Imagine flying, along with 20 or so fellow aircrew, in an Air Force E-8C Joint Surveillance Targeting and Attack Radar System (JSTARS) jet for a mission to track down insurgents planting roadside bombs in Iraq or Afghanistan. You’ve just taken off from your base in Qatar but before you can go scan the ground for bad guys with the plane’s powerful AN/APY-7 radar, you’ve got to refuel from a waiting KC-135 tanker since the E-8’s ancient Pratt & Whitney JT3D engines burned way too much gas taking off on a hot Middle Eastern day.
The E-8 you’re flying in is a converted Boeing 707 passenger jet that was built in 1967 and flew in airline service for decades before being purchased by the Air Force and refurbished for military use in the 1990s.
Approaching the tanker, all is going smoothly until the two planes hook up and fuel starts flowing into the JSTARS. You hear a “loud bang throughout the midsection of the aircraft.” This freaks everyone out enough for the pilot to immediately stop the refueling to check the aircraft for damage or malfunctioning systems. Finding none, the pilot brings the jet back into contact with the tanker and as soon as fuel starts flowing between the two jets, the E-8C begins to shudder as “another series of loud noises and vibrations” are “heard and felt throughout the aircraft.”
As this is happening, the KC-135’s boom operator, lying on his couch underneath the aft-belly of his jet, sees vapor and fuel pouring out of the JSTARs. Something is very wrong. The tanker crew tells the pilots of the JSTARS what they’re seeing and the E-8 crew see the same thing as they look out the windows in the aft of their jet; fuel is streaming out of “at least two holes in the left wing, just inboard of the number two engine.”
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January 27th, 2012 | Air Force, Money Money Money, Planes, Copters, Blimps, The Deadlies, The Defense Biz | 3 Comments
I had a chance to sit down with Medal of Honor recipient SFC Leroy Petry a couple of days ago while participating in the AFCEA West 2012 conference in San Diego. Like all who’ve received the nation’s highest award for valor, his story of courage under fire is amazing. (Read more about him in Military.com’s headlines here.)
Petry lost his right hand when the enemy grenade he was throwing away from his fellow Rangers went off right as he released it. After an extended convalesence and many hours of rehab, he was offered a range of prosthetic options. While many amputees prefer the age-old hook because of its superior gripping power, Petry decided to go high-tech. He selected the Touch Bionics iLimb Pulse.
From the article at Military.com:
The iLimb Pulse basically has two parts: the robotic hand and the sleeve that slips over the forearm. Sensors within the sleeve pick up muscle movement near the surface of the forearm, which in turn programs the digits in the robotic hand to move.
“It basically runs off the same muscles you’d use to open and close your hand,” Petry explains. The robotic hand also rotates 360-degrees at the wrist, which comes in handy when trying to reach things in out-of-the-way places.
Petry recently upgraded from the Pulse to the iLimb Ultra, which has better tuned micro-motors and more titanium components. He also can replace the hand with an array of attachments including tools or cutlery.
“I never golfed until they told me they had a golf attachment,” he says. “Now I love the sport.”
And as an added feature, Petry had a special placard attached to his base plate with all the names of the Army Rangers from the Second Ranger Battalion who had been killed in combat since Operation Urgent Fury in 1984. “It reminds me that men are still out there fighting,” he says pointing to the placard. “Hopefully, it doesn’t have to get any bigger.”
(Photo — SFC Leroy Petry’s Touch Bionics iLimb Ultra — with memorial placard to fallen Army Rangers.)
– Ward
January 27th, 2012 | Gadgets and Gear, Robots, The Defense Biz | 3 Comments
Here’s where you’ll see the weapons programs are going to thrive going forward and the types that won’t (barring Capitol Hill getting involved, which you’ve always got to factor in). Below you’ll the Pentagon’s basic budget documents that the DoD has released to coincide with the budget rollout that we’ve been live Tweeting. The first is a basic fact sheet highlighting the DoD’s 2013 budget numbers. Next you’ll see a Pentagon document laying out DoD’s top spending priorities for the 2013 budget request — it shows some of the weapons programs that are funded and some of the ones that are cut. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey just said, this budget saves more than $250 billion over the next five years while spending more than $600 billion for this year.
Dempsey just called this budget a “down payment” on an effective future military
Click through the jump to read the documents:
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January 26th, 2012 | Acquisition Reform, Air Force, army, Around the Globe, Future Wars, Marine Corps, Money Money Money, navy | 24 Comments
So, the Navy just took a big step toward achieving the military’s goal of having UAV’s capable of mid-air refueling.
Last month, a Navy Learjet equipped with flight control software and refueling hardware from the service’s X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstrator jet autonomously completed a mock air-to-air refueling from a Boeing 707-based tanker (shown in the picture above, note the safety pilot you can see in the Learjet’s cockpit).
Remember, the Northrop Grumman-made X-47B is designed to prove that a stealthy, fighter-size drone can be operated from aircraft carriers and perform long-range strike, ISR and aerial refueling missions. X-47B is meant to pave the way for the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) combat drone, set to enter service later this decade.
The technology used in the refueling tests is similar to this tech that will be used to allow the X-47B to take-off and land aboard aircraft carriers.
From a NAVAIR press release:
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January 26th, 2012 | Drones, Money Money Money, navy, Planes, Copters, Blimps | 30 Comments
Speaking of Northrop Grumman-made UAVs, check out these new photos of Northrop’s stealthy X-47B. The downward-looking pics show the plane — designed to test out how to operate a fighter-sized, stealthy UAV from an aircraft carrier — flying from an angle I’d never seen before. They make it look all the more badass, even if it is only a concept jet.
The jet caused a stir in a small town in Kansas last month when locals mistook a shrink-wrapped X-47B being trucked from California to Maryland for a UFO!
January 25th, 2012 | Drones, Fast Movers, Future Wars, Money Money Money, navy, Planes, Copters, Blimps | 59 Comments
