U.S. Army Tests Secret Hypersonic Weapon

    Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV)-2  CREDIT:DARPA

The DARPA Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV)-2, one of several hypersonic test projects underway by various U.S. military agencies.

The U.S. Army's hypersonic weapon prototype streaked across the Pacific Ocean at several times the speed of sound Thursday, Nov. 17, in a flawless maiden test flight. The success could pave the way for a new military capability to strike targets anywhere on Earth in as little as an hour.

Such a hypersonic weapon concept flies at a relatively flat trajectory within the atmosphere, rather than soaring up toward space like a ballistic missile and eventually coming back down. Hypersonic speed is defined as being at least five times the speed of sound (3,805 mph, or 6,124 kph, at sea level).
An unmanned aircraft that can travel at a breakneck pace 20 times the speed of sound will take off Wednesday from an Air Force base in California for a test flight.

The Army's success Thursday was built upon lessons learned from two hypersonic test flights carried out by the Pentagon's research arm, called DARPA, in April 2010 and August 2011.
The Army's Advanced Hypersonic Weapon launched aboard a three-stage booster system from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai in Hawaii at 6:30 AM ET, deployed for its hypersonic glide, and eventually splashed down in the Reagan Test Site located near the Kwajalein Atoll.

Pentagon officials kept a careful watch on the flight test from space, air, sea and ground. That allowed them to collect data about aerodynamics, navigation, guidance, and control performance, as well as thermal protection technologies meant to shrug off intense heat during hypersonic flight.
Such success may provide some consolation to DARPA, given that its Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) experienced problems in its two test flights that led to early crashes. HTV-2 reached a speed of Mach 20 during its latest test in August.

The Air Force has also tested its own X-51A Waverider vehicle, most recently on June 13, as an experimental platform for an air-breathing scramjet engine. During the latest test, the X-51A Waverider reached hypersonic speeds of at least Mach 5 before it failed to switch over to its main fuel source.
Having several hypersonic projects resembles the early days of U.S. rocket and missile development, when the Army and Air Force competed to get their rockets off the ground. But any success in the hypersonic realm seems likely to benefit the U.S. military's unified goal for a "Conventional Prompt Global Strike" weapon designed to speedily attack targets around the world.
Copyright 2011 InnovationNewsDaily

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China military accepts heavier, tattooed recruits

China's military is accepting heavier recruits and will no longer reject people for sporting prominent tattoos as it steps up a drive to attract young, new entrants, state media said on Wednesday.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) – already 2.3 million-strong – is on a major charm offensive to attract recruits, particularly from a booming student population that has become more wealthy and fashionable.
As such, the army has relaxed some of the stringent standards governing health examinations for this year's winter army conscripts, according to a Beijing News report posted on the defence ministry's website.
It said that men sporting tattoos less than two centimetres (0.8 inches) in diameter on their faces or necks would now be allowed into the army.
The report added that male soldiers would be accepted if they weighed up to 25 per cent more than the "standard weight" compared to last year's 20 per cent.
According to Contemporary Medicine, a medical journal managed by China's health ministry, a person's standard weight in kilos is calculated by subtracting 110 from his or her height in centimetres.
The changes come as the PLA targets young people – and particularly educated graduates – to bring skills the army needs to modernise.
As the Chinese grow more and more affluent, their waistlines have also expanded with richer diets. Many of the nation's youth, meanwhile, have grown more fashion-conscious and trendy.
Highlighting its drive to attract qualified youth, the ministry has also decided to pay up to 6,000 yuan (£590) every year to university students who enrol in the army, to help them pay off their education, the report said.
The number of graduates in China has grown from 3.38 million in 2005 to 6.3 million in 2010, Colonel Jiang Jiping – in charge of recruitment in the PLA – told reporters in September.

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‘Son of Osprey’ to Replace All Army Copters

The V-22 Osprey tiltrotor flown by the Marines and Air Force crashes or burns much more often than the military cares to admit. But that hasn’t stopped Osprey-maker Boeing from pitching a new tiltrotor for an ambitious Army program aimed at replacing almost everything the ground combat branch flies … with a single aircraft design.
That’s potentially thousands of new tiltrotors, which take off vertically like helicopters but fly fast like airplanes, thanks to their rotating engine nacelles — but which are also vulnerable to dangerous aerodynamic phenomena and, in the V-22’s case, have been plagued by engine problems.
By continuing to invest in the V-22, the Pentagon is doubling down on a risky bet. If Boeing’s “son of Osprey” gets the greenlight for the comprehensive Joint Multi-Role program, the military will be going all in. But a lot could change between now and 2025, when the first of the new rotorcraft is (loosely) scheduled to enter service. And there’s reason to believe a new tiltrotor could avoid the pitfalls of the Osprey’s design.
Boeing showed off some preliminary artwork of their Joint Multi-Role tiltrotor at an Army confab in Washington, D.C., last week. The art shows a small, sleek scout version and a larger cargo model. “Those images are nothing more than artist concepts and not necessarily associated with a specific design philosophy,” Boeing spokesman Chris Haddox told Danger Room. “The work is just getting underway.”
All the same, the Boeing concept shows apparent improvements over the V-22. Specifically, simpler wings and better rotors.
To fit aboard the Navy assault ships that carry Marines into battle, the V-22 had to have a wing that could fold back along the fuselage — at the cost of extra weight and complexity. The Osprey’s rotors also had to be smaller than ideal for a 25-ton aircraft, forcing the engines to work harder and run hotter.
Over the years, engineers have proposed solutions to this problem. Farhan Gandhi, an engineer at Penn State University, proposed a telescoping rotor blade that would automatically increase in length during a tiltrotor’s helicopter mode, increasing its lifting ability. One retired V-22 engineer told analyst Lee Gaillard that replacing the V-22’s three-blade rotor with a new, five-blade model (.pdf) would boost performance. In the end, Boeing opted for tweaks to the V-22’s software to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the existing design.
Boeing’s conceptual future tiltrotor seems to avoid these half-measures by incorporating bigger rotors from the outset on the scout model, and twin rotors — that is, two sets of blades on each nacelle — for the cargo version. An Army tiltrotor could probably also skip the folding wing mechanism, as seems to be the case in the artist’s renderings. The result could be a safer, better-performing tiltrotor than the troubled V-22.
Photo credit: US Air Force

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Airships Set to Take Flight Once Again

Photo: Hybrid Air Vehicles

Every year millions of carefree people board cruise ships and never entertain a single thought about the sinking of the Titanic. Same goes for the millions of people everyday who travel and commute via plane, train or automobile. Unless you're severely phobic, chances are transportation disasters are the last thing on your mind as you embark.

So why then does the mere mention of the blimp and zeppelin industry initiate an echo-chamber where all we hear is "Oh the humanity!". Perhaps we should let bygones be bygones and stop fixating on the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, for the dawn of a new age of 'air vehicles' may soon be upon us.

British Company, Hybrid Air Vehicles, is leading the charge. They recently pulled down two major commercial deals, potentially indicating that the airship industry may once again be taking flight.

The company's modern airships are composed of semi-rigid lifting balloons, taking 40 percent of their lifting capacity from onboard engines that provide vectored thrust. Helium provides the remain 60 percent for liftoff.

Additionally, fan-equipped pontoons on the underbelly of the hull give the airship the ability to land on grass, concrete or water, without a ground crew.

Hybrid Air Vehicles most lucrative deal is a $517 million contract with Northrop Grumman to supply a Long-Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) to the U.S. Army for deployment in Afghanistan in 2012. The second deal is with Discovery Air Innovations, who has agreed to buy vehicles capable of lifting 50 tons and flying 115 miles per hour.

The military airships potentially would be used for surveillance and transport, while the Canadian contract intends use the air vehicles to deliver cargo in remote regions of the arctic North.

Hybrid Air Vehicles sees a bright future for their airships. The company seeks to tap the markets of mapping and geographic monitoring, humanitarian aid distribution, offshore drilling and luxury tourism.

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SC/Tanks test infra-red invisibility cloak

Adaptiv is based around hexagonal panels made of a thermo-electric material.

Tanks could soon get night time invisibility thanks to a cloaking device that masks their infra-red signature.

Developed by BAE Systems, the Adaptiv technology allows vehicles to mimic the temperature of their surroundings.

It can also make a tank look like other objects, such as a cow or car, when seen through heat-sensitive 'scopes.

Researchers are looking at ways to make it work with other wavelengths of light to confer true invisibility.

Hiding out

The hi-tech camouflage uses hexagonal panels or pixels made of a material that can change temperature very quickly. About 1,000 pixel panels, each of which is 14cm across, are needed to cover a small tank.

The panels are driven by on-board thermal cameras that constantly image the ambient temperature of the tank's surroundings. This is projected on to the panels to make it harder to spot. The cameras can also work when the tank is moving.

Its developers would not discuss exactly how the panels are heated and cooled.

Field trials of the thermal cloaking system showed that it made a tank resemble background scenery best from a distance of 300-400m.

BAE Systems has also produced a library containing the heat images of other objects, such as trucks, cars and large rocks, that can be projected on to the panels.

 The heat masking technology can make a tank look like a car to a heat 'scope

"Earlier attempts at similar cloaking devices have hit problems because of cost, excessive power requirements or because they were insufficiently robust," said Adaptiv project manager Pader Sjolund at BAE Systems in a statement.

By contrast, he explained, Adaptiv panels add to the armour on a fighting vehicle and consume relatively little power.

"We can resize the pixels to achieve stealth for different ranges," he added. "A warship or building, for instance, might not need close-up stealth, so could be fitted with larger panels."

BAE estimates that the technology could be ready to put into production in two years.
SOURCE: FOXNEWS

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