Engine slated for the F-35 Lightning aircraft completes high-altitude tests
Mar 26, 2008
The GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team has successfully completed a high-altitude afterburner testing program at the U.S. Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee, including common exhaust hardware for the F-35 Lightning II aircraft. ...
U.S. Navy gears up to replace its aging EP-3E turboprops
Mar 26, 2008
As first reported in C4ISR the U.S. Navy has approached U.S. defense contractors to design a new Signals Intelligence (SigInt) platform to replace the service's aging fleet of Lockheed Martin EP-3E Aries II turboprops. ...
Russia to begin taking delivery of SU-32/34 fighter aircraft
Mar 26, 2008
Russia's SU-27 Flanker has become both an export success and a design success, with its airframe based on America's "teen series fighters" such at the F-14, F15 and F16. ...
Synthesizer covers 700 to 8000 MHz
Mar 12, 2008
Hittite Microwave Corporation has announced a new synthesized signal generator for use in research and development laboratories and automated test and measurement environments. ...
Fiber-optic system identifies friend or foe
Mar 12, 2008
Researchers at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) have developed a technology that helps warfighters distinguish friendly forces from adversaries during combat exercises. ...
Unmanned aircraft stays aloft nine hours by a hybrid system
Mar 12, 2008
AeroVironment, has announced that it has flown its Puma small unmanned aircraft for over nine hours, powered by an on-board fuel cell battery hybrid energy storage system. ...
Navy and lawmakers differ greatly on nuclear-powered destroyers
Mar 12, 2008
A nuclear-powered version of the Arleigh Burke DDG 51-class destroyer may become the next missile cruiser for the U.S. Navy. That is the view of congressman Gene Taylor of Mississippi who chairs the seapower subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. ...
Winners of aerial refueling contract to invest $600 million in Alabama plant
Mar 12, 2008
Northrop Grumman and its European partner EADS, the winners of a U.S. Air Force tanker contract early this month, will invest $600 million in an Alabama plant where the planes will be assembled, according to Tom Enders, chief executive of Airbus. ...
2008 bookings for Paveway bomb system begin with Asian orders
Feb 27, 2008
Raytheon Company has been awarded more than $100 million worth of contracts in the first two months of 2008 by countries in the Asia-Pacific region for their Paveway family of airborne precision-guided bombs. ...
Britain and Italy to acquire MRAPs
Feb 27, 2008
Force Protection Industries, Inc., Ladson, S.C., has been awarded a $115 million contract modification under a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract to acquire 174 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles and associated test sets, spares and support services. ...
Saab secures 310-million-dollar Thailand deal for Gripen fighters
Feb 27, 2008
As a result of Thailand's decision to purchase an integrated air surveillance system from Sweden, the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) has placed an order with Saab valued at $310 million.
...
Energy efficient 0.3 V microchip
Feb 27, 2008
Researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments have unveiled a new chip design for portable electronics that can be up to ten times more energy-efficient than present technology. The design could lead to a variety of devices that will last far longer when running from a battery.
The innovative design was presented Feb. 5th at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco by Joyce Kwong, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Kwong carried out the project with a number of her MIT and TI colleagues. The team demonstrated the ultra-lowpower design techniques on TI's MSP430, a widely used microcontroller.
The key to the improvement in energy efficiency was to find ways of making the circuits on the chip work at a voltage level much lower than usual. While most current chips operate at approximately one volt, the new design works at just 0.3 volt. Reducing the operating voltage, however, is not as simple as it might sound because existing microchips have been optimized for many years to operate at higher standard voltages. Therefore memory and logic circuits have to be redesigned to operate at very low power-supply voltages.
One key to the new design, was to build a high-efficiency, DC-to-DC converter that reduces the voltage to the lower level — right on the same chip, thereby reducing the number of separate components. The redesigned memory and logic, along with the DC-to-DC converter, are integrated to realize a complete system-on-a-chip solution.
One of the biggest problems the team had to overcome was the variability that occurs in typical chip manufacturing. Because at lower voltage levels, variations and imperfections in the silicon chip become more problematic. Designing the chip to minimize its vulnerability to such variations was a huge part of the task.
So far the new chip is a proof of concept. Commercial applications could become available in five years, maybe even sooner.
The work was conducted at the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories and was funded, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
...
Power shirt harvests energy from the motion of the wearer
Feb 27, 2008
By Steve Grossman, Editor Nanotechnology researchers at Georgia Tech are developing a "power shirt" able to generate electricity to power small electronic devices for soldiers in the field, hikers and others whose physical motion could be harnessed and converted to electrical energy.
...
Making sure there is no confusion between nuclear-tipped and dummy warheads on B-52s
Feb 27, 2008
Much has already been written regarding the B-52 bomber that took off from an Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota in August with six nuclear-tipped AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles and then these missiles were transferred on a 1400-mile flight to the air force base in Barksdale, Louisiana. ...
