This has now gone into a total and utter farce. First there’s a competition, from which there’s a clear winner. This is what the USAF wants to have. The winner isn’t an American company, but will create and sustain more American jobs than choosing the American country. So Boeing sues on spurious grounds. Then the Government Accountability Office claws in and states they think the Air Force didn’t select properly. Now when the Air Force is expected to deliver its verdict (taking into account the GAO report), the DoD strips the Air Force of the ability to choose and the politicians will be in charge of deciding which hardware the military is going to have to go to war with. This sounds like a really very bad idea indeed. Of course with the contract valued at $35 billion, there’s understandably a whole host of politicians who want their grubby little hands on some of that action.

Lockheed’s Multiple Kill Vehicle-L space superiority platform promises to be the final word in the event of an intercontinental ballistic missile attack. Part of the U.S. Ballistic Missile Defense System, the MKV-L is designed to deal with the multitudinous targets an ICBM launch would provide, rather than take out a single warhead.

ICBMs can be tricky. They act as a far-reaching delivery system for a swarm of smaller warheads — some of which are dummies to confuse opposing countermeasures — that shower a broad area in booms, bangs, fire, and general badness.

The MKV-L would respond with a barrage of its own, firing a pathfinder seeker warhead that would keep track of the number of enemy projectiles and take no prisoners, eliminating every warhead, dummy and even the delivery vehicle. Now that the milestone of a calibrated pathfinder seeker has come and gone, Lockheed is setting its sights on the next step: running tests in a true flight environment in the next year or two, and getting the system online by 2017.

As a quick aside, Lockheed needs to work on its renderings. The odd assortment of bland space balls, cones and cans aren’t really inspiring a lot of confidence in me.

Official URL Link

A German inventor has developed a paint called AR 1 that can hide a vehicle from radar, and most importantly, “all militarily relevant frequencies.” How it works is unclear, though one test researcher proposes it’s either by reflecting radar waves in a pattern so they cancel one another out, or by utilizing microscopic magnets to absorb radar radiation.

Military: Camouflage Paint Hides Vehicles From Radar, Subsequent Missiles

We’ve been hearing rumblings about the U.S. Navy’s triple-hulled ships, but here’s one that was launched last month, the U.S.S Independence. Built by General Dynamics, it’s called a “littoral combat ship” (LCS), and the trimaran can move huge weapons around faster than any ship in the Navy. Ironic that with all that high tech built in, the ship reminds us of the Merrimac ironclad from Civil War days.

Littoral means close to shore, and that’s where these fleet-hulled babies will operate, tailor-made for launching helicopters and armored vehicles, sweeping mines and firing all manner of torpedoes, missiles and machine guns.

These ships were designed to be relatively inexpensive — this one’s a bargain at $208 million — and the navy plans to build 55 of them. This trimaran is the first of the new fire-breathing breed, ready to scoot out of dry dock at a rumored 60 knots. It’s like a speedy and heavily-armed aircraft carrier for helicopters.

The Department of Defense (DOD) relies on a global network of critical physical and cyber infrastructure to project, support, and sustain its forces and operations worldwide. The incapacitation, exploitation, or destruction of one or more of its assets would seriously damage DOD’s ability to carry out its core missions. To identify and help assure the availability of this mission-critical infrastructure, in August 2005, DOD established the Defense Critical Infrastructure Program (DCIP), assigning overall responsibility for the program to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs (ASD[HD&ASA]).

Full Document

You need green power offcourse to power your prison…. add extra wind power for torture center.

Official Google Map Site

Fusilier Damien Hields used his grenade machinegun to destroy seven Taliban positions before his ambushers realised he was their main threat. After peppering his vehicle with bullets, they hit the 24-year-old soldier. He had to be dragged off for treatment by his driver after he tried to continue fighting.

“Fusilier Hields showed extraordinary courage under intense fire,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Huw James, his commanding officer. “I was astonished at the state of his vehicle. There were so many holes in it, it was like a teabag. The Taliban did everything in their power to neutralise [him] and Fusilier Hields was having none of it. His actions allowed his patrol to come out of the ambush in which they were outnumbered by three or four to one and probably saved a lot of lives.”

British soldier awarded the Military Cross for fighting off 150 Taliban – Times Online

In a copy cat of the Chinese around a year ago, the US Navy has managed to shoot down a satellite at 130 miles altitude using a kinetic kill vehicle (ie a rocket with no explosive), hitting it in the fuel tank.

Of course China has not only proven that they can shoot them down, they can blind the US satellites too – so I’m wondering when the US is going to confirm they can do that too?

The EU has had it’s own battlegroups since 2003. These are battalion sized (500/600 people) ground forces allowing the EU to project it’s power without outside help and reinforce its position as an international actor.
Allthough this is a great step forward for EU independent operations, the battlegroups are far from perfect.
This report was released which goes into the pros and cons of the current EU battlegroup structure – as well as explaining it – in detail. PDF link.

I’ve covered a few of these pages before, but this one comes from the Daily Mail.

In principle, stealth cloaks are possible by using a camera on one side and a projector on the other. This story says it’s been done and demonstrated on a tank, and that they’re expecting to be able to do it without camera’s and projectors.

More invisible stuff around here

The UK MOD has an interesting page with publications about what it’s doing, how it wants to do things and how it sees the world.

A very interesting read is the DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme, which has the UK’s best ideas on what will happen globally between 2007-2036

4 times more explosive power than the US built MOAB, the Father / Dad Of All Bombs is around the same explosive power as a nuke, but no radiation fallout.

ABC

Guardian

The US is tackling the problem of jointness the right way. Jointness is used to describe operations in conjunction with another (or mulitple other) military arm(s) (such as Air Force coordinating with the Marines).
The US has set up a Joint Qualification System which offers points depending on joint actions each officer has had in the past, but can also gain by attending joint courses and excersises. Enough points result in a Joint Speciality Officer (JSO) designation.
From 2008 officers may not reach flag rank without a JSO.
In a way it’s crazy that interservice rivalry has been allowed to flourish so long and that armed forces have fought as such seperate units. Nowadays with communications being at the point they are there is no excuse for non-jointness in the armed forces.

Yes! A new way to destroy stuff! You send two sound waves and where they intersect the shock waves create a destructive cavitation field.

Here’s some more stuff on supercavitation, which says it works on the surface and in the air as well (from a comment in the original article)

This site has a huge amount of links and resources to all kinds of activities the USAF is involved in.

The UK MOD and Foreign Affairs has published it’s stance on Nuclear deterrent. Interestingly it shows that allthough the UK is the NPT signatory with the smallest arsenal, it’s ordanance is still considerable at 160 warheads and delivery systems. It has decreased in size by 50% since the Cold War and decreased effectiveness by 75%. The UK is the only NPT signatory to have reduced itself to a single delivery system (namely the submarine), forgoing land based silo’s, ship based launchers and air launched weapons.
The paper explores why the UK needs a nuclear deterrent, presents rebuttals to commonly voiced objections and the history of the UK nuclear deterrent rationale.
The option reccommended is to stick with submarines, but as the current Vanguard class is reaching the end of it’s service life in 2020 and is looking unscaleable, the proposed solution is to replace the class with an entirely new class of conventionally powered submarine.
The UK wants one submarine continuously on patrol. In a fleet of submarines, at least one is always in the shipyard for a period of three / four years for refit and repairs. This means the UK requires a fleet of three or four submarines to be able to maintain a continuous patrol of one.
Astoundingly, this tiny fleet will be the entirety of the UK nuclear deterrent.
(warning: PDF link)

Want to buy military surpluss? Why not directly from the UK Ministry of Defence?

The Pentagon has released it’s budget (yet again, stunningly huge!) on internet.

This link goes to the full summary of tables – for those who are interested in all the numbers for all the different elements that go into an armed forces.

There are some interesting thins in there, such as Iraq Freedom Fund, Defense for $50,000m and the $1,700,000m for the Iraq Security Forces Fund (with a similar amount going to Afghanistan). They are expecting to spend $165,343,662m on operations and maintenance and $101,678,734m on procurement. Huge numbers.

The rest of the gunk and pr stuff can be found here.

After the sonic ray gun, the US has released and tested its microwave ray gun, which makes people feel like they’re about to ignite at temperatures that can be selected by the operator. It can be carried around on a Humvee or mounted on guard towers.

Maybe the tin-foil hat brigade isn’t that wrong? Allthough they’d do well to stay away from tin-foil hats…

The UK are going to consolidate in St. Athan, Wales, and consolidating a wide variety of trainings from 27 different locations in to 1. Not only will that be a whole lot cheaper in terms of manpower required to run the academy and property expenses, but it will also mean that inter-services jointness could become a core cultural value in a large part of defence, which means a whole load more efficiency due to less unhealthy interservice rivalry and more understanding of the other branches.

Aviation Now has an interesting article on the USAF special projects, such as followups to the F-117A in the form of stealth cruise missles that also do recce.
Particularly interesting is the range of hacking projects the USAF has, such as Suter, which in the first guise can ‘see’ what targetted radars are seeing, and has grown to hack into the enemy computer networks and take control of them to manipulate the sensors. The latest version can

.

Shear Thickening Fluid has the property that when struck with force it turns into a rigid barrier. A while after impact it reverts to gel. As it’s light, it can be incorporated into clothing and make bullet proof vests lighter.

The US is going from biggest to even bigger and commissioning a new class of aircraft carrier, the CVN-21. This will displace around 102,000 tons – compared to the British Invincible (22,000t) and the future French carrier (75,000t), this is indeed massive.
The current US aircraft carriers are built around a basic design developed 50 years ago, and allthough there are to be no radical departures in hull design (unlike the new British designs which are a radical departure featuring trimaran hulls and hexagonal flight decks), the CVN-21 will feature quite a few innovations, such as an electromagnetic launch rail, allowing for much more free space and electricity, a repositioned island and plug and play electronics, as well as better armour around the munitions bays and a better protected and more modern command centre.
The plan is to have the first one off the line in 2014.
This site has a comprehensive run down of the new features and is kept updated.

Some seriously imaginative weaponry that doesn’t exist, such as the cock-rocket, galaxy bazooka, laser guided polar bear, squirrel exploder, squirrel imploder, squirrel unsploder, squirrel desploder, the ADD Gun, Whoop-ass of mass destruction, Atomic bong and sheep air strike.

This video is a collection of loads of small military pilot movies and pasted into a half hour movie with a sound track. Nicely edited, very well done that bloke.