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Interesting engineering news and general interest to get you through the week.

Military and Defence

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Military and Defence
 We live in interesting times.  And it's unfortunate but the military play an important part in it.  Military and defense operations have been responsible for many innovations however that we take for granted in our lives.  Indeed the success of our military almost relies upon their being ahead of the game which drives them to constantly innovate.

Airless tire would be able to save lives in military combat

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ryan  
Washington: A company is designing and testing the installation of a prototype airless tire that can withstand extreme punishment, even those meted out in military combat zones.
The tire is being developed by Resilient Technologies, LLC, along with the UW (University of Wisconsin) - Madison Polymer Engineering Center and the US Department of Defense, to boost the security of vehicles in combat.
The research will aim to develop a non-pneumatic tire for use on heavy-grade military vehicles such as Humvees.
The project could literally be a lifesaver for the military.
For example, in many situations in Iraq, tires have proven to be weak links in Humvees that enemies target with improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.
Monday 30 June, 2008 12:14 PM
 

Aeronautics industry should wake up and capture national market, says ISRO chief

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Rose Shah  
Bangalore: With a projected demand of 1,000 new civilian aircraft in the next 10 years, both for long and short haul flights, it is time the Indian aeronautics industry “wakes up and captures the national market,” Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) G. Madhavan Nair said here on Thursday.

He was speaking at the inauguration of a two-day International Conference on Aerospace Science and Technology, organised by the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL).
Saturday 28 June, 2008 10:54 AM
 

Pentagon battles a brain drain

Clipped to the Drawing Board by John William  
In the past 10 years or so, as spending on new military projects has reached its highest level since the Reagan years, the Pentagon has increasingly been losing the people most skilled at managing those projects.
When Paul Kaminski completed his graduate work in 1971 with degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, he started building advanced airplanes for the Air Force. By the time he stopped several decades later, he had played a pivotal role in producing a flock of new weapons, including radar-evading stealth aircraft.
Saturday 28 June, 2008 04:58 AM
 

Thales aims to double Indian business in five years

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ali Hamoud  
French defence and electronics major Thales hopes to double its India business from 250 million to 500 million euros in the next five years with increased sales in the military and civilian sectors.

"We have a long involvement with India and hope to increase our sales to double in next five years both in defence and civilian areas," Francois Dupont, Thales Managing Director & Country Corporate Director, told a group of visiting Indian journalists.
Monday 23 June, 2008 03:27 PM
 

Britain's deadly business

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator  
Britain won a dubious new accolade this week: it became the world's number one arms exporter . Not that the government had any regrets: the trade minister Digby Jones greeted it as "outstanding" and promised: "I look forward to working with the defence sector in future."
Monday 23 June, 2008 11:29 AM
 

Allegheny Technologies Unveils New Specialty Armor Steel for U.S. and International Defense Markets

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ali Hamoud  
The first new, high-hard steel armor developed in America since the Vietnam conflict was introduced to the defense market today by Allegheny Technologies Incorporated . It offers a modern means of protection – backed by unsurpassed manufacturing capabilities – at a time of critical demand for land, sea and airborne systems.
Sunday 22 June, 2008 10:11 AM
 

Huntingdon engineering firm aids NATO counter-terror fight

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator  
One of the world’s leading defence companies has begun to push a unique decontamination technology designed as a chemical and biological attack countermeasure by a Huntingdon-based materials processing innovator across NATO’s European member states.

EADS, owner of aircraft manufacturer Airbus and space leader Astrium, has signed an initial two year licensing agreement with Pursuit Dynamics for its patented PDX Basilisk application, a contract EADS is keen to extend both in terms of time scale and geographic footprint.
Thursday 19 June, 2008 08:11 PM
 

Are alien invasions on the cards?

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator  
The search for living beings in far-off galaxies has kept mankind occupied for centuries. There have been sightings of UFOs in the past and similar incidents are reported from time to time. The question is - are alien invasions really on the cards?.
THE GOVERNMENT of Romania has released video recordings of the sightings of unidentified flying object (UFOs) by pilots of a MiG-21 Lancer aircraft on October 30, 2007. This was shown on a TV channel and a search of the Internet revealed news items that lend credence to the information
Tuesday 17 June, 2008 04:38 AM
 

'Do-it-yourself drones' create buzz at S.D. convention

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator  
The unmanned Predator aircraft developed in San Diego during the mid-1990s has become a workhorse surveillance plane for U.S. military forces in Iraq, as well as a robotic hunter-killer.
Friday 13 June, 2008 06:57 PM
 

Getting robots of war to act more naturally

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Sean  
The next generation of military robots won't just be humanoids like the Terminator.

The robots of the future will likely work in concert, like a swarm of ants. Others may creep like spiders or hover like hummingbirds, if the work at the University of Pennsylvania is an indication.

Most of the more than 5,000 robotic devices now in Iraq are remote-controlled, sniffing out explosives or performing other jobs with constant human instructions
Friday 13 June, 2008 04:41 PM
 

New infrared imager may provide for perfect night vision

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Yan Chu  
Washington : Scientists at the Center for Quantum Devices (CQD) in the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University have invented a high-performance infrared imager that looks at wavelengths 20 times longer than visible light.

The researchers revealed that their imager was based on a Type II superlattice.

Lead researcher Manijeh Razeghi, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said that the new technology could revolutionise the detection of terrorist activitieslike use in night vision, target identification, and missile tracking.
Tuesday 3 June, 2008 02:24 PM
 

Paradise Lost, Paradise Not Regained

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Dave Ellery  
Two of Bulgaria's Deputy Ministers (of Economy and Defense) announced during the Hemus 2008 International Defense Expo that the country's military industry had already regained its positions on the global arms market that it had some 20 years ago.

These were rather bold statements. Not only because according to their data, in 2007 Bulgaria's arms exports amounted to EUR 180 M, whereas in the 1980s they were USD 900 M per year and even reached the record USD 1,5 B towards the end of the decade.
Saturday 31 May, 2008 10:05 PM
 

Strife on Mars: New designs on the Red Planet

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Adam Crighton  
Somewhere out there , halfway between the third and fourth planets from the Sun, lies a fabulous creature that devours robots. Invisible to everything but the imagination, the existence of this monster has been inferred rather than confirmed. It's a myth, of course, but even in the scientific community, a myth can stem from fact. And the fact in this instance is that more than half of the spacecraft sent to Mars have failed, and nobody knows why.
Wednesday 21 May, 2008 06:41 PM
 

Northrop Grumman wins UAS contract from U.S. Navy

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator  
The U.S. Navy has awarded Northrop Grumman Corp. (Los Angeles, Calif.) an 89-month, $1.16 billion contract for System Development and Demonstration (SDD) of the service’s new Broad Area Maritime Surveillance Unmanned Aircraft System (BAMS UAS) program. The BAMS UAS will provide the U.S. Navy with a persistent maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) system to protect the fleet and provide a capability to detect, track, classify, and identify maritime and littoral targets.

“We are honored that the Navy selected our team to provide this critical advanced capability to help fulfill its mission to protect our warfighters, our nation and its allies from maritime threats,” said Ronald D. Sugar, Northrop Grumman chairman and CEO. “We believe our approach, based on the proven capabilities of the Global Hawk, delivers the best value to the Navy and the American taxpayer, further supporting the National Maritime Strategy and the Global War on Terrorism.”
....click the link to read more
Friday 9 May, 2008 06:03 AM
 

Cell Based Sensors Detect Dangers Like Explosives and Biohazards

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ali Hamoud  
A small, unmanned vehicle makes its way down the road ahead of a military convoy. Suddenly it stops and relays a warning to the convoy commander. The presence of a deadly improvised explosive device, or IED, has been detected by sophisticated new sensor technology incorporating living olfactory cells on microchips mounted on the unmanned vehicle. The IED is safely dismantled and lives are saved.
....click the link to read more
Thursday 8 May, 2008 02:38 AM
 

Engineering supremacy

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Dave Ellery  
BUILT 170 years ago for the construction and repair of warships, it was once the largest building of its kind in Europe.

Now, after being closed to the public for more than 20 years, the No. 3 covered slip at the Historic Dockyard, Chatham, is open once more. Renamed The Big Store, it houses a unique collection of heavyweight naval and military hardware.

The collection has been brought together in a joint operation between the Historic Dockyard Trust and the Royal Engineers' Museum.
....click the link to read more
Sunday 4 May, 2008 02:07 PM
 

Laser Weapons Gain Momentum

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Rose Shah  
A U.S. Defense Science Board report on directed-energy weapons in late 2007 states: “Directed energy suffers from a history of overly optimistic expectations.” This may be the understatement of the century.
The report cites canceled or delayed programs, and notes that the biggest U.S. directed-energy (DE) program—the Airborne Laser (ABL), which alone consumes more than half the Pentagon’s DE budget—was little or no closer to its crucial operational test than when the board last reported on DE in 2001.
....click the link to read more
Thursday 1 May, 2008 10:25 AM
 

Battle lines in the final frontier

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Adam Crighton  
An arms race in space could prove catastrophic, and has the potential to throw our societies back into the 1950s, writes Tom Allard.
The Space Age began with the launch of Sputnik 1 into orbit and an outbreak of terror in the US.

It was the height of the Cold War, October 1957, a time of Joseph McCarthy's communist witch-hunts, "duck and cover" nuclear drills and Hollywood's obsession with fantastical sci-fi flicks.

Then came the shock of the Soviet Union's satellite launch.
....click the link to read more
Wednesday 30 April, 2008 06:31 PM
 

One-Stop Defense Shopping

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Yan Chu  
The Government Accountability Office reported last month on how things are going with nearly 100 major U.S. defense systems. Not well, it seems. They have exceeded their original budgets and are, on average, almost two years behind schedule.

The GAO report lays bare a festering problem in our nation's military procurement system: Competition barely exists in the defense industry and is growing weaker by the day.

It was a different story just two decades ago. In the 1980s, 20 or more prime contractors competed for most defense contracts. Today, the Pentagon relies primarily on six main contractors to build our nation's aircraft, missiles, ships and other weapons systems.
....click the link to read more
Tuesday 29 April, 2008 02:39 AM
 

Defense Could Object to Apple's P.A. Semi Purchase

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Administrator  
Apple, Inc.'s plan to acquire chipmaker P.A. Semi could run into opposition from the Department of Defense, since P.A. Semi's PWRficient chips are widely used by the armed services. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said Apple wants P.A. Semi's talent, not its products, so the question is whether P.A. Semi will be able to continue supplying its customers.
Apple's planned acquisition of chip-design firm P.A. Semi may run into trouble from an unlikely source -- the Department of Defense.
Monday 28 April, 2008 08:05 AM
 

Defence shipyards: Designing for the world

Clipped to the Drawing Board by Ali Hamoud  
For decades, India’s three defence shipyards combined the inefficiency of the public sector with the indecisiveness of the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
 
In Marxist Kolkata, Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE) also blended in militant trade unionism to ensure that the warships it was asked to build were invariably delayed.
 
That’s history. Today, with the MoD loosening its hold over its shipyards, GRSE buzzes with engineering, a capitalist energy never seen before in the 124-year history of that shipyard.
 
Business Standard has learned that GRSE is at an advanced stage of negotiations with French shipbuilding giant, DCNS (Direction des Constructions Navales Services), for jointly setting up a cutting edge design centre for warships and merchant ships. This will target both the Indian and the global markets.
....click this link to read more
Thursday 24 April, 2008 02:06 PM
 
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