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Army Launches Examination of Armor Testing

fuller-armor

If the ser­vice thought they’d buried the issue of armor test­ing, they for­got to ask their new Secretary.

ArmySec John McHugh announced today he had enlisted the ser­vices of the National Research Council to exam­ine the service’s armor test­ing pro­ce­dures and com­pli­ance pro­to­cols in light of a recent GAO report call­ing into ques­tion the Army’s adher­ence to QA standards.

Secretary of the Army John McHugh announced today that the National Research Council (NRC) will per­form an inde­pen­dent assess­ment of the Army’s body armor test­ing, fol­low­ing last month’s rec­om­men­da­tion by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for an inde­pen­dent review. The NRC func­tions under the aus­pices of the National Academies, a pri­vate, non­profit insti­tu­tion that pro­vides sci­ence, tech­nol­ogy, and health pol­icy advice to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and the pub­lic on crit­i­cal national issues.

Under an agree­ment between the National Academies and the direc­tor of oper­a­tional test and eval­u­a­tion (DOT&E), the Department of Defense’s final inde­pen­dent author­ity on sur­viv­abil­ity test­ing of body armor, the NRC will per­form an inde­pen­dent assess­ment of ongo­ing body armor testing. The pur­pose of the NRC assess­ment is to ensure that the Army main­tains the high­est stan­dards for test­ing processes and pro­to­cols, thus address­ing con­cerns raised by the GAO about cur­rent test­ing procedures.

On the face of it, this is a good thing. As bal­lis­tics experts will tell you, there’s still some voodoo in the bal­lis­tic test­ing sci­ence and one more set of eye­balls on the prob­lem wouldn’t hurt. Maybe at the end of this saga the Pentagon can adopt one stan­dard test­ing pro­to­col for all mil­i­tary body armor and the notional threats to it so there’ll be a bit more con­fi­dence in the results and less objectivity.

Walkoff ques­tion: Will they open the flex­i­ble armor test­ing stan­dards and pro­ce­dures can of worms?

– Christian

November 20th, 2009 | Body Armor Blues | 5 Comments »

New Camo Pattern on the Block

atacs-soldier

As if we didn’t already have enough to con­sider with Marpat, UCP, UCP-​​D, MultiCam and Desert Brush, in comes another pat­tern mak­ing inroads in the mil­gear blogosphere.

I’ve been trolling over at our friends Soldier Systems’ site over the past cou­ple days, and the edi­tor over there is obsessed with the devel­op­ment of this new pat­tern. Not one day after I scoped his post, our part­ners at Tactical-​​Life for­warded me an arti­cle (that looked more like a press release to me) unveil­ing the new, multi-​​environment pattern.

Companies par­tic­i­pat­ing in this unprece­dented launch include Remington, Bushmaster, DPMS Panther Arms, Danner, EOTAC, Tactical Assault Gear, Blue Force Gear and Emerson Knives.

The the so-​​called A-​​TACS pat­tern departs from today’s “pixel” obses­sion and goes more along the blended lines, mak­ing it easy to slip between envi­ron­ments and still con­ceal movement. 

Many who have seen the pat­tern com­ment on how it is unlike any cam­ou­flage pat­tern they have encoun­tered as its chameleon-​​like qual­i­ties cause it to blend into the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment. This unique “pat­tern within a pat­tern” con­cept allows it to break up the out­line of the human body rely­ing on a palette of inter-​​mingled nat­ural col­ors over a neu­tral tan base for use in open, rocky, or arid environments.

atacs-pattern

And here’s the conglomerate’s expla­na­tion for their design:

Many of the mod­ern dig­i­tal cam­ou­flage pat­terns cur­rently in use by the tac­ti­cal com­mu­nity have flaws. The square pix­els used to cre­ate the dis­tor­tion effect do not repli­cate the shapes, forms and shad­ows of the envi­ron­ment they are deployed in-​​especially when viewed through optics. The ninety-​​degree angles and lim­ited use of nat­ural col­ors can in many cases, make detec­tion easier.

Additionally, the “visual noise” in these same pat­terns tends to make them close-​​up into a solid color, pro­duc­ing a “blob­bing” effect when viewed from a dis­tance. A-​​TACS addresses and improves these crit­i­cal issues in three ways.

1. — Replace un-​​natural square pix­els with organic pix­els. Utilizing our patented process, we cre­ated a palette of nat­ural col­ors dig­i­tally sam­pled from real-​​world ele­ments in care­fully con­trolled light­ing. The pat­tern is then cre­ated using a math­e­mat­i­cal algo­rithm that writes “organically-​​shaped” pix­els using the spe­cific color infor­ma­tion given. The result­ing pat­tern while still dig­i­tal, is far more organic in appearance.

2. — Use small pat­terns to cre­ate larger more dis­tinct shapes designed to work at a dis­tance. Small shapes cre­ate larger shapes and larger shapes are orga­nized into a dis­tinct pat­tern with no hor­i­zon­tal or ver­ti­cal ori­en­ta­tion. This unique “pat­tern within a pat­tern” con­cept allows A-​​TACS® to effec­tively break the human out­line at great dis­tances thereby, min­i­miz­ing the “blob­bing” effect of other pat­terns when viewed from a distance.

3. — More effec­tive use of color-​​range pro­duces a bet­ter con­ceal­ment sys­tem. A-​​TACS® is cre­ated using a far greater range of inter-​​mingled nat­ural col­ors than was pre­vi­ously pos­si­ble. The over­all base color for the cast is a neu­tral tan which is designed for use in open, rocky or arid environments.

Furthermore, the abstract and intri­cate nature of this pat­tern gives it a unique “fingerprint”which is not only adapt­able to var­i­ous ser­vice branches, but also makes it dif­fi­cult to copy.

I dunno, another desert/​urban pat­tern? Aren’t we debat­ing the flaws of the UCP because of the forested envi­ron­ments of Afghanistan? Doesn’t this one look as if it would stick out on a green background?

On the other hand, it’s inter­est­ing to see some­one make a play against the ever-​​popular MultiCam and to tin­ker with the sci­ence of con­ceal­ment. Let’s not for­get, the Army is in the midst of a com­pre­hen­sive look at its cam­ou­flage effec­tive­ness and A-​​TACS is surely poised to play a role in push­ing the argu­ment and science.

– Christian

November 20th, 2009 | Cammo Green, Door Kickers | 37 Comments »

BAE to Market Mantis UAV to North America

This arti­cle first appeared in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

Manufacturer BAE Systems is for­mu­lat­ing its mar­ket­ing of the Mantis medium-​​altitude long-​​endurance UAV demon­stra­tor air vehi­cle in the U.S., fol­low­ing the recent kick­off of test flights of the U.K. version.

Mark Brown, BAE Systems vice pres­i­dent of unmanned aer­ial sys­tems, is posi­tion­ing the Mantis as a next-​​generation UAV. “When we talk about Mantis specif­i­cally, you’re talk­ing about a theater/​strategic plat­form that has the abil­ity to sat­isfy intel­li­gence, recon­nais­sance and sur­veil­lance require­ments and also be a weapons car­rier,” Brown said.

Mantis is the largest autonomous vehi­cle ever built in the U.K., with a wingspan of 65.6 feet. Were BAE to build the Mantis for a U.S. mar­ket, a sec­ond, sep­a­rate pro­duc­tion line would be launched. Whether that line were based in the U.S. or in the U.K. is “an open ques­tion,” Brown said. The com­pany is also open to part­ner­ing with another defense con­trac­tor, but “no deci­sions” have been made, he added. As to when the Mantis will make its North American debut, BAE’s U.K. liai­son offi­cer Matt Pearson would say only, “it’s cer­tainly worth think­ing about.”

Brown said Mantis is flex­i­ble. “We built this air­craft with manned stan­dards in mind,” he said, not­ing the UAV was designed just like any other manned air­craft, from the twin engines to the logis­tics plan. “It gets us where we want to be — fully cer­ti­fied in any air­space,” Pearson said.

Read the rest of this story, see how much the expanded Afghan army’s going to cost and con­sider how close China is to stealth tech­nol­ogy from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military​.com.

– Christian

November 20th, 2009 | Av Week Extra | 5 Comments »

Pinnacle’s New Armor

world-war-1-armor

Not really…but got you to look, right?

My col­league Bryant Jordan ran across this photo and passed it along to Defense Tech just to show how very far we’ve come with bal­lis­tic protection.

According to a cap­tion from the archival sec­tion at Corbis, these gar­cons are French sol­diers of the Army Ordnance Department show­ing off the test arti­cles of their WW I-​​era body armor.

I can’t even see what this is made of, but it sure looks like cold rolled steel and leather. I’m dig­ging the groin pro­tec­tor and the jaunty dude on the right with a 45 hole right in his junk.

Also, what gives on the 1984-​​esque eye shades built into the helmet?

I went on The Google for this one and came up empty. But I did run across a FAS entry that ref­er­ences the US Army’s exper­i­men­ta­tion with body armor. It was called the Brewster Body Shield (sure beats “Interceptor”) and looked more like a bad 1950s B movie robot cos­tume than a com­bat ready bal­lis­tic outfit.

brewster-body-shield

But it could stop bullets…

The Brewster Body Shield, was made of chrome nickel steel, weighed 40 pounds, and con­sisted of a breast­plate and a head­piece. This armor would with­stand Lewis machine­gun bul­lets at 2,700 f.p.s. but was unduly clumsy and heavy.

I’ll say. Makes Dragon Skin look pos­i­tively feath­er­weight by com­par­i­son (I’m just pulling your leg Murray).

It’s inter­est­ing to see how body armor tech­nol­ogy has evolved, and no doubt we still have a long way to go. But pic­tures like this offer a glimpse of what was state of the are nearly 100 years ago.

– Christian

November 19th, 2009 | Body Armor Blues | 18 Comments »

Zapping Drones from a Truck

laser-matrix

It took more than six months, but the Air Force coughed up some details yes­ter­day on a laser pro­gram it’s devel­op­ing to plink drones and other fly­ing objects from the sky.

Out at China Lake in May, a joint team spon­sored by the Air Force Research Lab that included the engi­neers from the Naval Air Warfare Center fired a 2 Kilowatt class laser at a series of five UAVs, track­ing them and shoot­ing them down  “at long ranges and using rel­a­tively low laser power,” accord­ing to a release from the laser maker Boeing. The so-​​called Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXper­i­ments beam rides on a trailer and is teth­ered to a fire con­trol radar that helps it zero in on the drone and track the intruder before zap­ping it with laser precision.

The Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated eXper­i­ments (MATRIX), which was devel­oped by Boeing under con­tract to the Air Force Research Laboratory, used a sin­gle, high-​​brightness laser beam to shoot down five UAVs at var­i­ous ranges. Laser Avenger, a Boeing-​​funded ini­tia­tive, also shot down a UAV. 

During the same test, the AFRL fired their Laser Avenger pro­to­type at another drone, down­ing it and giv­ing the engi­neers a chance to blast the 25 mike-​​mike the Avenger wields as a “hybrid directed energy/​kinetic energy” air defense system.

We’re still look­ing to get more infor­ma­tion on how high these lasers were able to deal their lethal energy. But this, com­bined with other news com­ing out about directed energy weapons qui­etly mak­ing strides, goes to show that lasers may be a lethal addi­tion to mod­ern plat­forms sooner than we think.

– Christian

November 19th, 2009 | Drones, Uncategorized | 52 Comments »

Northrop Invests Own Money In Fire Scout

This arti­cle first appeared in Aviation Week & Space Technology.

Rather than wait­ing for the U.S. Army to flight-​​test the Fire Scout vertical-​​takeoff unmanned aer­ial vehi­cle (VTUAV), Northrop Grumman is invest­ing heav­ily in a test pro­gram of its own. The company’s impa­tience may well pay off — when the Army finally makes a deci­sion about air vehi­cles for its new Brigade Combat Team Modernization (BCTM) pro­gram, Fire Scout will be ready to go.

The dis­so­lu­tion of the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) and can­cel­la­tion of the manned ground vehi­cle com­po­nent has forced the Army to re-​​examine its require­ments as it moves for­ward with the BCTM. In the case of the UAV piece of the mod­ern­iza­tion plan, the Army will field its Class I UAV (a small VTUAV weigh­ing 50 lb.) in Fiscal 2011 and 2012. The next VTUAV to come online as part of the BCTM is a Class IV UAV — in this case, Fire Scout. The Army selected Fire Scout for the FCS in 2003, but brigade com­bat teams are not sched­uled to field the air­craft until 2014, accord­ing to cur­rent requirements.

The Navy, on the other hand, is already fly­ing its MQ-​​8B Fire Scout from the USS McInerney on coun­ternar­cotics mis­sions in the Caribbean. The ser­vice con­tracted with Northrop Grumman in 2004 to cre­ate a Fire Scout vari­ant to use on the Littoral Combat Ship. The air­craft has exe­cuted 600 hr. of flight test­ing and 110 take­offs and land­ings from the McInerney.

Subsequently, Northrop Grumman is not wait­ing for the Army to make its move. On Oct. 6, the com­pany announced that its corporate-​​owned Fire Scout, dubbed White Tail, flew under the com­mand and con­trol of a new company-​​developed Stanag 4586-​​compatible ground con­trol sta­tion (GCS). Stanag 4586 is the NATO inter­op­er­abil­ity stan­dard for unmanned air­craft. The com­pany flew the White Tail in late September at Yuma Proving Ground, Ariz., pro­mot­ing the flights as hav­ing demon­strated the func­tion­al­ity of its own GCS. Future demon­stra­tion flights will also use the company’s GCS, includ­ing ongo­ing flights at Yuma in prepa­ra­tion for the Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiment at Ft. Benning, Ga., early next year.

But the GCS is just one piece of Northrop Grumman’s multi-​​pronged invest­ment strat­egy. Joe Emerson, the company’s Fire Scout Army pro­gram man­ager, says Northrop Grumman is part­ner­ing with plat­form man­u­fac­turer Schweitzer on invest­ing in a new rotor. Adding pay­loads adds weight, and the “fastest fix is to change out rotor blades. It’s the first area we’re look­ing at,” says Emerson.

Read the rest of this story, check out DARPA’s bomber­bel­ly­laser­plan, find out why it’s hard to get the Afghan army its bul­lets and see who’s to blame for bad pro­gram man­age­ment from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military​.com.

– Christian

November 18th, 2009 | Av Week Extra | 15 Comments »

IMINT: French Fashion Mavens Model MultiCam

french-multicam

Or is it?

This guy’s clearly wear­ing MultiCam and has all the high-​​speed iden­ti­fiers that a US trooper would wear. I can’t seem to find a high-​​rez ver­sion of this photo, which itself is a mys­tery, but given the story that sur­rounds the photo and con­text of that area of Afghanistan, I’m lean­ing heav­ily toward an adop­tion by at least some groups of French mil­i­tary (their ver­sion of the PJs) of MulitCam uniforms.

In this photo released by the French Army, Nato French sol­diers evac­u­ate wounded from Tagab, Afghanistan, Monday Nov. 16, 2009. Insurgents fired two rock­ets Monday into a crowded mar­ket north­east of Kabul where the head of French forces in Afghanistan held a meet­ing with tribal elders. The attack killed at least twelve and wounded 20 other peo­ple, the French mil­i­tary said. (AP /​ HO /​ ADC Jean-​​Charles Thorel)

The only thing that makes me pause, is that I reported a while back that USAF PJs were wear­ing MultiCam com­bat uni­forms in the AO. This guy could be a PJ but I can’t see enough of the helo and am skep­ti­cal that an AF bubba would be sport­ing Rock Star hair and a hill­billy beard. Wouldn’t look too good with the rest of his pals at the Bagram Links.

So help me with this dear readers…who is this guy?

– Christian

November 18th, 2009 | Afghan Update, Commandos, Door Kickers | 55 Comments »

VTOL JSF Arrives at Pax River

BF-1-at-PAX

The first pro­duc­tion model F-​​35B arrived in the ‘hood last Sunday.  BF-​​1 will begin the JSF’s devel­op­men­tal test pro­gram in the next few weeks, includ­ing ver­ti­cal take­offs and land­ings.  Meanwhile DoD reports show the pro­gram is behind sched­ule and over bud­get – not a good place to be these days (just ask the F-​​22 or Presidential Helo guys).  And adding to the bad press is a report from the UK Register that says both the V-​​22 and JSF have a prob­lem with melt­ing flight decks at sea.  (Surprise … er, I mean, “No comment.”)

So enjoy this happy snap.  We’re try­ing to get over to Pax to get some more before manned flight goes away alto­gether, which may be sooner than planned if the acqui­si­tion pro­fes­sion­als don’t get their acts together.

(Gouge — NC)

– Ward

November 17th, 2009 | Fast Movers | 68 Comments »

Super Cavitation and the Truth

super-cavitation

Yesterday we received a call on our new Tip Line won­der­ing if the Russians and US were work­ing on sub­ma­rine tech­nolo­gies that cre­ate an air bub­ble in front of the sub that allows it to travel 3x the nor­mal speed.

Here’s what our read­ers asked:

This is more of a “Is it true” tip?? Someone told me just last night that the Russian Navy & the US Navy are sep­a­rat­ley work­ing on “an air bub­ble in front of a ship (sub) can make it travel 3 times its nor­mal speed & that it was already tested on a tor­pedo & it moved as fast as 300 mph under water. Is there any truth to this story?? I am not beleiv­ing any­one or any story unless I see it posted here or on mil​i​tary​.com. Can you let me what if any­thing you’ve heard about this. Thanks…

I don’t know much about subs, but I do know guys that do. So I sent this query on to our friend Joe Buff who had this reply (be sure to read his ear­lier post on DT regard­ing this sub­ject):

Sounds like super­cav­i­ta­tion. USSR/​Russia has had super­cav­i­tat­ing rocket tor­pe­does since the Cold War. USN also devel­oped a good one pro­to­type but decided not to deploy, pre­fer­ring the mark 48 ADCAP tor­pedo. USN right now doing good work w. GDEB on “Underwater Express”, a 100-​​knot manned min­isub which would give a “really quick and sonar-​​deafening get­away vehi­cle” for SEALs near the beach/​surf zone.

The process uses rocket propul­sion to get the under­wa­ter hull/​vehicle going fast enough to cre­ate a partial-​​vacuum bub­ble around itself, elim­i­nat­ing water flow resis­tance against hull (but not the need to push water around and away from the bow/​tip). Rocket engine burn­ing fuel pro­vides thrust allow­ing very high speed (200 to 300 knots for a sharp-​​tipped tor­pedo) not pos­si­ble using a tra­di­tional rotat­ing water screw (as in Ohio class) or pump-​​jet tur­bine (as in Virginia class).

I’ve not heard of this being applied to sur­face ships, where I think it would not work, and where air cush­ion, hydroplan­ing, or wing-​​in-​​ground-​​effect would give high speed much more prac­ti­cally. There are sep­a­rately though things like “Prairie Masker” which emit bub­bles (engine exhaust I think, not “air”) to iso­late hull noises from the sea to pro­vide acoustic stealth for the ship against enemy subs & sonars.

Well, there you have it. Hope this answers the mail and please keep the tips coming…

– Christian (with Joe Buff)

November 17th, 2009 | Bubbleheads, etc. | 33 Comments »

Mantis Begins Search For Prey

This arti­cle first appeared in AviationWeek​.com.

The U.K.‘s Mantis medium-​​altitude long-​​endurance unmanned aer­ial vehi­cle (UAV) demon­stra­tor has com­pleted a series of test flights using the range at Woomera in Australia. The first flight was made Oct. 21, but was only revealed today. Several mission-​​representative tri­als have since been car­ried out, mark­ing the cul­mi­na­tion of phase one of the Mantis pro­gram, which has now been concluded.

The BAE Systems-​​led pro­gram is being jointly funded by the Defense Ministry and indus­try and is aimed at address­ing both poten­tial British and export require­ments for a UAV in this class. Phase Two of the pro­gram has yet to be agreed between the indus­try part­ners and the min­istry, with dis­cus­sions ongo­ing exam­in­ing a vari­ety of fund­ing mech­a­nisms to sup­port the next stage of the incre­men­tal devel­op­ment project. The Mantis, which has 65.6-foot wingspan, is the largest autonomous UAV to be built by the U.K. The rapid devel­op­ment pro­gram took 19-​​months from con­cept to first flight. The Mantis is intended to be able to carry electro-​​optical and radar sen­sors, as well as a range of air-​​to-​​surface weapons. BAE part­ners on the pro­gram include Rolls-​​Royce, Qinetiq, GE Aviation, Meggit and Selex Galileo.

Read how MAVs might jam the bad guys, pon­der China’s defense buildup and check out some sweet MP-​​RTIP pics from our friends at Aviation Week, exclu­sively on Military​.com.

– Christian

November 17th, 2009 | Av Week Extra | 2 Comments »
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