Mil-Tech

Russian robotic soldier revealed

A prototype track-mounted combat platform tailored to use Russian weapons has been unveiled at an arms show in Moscow. Producers say it beats the similar American bot widely used in Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.

Propeller The bot, called MRK-27-BT, was produced by the robotics lab of the Moscow Bauman Technical University. It was shown to the public at the Interpolitex-2009 arms exhibition.

MRK-27-BT’s standard armament includes two Shmel rocket launchers, two grenade launchers, a Pecheneg machine gun with a 100 round ammunition belt, and six smoke grenades. It is operated with a couple of joysticks and has a maximum range of 500 meters. All the weapons are standard issue used by human soldiers and can be detached in the field.

The project is similar to SWORDS, a weaponized version of Foster-Miller’s TALON platform. While the platform is extensively used by US military for disposing of explosives and other tasks, the real weapon-wielding bot was never used in actual combat.

Russian developers say their project beats the American counterpart in mobility and speed thanks to a superior track design. Its weapon mount is more flexible and can extend over a foxhole edge. It also has a built-in recoil suppressor. At the same time the Russian robot is larger, standing 1.5 meters tall with its mount raised, while SWORDS is barely knee high.

Designers hope that Russian Defense Ministry will order a trial series of the platform. However, according to RIA Novosti’s sources, top brass want a developed doctrine about the use of combat robots before committing.

Ground Vehicle Engineering and Technology Symposium Sets the Stage for Collaboration, Military Technology Development

In a push to leverage the most advanced ground vehicle systems research being pursued in the United States today, the National Defense Industrial Association’s (NDIA’s) Michigan chapter will host a three-day symposium in August that will serve as a gateway for public-private technology discussion and project development.

The 2010 Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium (GVSETS), taking place Aug. 17-19, will offer industry, government and academic organizations an opportunity to present technical papers and attend panel discussions likely to set the research and development (R&D) agenda for ground vehicle systems programs moving forward. This year’s conference theme is GVSETS- Collaborating to Rapidly Provide Superior, Integrated Capabilities to Our Warfighters.

Building on the success of last year’s inaugural symposium, the NDIA has expanded the 2010 conference venue to the Dearborn Hyatt Regency and enlisted eight major defense contractors to help sponsor the event including AM General LLC, BAE Systems, DRS Technologies, General Dynamics Corp., Lockheed Martin Corp., OshKosh Defense Corp., Raytheon Co. and Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC). The Engineering Society of Detroit (ESD) and U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) will also be major participants at the conference.

NDIA in collaboration with ESD will be issuing a call for technical papers in five technology arenas: Power and Energy; Robotic Systems; Modeling and Simulation, Testing and Validation; Systems Engineering; and Vehicle Electronics and Architecture.

ROLLS-ROYCE ACQUIRES REMAINING SHARE OF EUROPEA MICROFUSIONI AEROSPAZIALI FROM FINMECCANICA

Rolls-Royce, the global power systems company, has strengthened its position in Italy by acquiring the remaining 49% share in Europea Microfusioni Aerospaziali SpA (EMA) from Finmeccanica, taking its holding in the Italian company to 100%.

EMA, originally established in 1990, manufactures precision advanced micro-castings for aero engines, including those that power the Airbus A380 and will power the new
Boeing 787.

Giuseppe Ciongoli, Rolls-Royce Regional Director – Italy, said: “Over recent years, EMA has developed into an important technology company and this transaction underscores Rolls-Royce’s commitment to high value added manufacturing and to advanced manufacturing in Italy.”

Through EMA, Rolls-Royce has brought skilled industrial job opportunities to an area of Southern Italy that previously offered limited specialised opportunities. The growth of EMA over the past decade has contributed to revitalising the local economy.

Russia Launches New Military Satellite Into Space

Russia launched a new military satellite with a Proton-M rocket into space on Thursday for improving the space communication facilities. Alexei Zolotukhin, a spokesman for the Space Forces reported that it was a Raduga-series satellite and it was sent from Bajkonur space centre in Kazakhstan.

It is reported that Russia operates a constellation of about 60-70 military satellites with reconnaissance, missile early warning and other capabilities.

Sikorsky expects $3.1B in defense budget

The Pentagon is expected to seek $3.1 billion for Sikorsky helicopters in its newest budget as the factory in Stratford continues to play a pivotal role in the war effort.

Industry publications Defense News and Military.com’s DoD Buzz reported Friday that preliminary documents indicate the Pentagon will ask Congress for a $1.4 billion order for UH60 Black Hawks for the U.S. Army and a $1.7 billion order for MH60 Seahawks for the U.S. Navy as part of the fiscal year 2011 budget.

Abbass lands $867,000 military deal

Jay Abbass has scored a direct hit in selling technology to the federal government that will allow military planes to evade incoming missiles.

The former provincial Liberal cabinet minister is president of Canada Direct Trading Ltd., an import and export company based in Halifax. The company has won a contract that’s worth $867,571 to supply an unspecified number of tiny explosive cartridges used to deploy decoys from military aircraft.

The explosive charge — “not much more than you’d find in a kid’s cap” — pops the missile decoy out of a holder and allows it to fall away from the plane.

Robots evolve to learn cooperation, hunting

If robots are allowed to evolve through natural selection, they will develop adaptive abilities to hunt prey, cooperate, and even help one another, according to Swiss researchers.

In a series of experiments described in the journal PLoS Biology, Dario Floreano of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne and Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne reported that simple, small-wheeled Khepera and Alice robots can evolve behaviors such as collision-free movement and homing techniques in only several hundred “generations.”

The robots were controlled by a neural network that mutated randomly, with input information from the robots’ sensors. In an imitation of natural selection, the robots with the best maneuvering abilities were allowed to foster a new generation. Furthermore, selected robots were “paired” by having their neural net connections mixed and passed to a new generation.

Within 100 generations, the robots were able to move through a maze without bumping into anything.

Another experiment involved the robots pushing round discs along a wall to get points. Robots were found to cooperate in pushing larger tokens together to earn points for their whole group. The researchers also observed altruistic behavior, in which robots would sacrifice getting points for themselves in favor of getting points for their whole group of related robots. This was measured by pushing small and large discs into a zone–the large discs required a cooperative effort to move.

The researchers described “spider” hunting techniques among the bots in which hunters would lie in wait for prey (which in this case, fortunately, consisted of other robots). The hunted, meanwhile, developed a strategy of “quickly (rotating) in place, which reduced the probability of being approached from the sides without sensors.”

Russia tests its first stealth fighter jet

Russia tested its fifth-generation Sukhoi fighter jet in the Russian Far East on Friday.

The plane, provisionally called T-50, is the country’s first fighter jet based on the stealth technology and is viewed by military experts as the Russian answer to the American F-35 and F-22 jets.

The flight lasted for 47 minutes and was successful, being piloted by Sergei Bogdan, one of Russia’s best test pilots, Sukhoi corporation spokesman Alexei Poveshchenko told CNN.

Raytheon Will Prevent From Cyberattacks

Raytheon Co.’s (RTN) wholly owned subsidiary Raytheon BBN Technologies has been awarded a $2.9 million contract by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop new approaches to protect the Department of Defense Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) against cyberattacks.

Military information systems are increasingly dependent on SOA, which is called upon to support complex military tasks and missions. The advanced security features that Raytheon BBN Technologies will develop under the Advanced Protected Services (APS) program will handle the multifaceted and dynamic information exchange demanded by network-centric operations more quickly and cost effectively.

The APS program aims at enabling future military service-oriented information systems to detect, protect and adapt to surviving attacks from motivated, well-resourced and determined enemies.

Raytheon BBN Technologies is a research and development organization with expertise in information security, speech and language processing, networking, distributed systems, and sensing and control systems.

Raytheon is the one of the largest aerospace and defense companies in the U.S. It delivers state-of-the-art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the areas of sensing; effects; and command, control, communications and intelligence systems, as well as a broad range of mission support services.

Raytheon is planned to report its fiscal 2009 fourth quarter results on Jan 28, 2010. The company expects fiscal 2009 revenues in the range of $24.7 billion to $25 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter is currently $1.24 per share. For the current fiscal year, the average forecast is $4.83 per share, up 18.7% from last year.

We continue to view Raytheon as one of the best positioned among the large-cap defense primes due to its non-platform-centric focus, strong order bookings and order backlog, strong cash flow generation, and focus on shareholder value. We maintain our market Neutral recommendation on the shares. Defense contractors with significant exposure to high-cost platform programs include Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) and General Dynamics Corp. (GD).

Saab Enters Contract for Deliveries of RBS-70 Air Defense System

Saab has signed a contract on deliveries of the RBS 70 ground based air defence system to the Finnish Army. The order is worth 26 million EUR. The contract covers further deliveries of the RBS 70 ground based air defence system. First deliveries of materiel are scheduled for 2011.

RBS 70 is a complete missile system with the potential for being integrated with most wheeled and tracked vehicles.

The 4th generation of the RBS 70 system has non-cooled laser transmitter minimising reaction times and logistic support. The 4th generation system incorporates the BOLIDE all-target missile, BORC clip-on thermal imager, a digital IFF Interrogator, a PC-based training simulator and an external power supply for training.

Because of its long intercept range in the head-on sector 8 km, RBS 70 really belongs to a class other than the VSHORAD.