of this year. The centrality of unmanned aircraft to such missions suggests that the black budget is almost certainly already funding next-generation drones.
In April 2009, a French magazine published a photograph of one recent product of that funding—a slender-winged aircraft that had previously been spotted in southern Afghanistan and that aerospace experts had begun calling the Beast of Kandahar. After another photograph surfaced, this one a clear shot of the craft on the runway in Kandahar, the Air Force issued a statement that finally gave the Beast a formal identity: the RQ-170 Sentinel.
Manufactured by Lockheed Martin, the RQ-170 is a tailless flying wing with the telltale shape and surface contours of a stealth aircraft. Black-plane watchers immediately noticed similarities between the RQ-170 and Lockheed’s unmanned Polecat aircraft, which UAV observers had long speculated was being developed in secret and which was finally made public at the Farnborough International Airshow in England in 2006. The Air Force says that the Sentinel is a reconnaissance drone, a claim supported by the aircraft’s lack of visible armaments, by the sensors that appear to be embedded in its wings, and by its “RQ” designation.
But much about the RQ-170 is puzzling. Why would the Air Force need a stealth aircraft in Afghanistan, a country with no radar defense system? It wouldn’t, according to those familiar with the drone. The RQ-170 was developed with a more sophisticated enemy, perhaps China, in mind. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be adapted for current conflicts, however. Unlike the relatively easy-to-spot Predator and Reaper drones, the RQ-170’s stealth could allow it to conduct missions that those aircraft cannot, such as clandestine tracking, or slipping unnoticed across Afghanistan’s border into Iran or Pakistan to spy on their nuclear programs.
Aircraft like the RQ-170, the Predator and the Reaper can get only so close to their targets, of course, which is why the Pentagon is developing micro-drones designed to investigate dangerous terrain undetected. In April the Washington Post reported that the CIA was using pizza-platter-size micro-drones to find insurgents in Pakistan. And the 2010 Pentagon budget contains a brief unclassified reference to Project Anubis, a micro-drone developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. The Air Force won’t talk about that specific vehicle, but a more general 2008 marketing video released by the lab did suggest that future micro-UAVs might be equipped with “incapacitating chemicals, combustible payloads, or even explosives for precision targeting capability.” The video depicts an explosives-laden drone dive-bombing and killing a sniper. Budget documents indicate that Project Anubis (named for the ancient Egyptian god of the dead) is now complete, which means a lethal micro-drone could already be in the field.

The Pentagon is forging the next link in the kill chain—following an individual—with at least one high-priority research program. The Clandestine Tagging, Tracking and Locating initiative (abbreviated both as CTTL and TTL), which was conceived in 2003, is slated to get about $210 million in unclassified funding between 2008 and 2013 and may receive more than that from the black budget. “The global war on terrorism cannot be won without a Manhattan Project–like TTL program,” was how officials from the Defense Science Board, a civilian committee that advises the Pentagon, described the situation in a 2004 presentation, adding that “cost is not the issue.”
In a 2007 briefing, Doug Richardson, an official working in the Special Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Exploitation program in Special Operations Command, said that the Pentagon wanted to use 14 different technologies for tagging and tracking targets such as people and vehicles. Tagging could involve marking targets with invisible biological paints or micromechanical sensors; tracking would mean monitoring those markers from a distance. Other schemes entailed capturing a person’s “thermal fingerprint” and then tracking him or her, perhaps from aircraft equipped with infrared sensors.More details can be found in proposals from companies and scientists seeking Pentagon contracts. One such proposal, from a University of Florida researcher, uses insect pheromones encoded with unique identifiers that could be tracked from miles away. Other plans employ biodegradable fluorescent “taggants” that can be scattered by UAVs. Voxtel, a private firm in Oregon, has already made available a product called NightMarks, a nanocrystal that can be seen through night-vision goggles and can be hidden in anything from glass cleaner to petroleum jelly.
Perhaps the most advanced tagging concept is “smart dust,” clouds of “motes,” tiny micro-electromechanical sensors that can attach themselves to people or vehicles. Thousands of these sensors would be scattered at a time to increase the chance of at least one of them reaching its target. Kris Pister, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon’s R&D branch, more than a decade ago to work on smart dust and was able to create sensors the size of rice grains. In the beginning, he now says, he and his colleagues imagined “smart burrs” that could attach to a target’s clothing as he or she brushed by, or “smart fleas” that could jump onto their targets. Pister says that this kind of autonomous microsensor is probably still not feasible. In 2001, however, his group succeeded in scattering more-primitive smart-dust motes from a small aerial drone and using them to track vehicles. A single UAV could easily carry thousands of tags, he says.

An alternative to the conventionally armed land-based ICBM is a hypersonic weapon, essentially a cruise missile capable of traveling at many times the speed of sound—faster than anything in today’s conventional arsenal. These missiles would not have to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and would have very different trajectories from ICBMs, so Russia would be less likely to mistake them for nuclear weapons.
The Pentagon has mentioned two non-ICBM candidates for Prompt Global Strike, one from the Army and one from Darpa. Both of these weapons would be boosted into the atmosphere by rockets and then glide back to Earth at hypersonic speeds. In addition to these official Prompt Global Strike options, the Pentagon is conducting at least three other hypersonic or near-hypersonic research efforts: the Air Force’s X-51 WaveRider, which used a scramjet engine to accelerate to Mach 6 in May; the Navy’s Revolutionary Approach to Time-Critical Long-Range Strike project, known as RATTLRS; and the Darpa-sponsored HyFly, a dual-combustion ramjet. (Ramjets and scramjets achieve rocket-like speeds without the heavy burden of liquid oxygen by mixing jet fuel with compressed air that enters the engine from the atmosphere.)
The proliferation of hypersonic research may mean that the Pentagon has faith in the technology. But it also makes black-budget watchers like John Pike, the director of the military information Web site GlobalSecurity.org, suspicious. Pike believes the military’s hypersonic programs may just be a cover for yet another black project. What kind, though, he has no idea.

Read it completely.It will give you an idea where the future warfare is headed.And most importantly these technologies might have been invented for irregular warfare but they can be used very effectively for regular warfare as well

darshhan · Post by **darshhan** » 17 Nov 2010 18:15

Article about advances in Nuclear material detection.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/ ... ction.aspx

On any given day, ships and trucks deliver cargo containers filled with tons of imported goods. Homeland security officials have long warned that terrorists may use them to smuggle nuclear materials into the United States.

Detecting radioactive substances at ports and border crossings has remained problematic for two reasons. First, most smuggled nuclear materials would not emit much energy in the first place. Picking up those signals is a fundamental physics problem, said Andrew Wiedlea, deputy branch chief of the Defense Threats Reduction Agency’s innovation and systems engineering office. Because of the low energy emissions, available portal technologies that attempt to detect them often have high false alarm rates. Moreover the systems cannot find heavily shielded nuclear materials and some detectors are simply too large to fit existing border inspection lanes.

To help solve the problem, military scientists are pursuing solid-state materials that may one day yield detectors that can accurately locate radioactive substances and also fit into devices small enough for troops to pin onto their collars.

There are several ways to detect radioactive materials. One method is to sense gamma rays, or high-energy photons emitted by nuclear compounds. When gamma rays collide with certain materials, such as plastic, they give off lower-energy photons of visible light. The photons can be converted into electrons to generate a measurable electrical pulse.

Another way to find nuclear reactive materials is by detecting the emission of neutrons, or the non-charged particles found in atoms. Uranium and plutonium — the two radioactive compounds used in modern nuclear weapons — emit neutrons through their natural decay process.

Conventional neutron detectors consist of metal tubes containing helium-3 gas. When a high voltage is applied to a fine wire running the length of the tube, any passing neutrons create a nuclear reaction with the helium-3 atoms. The atoms split into two particles, a proton and a triton. A triton consists of a single proton and two neutrons. Those particles zoom through the rest of the gas and collide with other helium-3 atoms. The collisions knock loose electrons, which are attracted to the tube or the wire depending on polarity and cause a sudden jump in the electrical current.

The problem with the existing gas-based detector technology lies in its unwieldy baseball bat-size and the decreasing supply of helium-3. Scientists are pursuing solid compounds, including boron nitride, to replace the gas.

“You get a lot more boron atoms per volume in this solid boron nitride than you get in the helium-3 atoms per unit volume in a tube,” said Wayne McGinnis, the scientist leading the research at the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego. The resulting solid-state device is much smaller than its tubular gas counterpart, but just as effective, he said.

One configuration of a commercially available helium-3 gas detector comes in a tube about 50 centimeters long with a 1.27-centimeter diameter. For the same sensitivity to neutrons, the solid-state detector would contain a 4-centimeter by 4-centimeter square film of boron nitride that is 100 microns thick. There are 1,000 microns in a millimeter.

“For the same neutron flux, you can have a much smaller detector yet still count the same number of neutrons coming in because of the high density” of boron atoms for nuclear reactions, said McGinnis.

The scientists sandwich a thin layer of the boron nitride between several electrodes. To generate an electric field to attract electrons that are freed up by the neutron reactions, only tens or hundreds of volts need to be applied, compared to thousands or more volts in the helium gas-based system.

One challenge in using boron nitride as a neutron detector is that the material itself has to be of high quality. Boron nitride often comes in polycrystalline form, where there are multiple tiny crystals all crunched together. With the naked eye, the material looks like white silt. But a closer inspection reveals grain boundaries that can trap freed electrons, which means one would not see a current pulse to indicate a nuclear reaction in the detector, explained McGinnis.

With a team of scientists at the University of Michigan, McGinnis is working to improve the material. Researchers are growing films in a hexagonal crystal structure and testing them in the neutron detector.

“The focus is on getting a high enough quality material grown so that it will work as a detector to see those current pulses,” said McGinnis. “As we do that, we will be testing the bench shop prototype detectors we’ve made with neutron sources that we have access to,” he said.

When scientists placed two of the detectors back to back, they could tell from which direction neutrons were emanating because the concentration of colliding particles was higher at the closer device.

vijyeta · Post by **vijyeta** » 17 Nov 2010 20:17

Austin wrote:Russian Special Forces: trials not everyone will endure

This is the most elaborate account on the spetsnaz I have ever come across. Some of the data and details provided are amazing.

http://militera.lib.ru/research/suvorov6/index.html

wig · Post by **wig** » 17 Nov 2010 20:50

an interesting article on : Moscow's Gray Weapons Market-Russian Intelligence Supports Dubious Arms Deals

In one case, a Pakistani living in Moscow and posing as a textile merchant reportedly arranged for the sale of helicopters and X-55 cruise missiles to Pakistan.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 08,00.html

Kartik · Post by **Kartik** » 18 Nov 2010 08:18

USAF F-22 crashed and the pilot has still not been located. Hope for his family's sake that he is safe.

article link

Austin · Post by **Austin** » 18 Nov 2010 08:29

^^ Oh thats bad news , hope the pilot is safe and in our prayers.

Bad news for F-22 as it is they are producing few aircraft , loosing one is not good.

wig · Post by **wig** » 20 Nov 2010 07:37

NATO leaders agreed on Friday evening to establish a missile defense shield that would cover all NATO member states, and on Saturday they expect Russia to agree to discuss the possibility of cooperating on the system’s development.
{/quote]
Turkey, which had seemed to present a potential sticking point, dropped its objections to a common missile defense system when it was satisfied that no country, particularly Iran, would be named as a principal threat. Turkey also wanted money to buy antimissile components.

The snag for the treaty clouds the broader efforts to “reset” relations with the Kremlin. Russian officials have said that they understand the domestic political situation, but that a failure to ratify the treaty would have some impact, at least, on the warmth of future relations.

The White House distributed remarks by Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, supporting ratification of the treaty. Mrs. Merkel said no one was so naïve as to believe immediately in a world without nuclear weapons

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/20/world ... ml?_r=1&hp

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 20 Nov 2010 12:46

idiot would believe it when the Russians told you their nuclear ICBM launch submarines have been scrapped.

They ARE in service. At least one. It recently launched a test ICBM right here off the California coastline. Didn't you see it in the news? The giant thing then came within 7 miles of coastline near Ventura, CA. before vanishing from sonar readings.