About Defense Tech

Defense Tech exam­ines the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­ogy and defense from every angle and pro­vides analy­sis on what’s ahead.

Tip Us Off

Tip for Defense Tech?

SEND IT!

It’s Confidential!

Major M4 Mods in the Works

M4-afghanistan

My good friend Matt Cox over at Army Times has done it again.

In what might be the best mil­i­tary weapons story of the year so far, Matt got his hands on a brief that shows the Army is seri­ously look­ing at major improve­ments to the cur­rent M4, includ­ing a heav­ier bar­rel, a new round counter and poten­tially mov­ing to a gas-​​piston oper­at­ing system.

The improve­ments, if imple­mented, would address most of the major crit­i­cisms of the cur­rent M4 con­fig­u­ra­tion and would also answer the mail on a study of the 2008 Wanat bat­tle that seemed to indi­cate that some weapons had a high inci­dence of stop­pages when fired at high cyclic rates.

Army weapons offi­cials say they want to give sol­diers some­thing bet­ter, sooner. While there is no set time­line, the hope is “to have this nailed by [early] January,” said Col. Doug Tamilio, the head of Project Manager Soldier Weapons.

“As we move down this car­bine com­pe­ti­tion path, let’s con­tinue to make sub­stan­tial improve­ments to the M4,” Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller said Oct. 27. Fuller com­mands Program Executive Office Soldier, the com­mand respon­si­ble for sol­dier weapons development.

The Army has made 62 changes to the M4 since it began field­ing the weapon in the mid 1990s, weapons offi­cials main­tain. The changes have ranged from improved extrac­tor springs to high-​​tech optics to a more reli­able magazine.

But sol­diers’ crit­i­cisms of the M4’s per­for­mance have continued.

The fixes were out­lined in a brief­ing from PEO Gen. Pete Fuller to law­mak­ers who’ve been push­ing the Army to mod­ern­ize the M4 in sub­stan­tial ways. Matt’s story jibes with what the Army has been say­ing all along that it would con­tinue to improve the M4 even as it searches for a so-​​called “improved car­bine” which might night land in Joes’ hands until 2013.

Be sure to read the entire story, but by the looks of it, the work that Matt’s done (and we’ve done here) might be mov­ing the geo­logic entity that is the insti­tu­tional Army on one of its most fun­da­men­tal programs.

– Christian

November 23rd, 2009 | M4 Monopoly | 21 Comments »

McAfee’s Take on the Cyber War

mcafee-report

The big cyber news event of the week is the just released report by McAfee. In this report the secu­rity indus­try giant asks if the age of cyber war­fare has arrived. The thirty-​​seven page report has sev­eral very provoca­tive state­ments about cyber warfare. Upfront, they present three key find­ing in the report and they are as follows:

Although there is no com­monly accepted def­i­n­i­tion for cyber war today, we have seen nation-​​states involved in vary­ing lev­els of cyber conflict.

If a major cyber con­flict between nation-​​states were to erupt, it is very likely that the pri­vate sec­tor would get caught in the crossfire.

Too much of the debate on poli­cies related to cyber war is hap­pen­ing behind closed doors.

One topic in the report that gave rise to lively debate in a meet­ing I attended was, “The line between cyber crime and cyber war is blurred today in large part because some nation-​​states see crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions as use­ful allies. Nation-​​states have already demon­strated that they are will­ing to tol­er­ate, encour­age or even direct crim­i­nal orga­ni­za­tions and pri­vate cit­i­zens to attack enemy targets.”

This cre­ates an inter­est­ing dilemma about who is in charge of cyber attacks when you really don’t know who is behind it! While this has been dis­cussed many times behind closed doors, it has rarely been argued this openly in public. 

Towards the end of the report they stated that inter­na­tional cyber con­flict has reached the tip­ping point where it is no longer just a the­ory, but a sig­nif­i­cant threat.  While these are not new, the atten­tion this report is draw­ing has placed these issues before the secu­rity indus­try, mil­i­tary and gov­ern­ment leaders. 

If the tip­ping point has been reached, how will the com­puter secu­rity indus­try respond to this inter­na­tional issue and what does this mean for the pri­vate sector?

– Kevin Coleman

November 23rd, 2009 | Cyber-warfare | 12 Comments »

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 | 15 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 | 56 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 | 7 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 | 21 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 | 53 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 | 72 Comments »
Recent Comments