Mil-Tech

Lockheed Martin still pursues hybrid airship future

Losing a half-billion dollar contract award will not discourage Lockheed Martin from continuing to pursue hybrid airships as a future business.

The company’s advanced development programmes (ADP) division instead has released a new marketing campaign, with a promotional video posted on YouTube on 24 August revealing new details about the company’s technology.

Lockheed systems engineer Bob Ruszkowski confirms the company “absolutely” sees opportunities for new business, despite losing a competition for a $517 million contract from the US Army in June.

A Northrop Grumman/Hybrid Air Vehicles team instead won the deal to build the long-endurance multi-intelligence vehicle (LEMV), for deployment to Afghanistan in early 2012.

“We are exploring opportunities for hybrid airships beyond LEMV,” Ruszkowski says.

Lockheed lost the contract despite investing significantly in hybrid airship technology. The ADP, or Skunk Works, division manufactured a demonstrator aircraft called the P791, which first flew in January 2006.

“The P791 demonstration aircraft still exists. It’s still in our hangar. It’s available to use again for other demonstrations,” Ruszkowski says. “We learned quite a bit from it, and we’re exploring other opportunities for hybrid airships.”

In the new video, P791 programme manager Bob Boyd and other programme officials describe details of the hybrid airship technology.

The P791 is described as guided by a two-axis thrust vectoring system that is steered by fly-by-wire flight controls. The tri-hull airship is built using a “high-strength, lightweight woven material that’s heat-sealed together”, Lockheed says.

Lockheed’s hybrid airship also incorporates an air cushion landing system with four pads, which both soften landings and “grab” the ground so no mooring equipment is required.

The company plans to offer a hybrid airship as both a surveillance and cargo aircraft. In the latter configuration, new versions of the technology scaled up to seven times its current size could haul as many as 300 freight containers at a time, Lockheed says.

The video also offers hints that Lockheed sees an opportunity with hybrid airships to break into the commercial aircraft market for the first time since the early 1990s. Its future airships will be designed to offer availability rates on a par with commercial aircraft, of between 95 and 99%, the company says.

R29m more for SA rocket killer

The SA Army has invested a further R28.9 million to develop “a local active protection system” hat can intercept rocket propelled grenades (RPG), missiles and even fin-stabilised long-rod penetrators rounds fired by tanks.

The R28 946 305.66 contact was handed Denel Dynamics last Wednesday. The company, SAAB SA and, Reutech Radar Systems (RRS), Rheinmetall Denel Munitions (RDM) have been working on the technology for about a decade. Denel Dynamics CE Jan Wessels in 2008 told the Engineering News active protection was a domain that had opened up from about 2003 “in peacekeeping and asymmetrical warfare situations around the world, with Iraq and Afghanistan being prime examples.”

In these operations, it is often impossible to distinguish between civilians and irregular combatants until the latter unveil their weapons. And by then they may be very close. Wessels noted that today almost every armed faction has RPGs and many groups have access to more sophisticated and powerful anti-armour missiles. “So they can attack and disable, even destroy, the most sophisticated and expensive vehicles,” he told Keith Campbell.

“We now have a product which we have named Mongoose, which is a small missile that gets fired at the incoming RPG or missile and actually destroys it before it hits the vehicle or other asset (like a command post) being protected by Mongoose. Now you can understand that this is a radically new type of technology, a new type of product. This is an example of a technology that is very beneficial in the current situation – for example, when our forces are deployed in peacekeeping operations in the future, this will be a very valuable lifesaver and equipment saver.”

Mongoose is currently the “hardkill” or “active” component in the SAAB Avitronics Land Electronic Defence System (LEDS). Wessels told defenceWeb earlier this year RRS provide the sensor, Denel Dynamics and RDM the Mongoose missile, and SAAB the overall system.

The system consists of a brain called an active defence controller (ADC), a set of sensors, a high-speed directed launcher (HSDL) and countermeasure options ranging from fast deploying multi-spectral smoke and decoys (soft-kill) to rockets (hard-kill munitions) to destroy incoming threats. “It is a unique system,” said Wilfred Moore, Saab Avitronics’ senior executive, marketing and sales in 2006. The control computer, which has a global positioning system capability, integrates with the vehicle intercom and its command and control system. It also draws data from the vehicle wind sensor.

The basic LEDS 50 warns the crew of a vehicle fitted with the system that they are in the beam of a laser. In the military environment, lasers are used to designate targets for artillery and antitank guided munitions, as well as for range finding. The system can deal with up to eight threats simultaneously, while providing analysis on the nature of the threat based on the spectral band used.

LEDS 100 adds jammers and decoys, while LEDS 150 adds the Mongoose counter-munition. LEDS 100 confuses enemy weapons operators and incoming rounds by deploying smoke in their line of sight or flight, hiding the target vehicle. The smoke and an optional infra-red jammer interfere with the acquisition and/or tracking, ranging, launching or guidance of a hostile weapon. The system provides automated warning to the vehicle’s occupants and “dynamically and intelligently screens the vehicle from attack in any direction (including above) in less than 700 milliseconds,” a SAAB official said at African Aerospace and Defence in September 2004. The screen obscures the attackers’ line of sight and gives the vehicle and its occupants to get behind cover. The screen is multispectral and cannot be penetrated by lasers or thermal imagers of the type used to guide weapons. Unlike some comparable systems abroad, one does not have to turn the vehicle or its turret to defeat the threat. “This is achieved by the use of a high-speed directed launcher. The launcher moves extremely fast and can turn to any position in the protected hemisphere in less than 100 milliseconds,” the official added.

LEDS 150 claims to destroy incoming RPG-7 rounds and antitank guided munitions with Mongoose at ranges as close as within 20 metres of the launch vehicle, allowing it to intercept rounds fired “from across the street”. Moore said this would be put to the test in late 2007 in what are called “full dynamic trials”, meaning LEDS would have to detect the rocket travelling at 300 metres per second and fire back within a bare fraction of a single second if the round is not to hit the vehicle. Moore said no other system in use has that ability, and tests prove it: On January 24, 2006, a Mongoose intercepted and destroyed a 105mm high explosive round fired from a tank at a muzzle velocity of 683 metres per second. In a previous test series, three Mongoose hit three fin-stabilised rods travelling at close to 1500 metres per second, breaking their fins and deflecting them from their flight path with concentrated blasts, forcing them to smash into the ground within 150m of the point they were to hit, Moore added. Mongoose should also be able to defeat rounds fired from anti-tank guns and even artillery shells, as well as anti-armour missiles. LEDS can also be used aboard ships and smaller vessels.

Indications are the Mongoose can also be delivered as a light precision guided missile from an unmanned aerial vehicle or light aircraft.

The SA Army has invested substantial amounts of money in the project in recent years: In March 2007 it awarded Denel Dynamics R720 205 for a local active protection system technology maturity study, and in August 2007 R17 192 301 for “active protection system technology establishment”. In October 2008 it added R526 315 for he same purpose and in March this year a further R712 716.46, amounting to R19 151 537.46. Last week’s contract takes the value of “hardkill” work since 2007 to R48 097 843.12. Indications are the latest infusion of money is for R&D work on “more challenging threat scenarios” than those that fit the Mongoose I profile.

Top-secret work at electronics company mostly for military

One hundred and seventy people are busy at work inside the gated compound on Ballston Avenue where secret work has been going on for the past 50 years.

“It’s a very big kept secret. To many people, it’s a great mystery,” said Mark St. Pierre, president and CEO of Espey Manufacturing & Electronics Corp. “That’s not by design; it’s just the way it happened.”

Espey is an electronics manufacturer specializing in power-related devices. But about 80 percent of the company’s nearly $30 million in annual contracting work is conducted for the military.

“We’re much more than that big gray building on the corner in a resort town,” St. Pierre said. “We’re doing defense work and valuable work for the nation. Our devices end up in radars and radios and all kinds of communication gear.

“We’re the people behind the scenes from a power point-of-view,” St. Pierre said. “We deliver power solutions enabling all these fancy technologies to work.”

Inside the 150,000-square-foot facility, the company conducts work on systems that will be used by the military on land, on sea and in the air. The systems are installed on everything from nuclear submarines to surface ships, including fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and wheeled vehicles.

“These things have been around, but they become digitized, or made electronic. That’s where we come in. We can take an old howitzer and make it extremely accurate by putting a digital fire control system on it. It’s a system that electronically tells the gunner, or the forward spotter: This is the weather. This is the air density. This is the altitude. This is the angle and azimuth you should use. You can drop that shell in the living room of an insurgent hiding in Afghanistan,” he said.

Testing such technology is not cheap. St. Pierre estimated it costs the plant about $250,000 a year in electricity bills alone.

And from a contractor’s standpoint, St. Pierre said he believes Espey is somewhat protected from proposed Defense Department budget cuts because of the type of work the firm does.

You always have to be concerned, but we’re positioned well. I really think we’re going to be immune to those kind of cuts,” said St. Pierre, who was named Espey’s president last year.

“Things that are in communications and radar generally don’t get cut very often. Ground vehicles, which are essential to the Army’s modernization program — as well as the upgrading and modernization of existing ships — we’re on those, which I think immunizes us against wholesale cuts,” he said. “More power consumption means more opportunity for companies like Espey.”

U.S. Rep. Scott Murphy, D-Glens Falls, toured the facility in May and called Espey an important small business in upstate New York.

“I’ve been proud to work with them as they’ve helped to make our local economy strong and our country safe,” Murphy said.

Compared with places like GlobalFoundries, which is expected to create specialized computer chip manufacturing jobs after it opens in 2012 in Malta’s Luther Forest Technology Campus, St. Pierre said the 170 workers he employs range from high school graduates who are taught to assemble electronic components to employees who have earned doctorates.

St. Pierre said 20 percent of the work at Espey involves “high-end commercial work,” such as making the equipment that can manage power systems for locomotives. The bulk of the company’s work, however, continues to be for the military.

“About 80 percent of what we do is military, most of which comes from federal funding, one way or another,” St. Pierre said.

“Although we sell a little bit directly to governments — including the U.S. government and foreign governments, under license — most of what we sell is as a subcontractor, and that number is ultimately funded, indirectly, by the federal government,” he said. “It might go through companies like Lockheed-Martin, or Raytheon, or General Dynamics, but the contracts are typically government contracts paid for by the taxpayer.”

Copyright 2010 The Post-Star.

Europe And Beyond: U.S. Consolidates Global Missile Shield

On September 17, 2009 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and President Barack Obama separately announced plans to shift the emphasis of the global American interceptor missile – so-called missile shield or anti-ballistic missile defense – project from the previous George W. Bush administration’s plans to a more mobile, flexible and geographically broader system.

The proposed deployments of ten ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland and a forward-based X-band radar installation in the Czech Republic were abandoned in favor of what Obama deemed “stronger, smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and America’s allies.” Both Poland and the Czech Republic, however, remain part of Pentagon plans and will be incorporated into a broader grid with all 28 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which in its final stage will cover all of Europe. Or at least the entire continent west of Russia and Belarus.

Plans for ground-based interceptors in Poland alarmed Russia, which necessarily saw them as aimed at itself, but would also have been housed in fixed silos that made them easy targets.

In the month before the announced change in American plans to begin the incremental buildup of a missile shield in Eastern Europe – phased adaptive approach in government terms – a report surfaced at the annual U.S. Space and Missile Defense Conference of the Boeing Company planning a 47,500-pound mobile interceptor missile launcher to be deployed within 24 hours to NATO bases in Europe. During the same month the Missile Defense Agency and Boeing also announced the successful test of their joint Airborne Laser (ABL) anti-missile system.

At the end of last August the first disclosure appeared of plans to expand U.S. interceptor missile deployments to the Balkans and the Black Sea region, Israel and Turkey. [4] The head of the Missile Defense Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, said at the time that he supported the installation of Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors in the Balkans and Turkey. (In 2007 his predecessor, Lieutenant General Henry Obering, mentioned placing U.S. interceptor missile radar sites in the Caucasus and even Ukraine.)

The SM-3 is a ship-based anti-ballistic missile and anti-satellite interceptor – used to destroy an American satellite in orbit over the Pacific Ocean in February of 2008 – and part of the U.S. and allied Aegis ballistic missile defense system. It has the main advantage of being deployable around the world on destroyers and cruisers. What O’Reilly was referring to, though, was a combination of sea-based SM-3s and their adaptation for use on land.

In describing current U.S. missile shield plans last September, Pentagon chief Gates spoke of a four-phase program that began with the deployment of Aegis class warships equipped with SM-3s in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea last year, to be followed by enhanced versions of the missile both on sea and land, with successive generations of more advanced models in the third and fourth stage.

This February plans to station land-based SM-3s in Bulgaria and Romania were announced [5], and when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski in the latter’s nation early last month to sign an amended agreement on interceptor missile cooperation, it was revealed that SM-3s will be stationed in Poland in the second phase of the Pentagon’s plan for a continent-wide interceptor system. [6] Slightly more than a month before, the U.S. moved Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) interceptors and approximately 100 troops into eastern Poland, only a few kilometers from Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. [7] U.S. deployments in the country are also part of a broader NATO strategy.

Connecting the ship- and land-based components of the global U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe with other locations to the east and the south, the Pentagon has also been qualitatively expanding Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and Standard Missile-3 deployments in the Persian Gulf. Washington is now preparing to provide Gulf Arab states with the longer-range Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile intercept system.

Last October and November the U.S. and Israel conducted the fourteen-day Juniper Cobra 10 exercise with five missile interception systems, the largest such live-fire maneuvers ever held. An American military officer present at the war games said the unparalleled drills would “help the development of a planned NATO missile shield for Europe.” A year before, the U.S. deployed an X-band missile shield radar (Army Navy/Transportable Radar Surveillance) to Israel with 120 troops, the first and to date only long-term foreign troop deployment in Israel’s history.

Washington and NATO are well advanced in solidifying an impenetrable interceptor missile system from the Baltic Sea to the Arabian Sea and the Black Sea to the Red Sea.

In the past few days further details have emerged concerning the expansion of those plans in both breadth and sophistication.

On August 30 Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas announced that “his government has been negotiating a plan with the United States to place a warning center in the Czech Republic as part of a reworked U.S. missile defense plan.” He also stated that personnel manning the facility could be provided by the U.S. and other NATO states and that the site could even be based in his nation’s capital, Prague. Necas added, “The U.S. plans to initially invest $2 million in 2011 and 2012 for the center, which is expected to become part of a joint NATO missile defense shield in the future,” and that no new treaty with Washington would be required for the project. Czech popular opposition to the earlier plan for an X-band missile defense installation was credited for the U.S. discarding the Bush-era plan.

Two days afterward Czech Defense Minister Alexandr Vondra confirmed that the U.S. had allotted $2 million for the construction of the facility, that American experts would be deployed there and that it would be in operation by the middle of next year. Vondra added, “I believe it will be one of many parts of the NATO system….”

In August of last year the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza revealed that the U.S. would expand its interceptor missile plans to the Balkans, Israel and Turkey. This August the Washington Post belatedly confirmed that design.

An article by staff writer Craig Whitlock appeared in the August 1 Sunday edition of the newspaper which quoted several U.S. military officials to the effect that:

“The U.S. military is on the verge of activating a partial missile shield over southern Europe….

“Pentagon officials said they are nearing a deal to establish a key radar ground station, probably in Turkey or Bulgaria. Installation of the high-powered X-band radar would enable the first phase of the shield to become operational next year.

“At the same time, the U.S. military is working with Israel and allies in the Persian Gulf to build and upgrade their missile defense capabilities. The United States installed a radar ground station in Israel in 2008 and is looking to place another in an Arab country in the gulf region.”

Not substituting for deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, as has been seen above, but adapting and extending the network of which they are a part southward and eastward.

The Washington Post feature added that although the interceptor missile projects in Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf are technically distinct, “they are all designed to plug into command-and-control systems operated by, or with, the U.S. military. The Israeli radar, for example, is operated by U.S. personnel and is already functional, feeding information to U.S. Navy ships operating in the Mediterranean.”

Providing historical perspective and dispelling the prevalent notion that the current administration’s plans are in any manner a retreat from those of its predecessor, the piece stated:

“The concept of a missile shield began with former president Ronald Reagan, who first described his vision of a defense against a Soviet nuclear attack in his ‘Star Wars’ speech in 1983….It has expanded further under President Obama, despite the skepticism he expressed during the 2008 campaign about the feasibility and affordability of Bush’s plan for a shield in Europe.

“In September, Obama announced that he was changing Bush’s approach. Instead of abandoning the idea, he directed the Pentagon to construct a far more extensive and flexible missile defense system in Europe that will be built in phases between now and 2020.”

The author provided these additional details:

Starting late last year the U.S. has steadily deployed Aegis class warships in the Mediterranean Sea equipped with Spy-1 360 degree missile radar and “arsenals of Standard Missile-3 interceptors [which] will form the backbone of Obama’s shield in Europe.”

The initial detachments, one or two destroyers and cruisers at a time, will be tripled in number. Furthermore, “the Obama administration has plans to nearly double its number of Aegis ships with ballistic missile defenses, to 38 by 2015.”

Citing the commander of the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean, Vice Admiral Henry B. Harris Jr., the Washington Post article stated that one “option would be to assign some Aegis ships to home ports in Europe instead of making them sail constantly back and forth to the United States.

“Other Navy officials have floated the idea of flying in fresh crews so a ship could more or less deploy continuously, obviating the need for long breaks.”

It then supplied further specifics, disclosing that “Aegis ships, armed with dozens of SM-3 missile interceptors, will patrol the Mediterranean and Black seas and link up with…high-power radar planned for southern Europe.”

Romania will host land-based Standard Missile-3 deployments and Poland will follow as the site of SM-3s and additional sensors.

Although as recently as last year the Pentagon envisioned a total of 147 SM-3s, the Obama administration intends to nearly triple that number to 436. The new strategy “will require an unspecified number of new SM-3 missiles, which cost between $10 million and $15 million apiece.”

The system will expand in earnest after the NATO summit in Portugal in November, when the U.S.’s 27 members in the military bloc are expected to endorse a comprehensive, layered, mobile interceptor missile system for the entire European continent, albeit still firmly under U.S. control.

The Missile Defense Agency’s O’Reilly “said combined defenses would feature the best of both worlds: an ‘upper layer’ framework of SM-3 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, interceptors, operated by the United States, that could shoot down enemy missiles in space or the upper atmosphere; and a ‘lower layer’ of Patriot batteries, operated by European allies, providing a second layer of defense closer to the ground.”

Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles have a longer range than both the PAC-3 and SM-3 and had not been discussed before as part of the new system.

Regarding the placement of U.S. and NATO interceptor missiles in Romania, on the Black Sea across from southwestern Russia, a recent analysis examined the geopolitical consequences:

“This means that the U.S. front line of defense is shifting from the eastern border of Germany to the Black Sea, which is adjacent to the Middle East, the Caucasus and Russia.

“Romania is ready to accept deployment of 20 SM-3 anti-ballistic missile units, currently installed on American naval vessels with the Aegis Combat System. These missiles could later be replaced with the more advanced terminal high altitude area defense (THAAD) missiles. They will also be deployed in Bulgaria. Meanwhile, it has become more likely that the X-band radar system, which the U.S. originally planned to install in the Czech Republic, will be set up in Israel.”

Bulgarian Defense Minister Anyu Angelov was summoned to Washington for six days starting in late June for “the launch of technical negotiations about NATO’s missile defence in Europe in general” and meetings with Defense Secretary Gates, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher, the last-named the key point person in securing U.S. missile shield deployments in Eastern Europe.

Angelov was given his marching orders and returned home to confirm that his nation will join the U.S. interceptor missile program in Europe (and beyond) and that “Bulgaria is participating actively in the discussions and the practical realization of all steps concerning the establishment of a NATO-wide missile defense system.” [17]

For domestic consumption he presented the decision as his country’s own – “We are the most interested state in Europe in the establishment of a missile shield because we are in the most threatened region – we fall within the range of ballistic missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles [such] as the ones employed by the states in the wider Middle East” – but since Bulgaria was incorporated into NATO in 2004 it now receives orders from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.

In a recent report that 700 Bulgarian combat troops have been ordered to Afghanistan (as Dutch troops have left), a leading local news agency demonstrated how such decisions are made: “Bulgaria’s center-right government, elected last July, initially said it would not be able to provide more forces in Afghanistan due to the economic crisis, but later changed its strategy under pressure from the United States and NATO.”

The same relationship of supremacy and subordination obtains between the U.S. and all other NATO members, particularly the twelve new acquisitions in Eastern Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic Sea.

The Pentagon has secured seven new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania since the latter two states joined NATO in 2004. Those sites include the Bezmer Air Base in Bulgaria, fifty kilometers from the Black Sea, and the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base in Romania near the city of Constanta on the Black Sea. Both are being upgraded to strategic air bases which, already employed for the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, are available for strikes against Iran and in the South Caucasus in the event of an equivalent of the Georgian-Russian war of two years ago. The Romanian base is the main headquarters for the Pentagon’s Joint Task Force-East.

At any given time there are several thousand U.S. troops in Bulgaria and Romania, the first foreign forces in Bulgaria since shortly after the end of World War Two and in Romania since 1962.

A comparable situation exists in Poland. An American military newspaper recently ran a feature on the deployment of Patriot missile batteries in the country called “U.S. Army’s presence in Poland most significant since World War II” in which an American Army spokesman stated, “We have between 80 and 150 troops going there on a regular basis. We’ve never had that number and for that long of a period.” No foreign troops had been stationed in Poland since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991.

The article also stated that “For the first time since the end of World War II, U.S. Army soldiers are making regular rotations into Poland, this time to train its forces to use Patriot missiles.

“Forty miles from the Russian border, a small group of U.S. Army Europe soldiers is instructing the Polish military about the missiles, which are designed to counter tactical ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and advanced aircraft.”

A Fox News report characterized the operation as “the first long-term U.S. troop presence…in Poland,” and quoted U.S. ambassador to the nation Lee Feinstein as maintaining “It’s U.S. boots on the ground, a very tangible symbol of the U.S.-Polish alliance.”

Regarding Israel, where the U.S. has also deployed the first foreign troops on that country’s soil, in late July the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense added $95.7 million to a White House funding request for Tel Aviv’s long-range Arrow and medium-range David’s Sling anti-ballistic missile programs subsumed under the Iron Dome layered air and missile defense system. Abiding by the subcommittee’s recommendations, Congress will allot $422.7 million for the above purpose for next year (with $109 million for the Arrow 3 system), bringing total U.S. underwriting of Israeli interceptor missile programs to $1 billion over the past four years.

According to member of the subcommittee Congressman Steve Rothman, “Given the concern and attention that we are focusing now on every dollar we are expending on behalf of the US taxpayer for all purposes, including the defense of the United States and its allies, it is a mark of the importance of these projects that they were all funded so robustly and fully by our subcommittee.”

By absorbing most all of Eastern Europe into NATO, the U.S. has also provided its Israeli ally access to air bases and training sites of strategic significance for future attacks on neighboring Middle East nations. On July 29 Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i stated, “We fly in Romania so we can act deep inside neighboring Arab states.”

The more extended and flexible, the “stronger, smarter and swifter” U.S. missile strategy, then, pursues a trajectory from the Baltic Sea, with Standard Missile-3-equipped Aegis warships also available for service in the Norwegian and Barents Seas, to Southeastern Europe into the South Caucasus, Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and Persian Gulf, covering Russia’s western and southern flanks and encroaching upon Iran.

When President Obama visits India in November he intends to secure billions of dollars in arms deals with the world’s second most populous nation.

On July 12 Russia’s Vzglyad newspaper reported that “The deal, if signed during Obama’s visit, would [have] the US replace Russia as India’s biggest arms supplier…adding that the deal would also help India curb China’s rise.

“India’s shortlist includes Patriot defense systems, Boeing mid-air refueling tankers and certain types of howitzers, and the total cost of the deal may exceed $10 billion….”

By selling anti-ballistic missile systems to India – starting with Patriots and advancing to longer-range models – Washington will connect its missile interception network from Europe through the Middle East to its eastern wing, that which includes 26 ground-based interceptors at Fort Greely in Alaska, a 280-foot-tall, 50,000-pound sea-based X-band radar in the Aleutian Islands, and PAC-3, SM-3 and THAAD missiles in Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Current U.S.-China tensions, the worst in several decades, were triggered early this year when Washington confirmed it was providing Taiwan with 200 advanced Patriot missiles and warships capable of being upgraded for the Aegis Combat System.

For all the talk of protecting the U.S. Mainland from alleged Iranian and North Korean missile threats – accusations that are in the first case absurd and in the second highly improbable – at the end of the day Washington and its military allies around the world are well on the way to encircling Russia, China and Iran with an insurmountable barrier of interceptor missile deployments in conjunction with the militarization of space and the Prompt Global Strike program. Neither those three nations nor any other outside the rapidly expanding U.S. global military nexus will be permitted to retain effective deterrence or retaliation capabilities.

Over-Reliance On Communication Technology Can Hinder Thought Process

Can communication technologies change your way of thinking? Or, more precisely can communication technologies get in the way of thinking and understanding?

The answer is of course, yes. We have understood this for some time. Each communications technology has its strengths and its limitations. But beyond these are the dependences we form around these technologies, which then further limit communications.

Two stories in the news media illustrate this latter point. The first is a great feature published by the New York Times’ reporter Elisabeth Bumiller with the headline “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint”. The article is still available online if you do a search using the headline. It’s instructive for many business presenters, who have seen more than their fair share of slides.

It describes the growing realisation within the US military that a dependence on PowerPoint presentations is hindering understanding of their strategy in Afghanistan. The image that went with the article told the whole story. It was of a slide in the presentation given by General Stanley A McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and was meant to portray the complexity of the military strategy. Instead it looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.

“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” Gen. McChrystal is reported to have said on seeing the slide.

The story then goes on to document the enormous amount of time spent by military presenters in preparing slides for daily briefings. The key phrase is “PowerPoint makes us stupid”, a quote by Gen. James N Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander.

Meanwhile Brigadier Gen. H R McMaster is reported to have banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005 and said that PowerPoint was like an internal threat that “can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control”.

The main criticism in the military seems to be that PowerPoint “stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making” in addition to tying up junior officers.

Would anybody in business dare to follow the same path in at least reducing the use of PowerPoint? If there are any readers out there whose businesses have restricted or even banned PowerPoint, let me know. If you have set guidelines on its use, share them with me so other business leaders on the Island can gain some insight.

For example, I once discussed in the column on how brilliantly Apple’s Steve Jobs uses slides during his presentations. One such analysis is available at Presentation Zen (www.presentationzen.com). One of the major stylistic devices we use to death in PowerPoint presentations is missing from a Jobs’ presentation: bullet points. In fact, many communication advisors tell presenters not to use bullet points. Studies have shown that people do not remember bullet points. What they do remember are images, and numbers associated with images.

In fact, a PowerPoint presentation should not be a mirror of your presentation, although as a reporter I love them. They serve as handy notes to consult when I cannot read my scribbles. Look at a Jobs’ presentation and you see images, and single numbers he wants to get across (like “30 percent growth!”).

That’s why his presentations are memorable. You can do the same, though your product or service might not be as sexy. The end is the same. You want to communicate a simple idea about your business.

The second example or comment on over dependency on communications technology was by US President Barack Obama, known for his love of his BlackBerry. In a speech before graduates of Hampton University last Sunday he singled out iPods and iPads as distractions, rather surprising given his campaign’s use of networking technology to motivate voters.

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations – none of which I know how to work – information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama is quoted as saying.

He informed: “We can’t stop these changes,” he added, “but we can adapt to them. And education is what can allow us to do so. It can fortify you, as it did earlier generations, to meet the tests of your own time.”

Personally, I think the first quote is wrongheaded, but the second is right on. What do you think?

Military's Hypersonic Falcon Missile Test A Dud?

On the heels of last week’s top-secret X37-B launch, the U.S. Air Force launched — and ultimately crashed — an experimental hypersonic glider theoretically capable of hitting Mach 20.

This conceptual image shows DARPA’s original vision of the hypersonic glider, now known as the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2.

It was a watershed week for conspiracy theorists, with President Barack Obama throwing his support behind several major upgrades to the country’s rapid-response strike capability.

On the heels of the top-secret X37-B launch, the U.S. Air Force launched an even more secret experimental hypersonic glider able to travel more than 4,000 miles in 30 minutes from launch. The craft — dubbed the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 — was launched via a Minotaur 4-Lite rocket Thursday from Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Air Force informed.

Conspiracy theorists have long reported on a secret project known as “Aurora” — a hypersonic spy plane capable of speeds up to Mach 6 (3,700 mph). The Falcon seems to be the culmination of that project, but it’s capable of much, much more, according to a fact sheet from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The sheet explains that once the vehicle accelerates into the upper atmosphere, it is crafted to separate from its booster and glide across the Pacific at around 13,000 mph, or nearly Mach 20.

The test vehicle launched last week reached Mach 5 on launch, and was designed to crash and sink into the sea and sink near Kwajalein Atoll, 2,000 miles south-west of Hawaii, 30 minutes later and 4,000 miles from the launch site.

But in a statement released Friday night, DARPA informed that while “the launch vehicle executed first-of-its-kind energy management maneuvers, clamshell payload fairing release and HTV-2 deployment,” all wasn’t perfect with the superfast craft. “Approximately 9 minutes into the mission, telemetry assets experienced a loss of signal from the HTV-2. An engineering team is reviewing available data to understand this event.”

The DARPA press release did not specify whether any of the test maneuvers were completed by the Lockheed Martin built craft before controllers lost communications with the craft, the site adds.

In the real world, Project Aurora is called the “Prompt Global Strike (PGS) program” and it’s actually part of the President’s solution to maintaining peace in non-nuclear times. President Obama inked a treaty with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last week that put both countries on the path to full nuclear disarmament.

However, the U.S. part of the agreement states that the country can replace every decommissioned nuclear weapon with a PGS missile. Within a week of the treaty being signed, Obama welcomed in the technology to make it possible.

And overnight, Obama informed he would support deploying a new class of hypersonic missiles that could hit any target on Earth within an hour.

Depending on the version the Pentagon chooses, the warhead would either split into dozens of lethal fragments in the final seconds of its flight or simply smash into its target, relying on devastating kinetic energy to destroy anything in its path reports the Times of London. As a precision weapon its effects would be quite different from the mass destruction inflicted by nuclear warheads delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach 13,400 mph.

The glider’s speeds of 3,600 mph are more than seven times faster than the Tomahawk guided missiles that were too slow to kill Osama bin Laden at an Afghanistan training camp in 1998. The White House has requested almost $250 million for research into hypersonic technologies which harness shock waves generated by a fast-moving missile to increase its speed further.

U.S. and Pakistan Reached An Agreement To Reinforce Strategic Ties

Pakistan and the United States wrapped up two days of high-level talks on Thursday, with a raft of economic development initiatives, an agreement to hasten deliveries of military hardware and a promise to put their often mistrustful relationship on a new footing.

In a communiqué issued after the talks, the countries informed they would “redouble their efforts to deal effectively with terrorism” and would work together for “peace and stability in Afghanistan.”

Administration officials said Pakistan was likely to get swifter delivery of F-16 fighter jets, naval frigates and helicopter gunships, as well as new remotely piloted aircraft for surveillance missions. But the United States was silent about Pakistan’s most heavily advertised proposal: a civil nuclear agreement similar to the one the Bush administration signed with Pakistan’s archrival, India.

Given Pakistan’s history of selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea, such an agreement would realistically be 10 or 15 years away, a senior administration official said Thursday. Still, the administration was careful not to dismiss the idea out of hand.

“This is a new day,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in greeting Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi. “For the past year, the Obama administration has shown in our words and our deeds a different approach and a different attitude toward Pakistan.”

The “strategic dialogue” was by itself meant to send a message: The administration used the term reserved for the substantive, wide-ranging exchanges it carries on with important countries like China and India. Pakistan and the United States held three such dialogues during the Bush administration.

But last year, Mr. Qureshi asked Mrs. Clinton to upgrade the exchange to the level of foreign minister. On Wednesday, he informed he hoped the two days of higher-level talks would help Pakistan and the United States overcome a history that “did not always enjoy a sunny side.”

Mr. Qureshi said the United States had agreed to put on a fast track some longstanding Pakistani requests for military hardware.

Although Mrs. Clinton deflected a question about civil nuclear cooperation, she said, “We’re committed to helping Pakistan meet its real energy needs.”

Among specific announcements was an agreement for the United States Agency for International Development to help Pakistan upgrade three thermal power plants. The administration said it would try to push through legislation creating so-called reconstruction opportunity zones in Pakistan. And it hopes to set up a fund to stimulate direct foreign investment.

Pakistan’s military campaign against Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley and South Waziristan has improved the tenor of its relationship with Washington. But success on the battlefield cuts both ways for Pakistan, analysts stated. It gives the country’s government in Islamabad a more credible argument for increased military aid. But it also imposes greater expectations from the United States about Pakistan’s counterinsurgency efforts and military cooperation.

“Yes, you get a pat on the back,” informed Bruce O. Riedel, an expert on Pakistan at the Brookings Institution. “But now that you’ve shown you can do something, you’ve got to do more.”

Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan also remains a subject of intense scrutiny in the United States. The Pakistani authorities cooperated with the Central Intelligence Agency to capture the Taliban’s military chief, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. But some analysts question whether the Pakistanis are rounding up other Taliban leaders, including shadow Afghan governors, simply to make sure that Pakistan has leverage in any future political bargaining in Kabul.

Mr. Qureshi insisted that Pakistan wanted Afghanistan to lead this process. “If they feel we can contribute, if we can help, we’ll be more than willing to help,” he informed. “But we leave it to them.”

On this subject, however, administration officials are more interested in hearing from Pakistan’s chief of army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was part of the delegation. General Kayani recently held talks in Islamabad with Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, and the general is viewed as critical to determining the role Pakistan will play.

Of all the raw nerves in the relationship, Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions may be the most sensitive. Islamabad yearns for an agreement with the United States because it would confer legitimacy on Pakistan’s existing program.

But Washington does not formally recognize Pakistan as a nuclear power. The selling of nuclear secrets by the father of its nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and the country’s refusal to allow American investigators to have access to him ensures that this recognition may be a long way off.

“The question is, can you move somewhere toward giving legitimacy to a Pakistani nuclear program?” said Daniel S. Markey, senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Is there space between a civil nuclear deal and just saying ‘no’?”

BAE Systems Hit By Defence Cuts

Orders for BAE’s F-35 fighter planes are likely to be reduced in a time of military budget restraints.

BAE Systems, the biggest manufacturing company in Britain, was dealt a major blow today when the government awarded the first phase of a £4bn contract to build new armoured cars for the British army to America’s General Dynamics. The move jeopardises the future of the firm’s armaments factory in Newcastle and 600 jobs.

The deal is for armoured reconnaissance vehicles to replace Britain’s ageing Scimitars – seen as vulnerable to roadside bombs – using better protection and with added firepower.

General Dynamics had previously said 10,500 UK jobs would be safeguarded or created over the 10-year deal, if it won the contract, and Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, made the point that the US group’s bid contained 73% UK content within the supply chain and the assembly, integration and test facilities at the company’s Defence Support Group at Donnington.

For BAE, which spent £50m over five years developing a contender for the deal, based on upgrading its existing CV90 tank, these are dog days as it faces swingeing defence spending cuts by the US and British governments in the wake of the global banking crisis.

Big-budget US projects have already been axed as the Obama administration curbs military spending, which doubled during the Bush years. Among them are the costly F-22 fighter plane, a new communications satellite, shipbuilding programmes and missile development. Further job losses are inevitable. As BAE derives half its £20bn of annual revenue from the US, this is unwelcome news.

Britain is also gearing up for big cuts, with both of the main political parties preparing to slash defence spending by up to £10bn after the election in May.
Analysts anticipate cuts to the BAE Harrier and Tornado fighter jet fleet, an early phasing out of Nimrod MR2 reconnaissance aircraft, and a reduction in orders for the new US F-35 fighters. Such ruthless cost-cutting means BAE could lose tens of millions in revenue.

“BAE faces a challenging period as government seeks to rein in public spending,” stated Peter Felstead, of Jane’s Defence Weekly. “Plans for new aircraft carriers, warplanes and ships are vulnerable at a time when there is cross-party consensus that military spending is too extravagant.”

The difficult backdrop has not been lost on the City: BAE’s share price is down 20% over 18 months and Goldman Sachs has published a note claiming BAE’s earnings could stagnate until the middle of this decade.

According to Goldman Sachs’ defence analyst David Perry, profits at BAE’s land division look set to halve by 2012 after the US cut funding for several vehicle programmes. Perry said he expected news about the F-35 to get worse. The programme leader, Lockheed, warned recently that it would share the burden among partners, including BAE, after the Pentagon withheld $614m (£410m) in performance fees.

Ed Steed, an analyst at Execution Noble, said BAE was not well positioned to withstand an era of reduced defence spending as it was heavily exposed to so-called platform products: “Big-ticket items such as ships, aircraft and submarines, where the spotlight tends to fall during a defence review.”

“Projects where BAE is involved such as F-35 and Typhoon are far advanced but governments around the world are likely to reduce planned orders or abandon plans to place new [orders] at a time of budgetary restraint,” he informed.

BAE has also suffered a number of setbacks on a second front: competition for new weapons contracts. Today’s news that it had lost the armoured car contract follows last year’s failure to win the $281m US government contract for armoured battlefield vehicles. That deal was clinched at the eleventh hour by its Wisconsin-based rival Oshkosh Defense and was the first time that BAE has suffered a major contract loss in North America since it launched the last phase of its US expansion strategy two years ago. BAE is now the fourth-biggest defence contractor in the US market.

To hedge against uncertainty in the US and UK, BAE is expanding in India, Australia and Saudi Arabia, where defence spending is expected to rise; and it aims to boost its presence in niche product areas such as cyber-security and unmanned aircraft.

When the company’s results were announced in February, Ian King, chief executive, informed he expected combat aircraft to take over from land vehicles as the main driver of growth. He expects land systems to fall 30% by 2012, following contract setbacks, and because of retrenchment as the US and Britain withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan.

But Howard Wheeldon, a strategist at BGC Partners, said he remained positive about BAE. “It is a past master at being able to adapt to changed circumstances. These may be worrying times but the company is well positioned, as it has a diversified product portfolio and international interests,” he informed.

Analysts at Exane BNP Paribas expect “a flat performance over the next couple of years” but note that about 30% of BAE’s income depends on maintenance and support programmes for projects that still have many years to run.

BAE rebutted suggestions that it faces a rocky period ahead, saying: “We have a large order book and programmes such as Typhoon continue to deliver a strong performance. During the year, £3bn of new support contracts were awarded.

“In the US, our high-technology capabilities within our electronics, intelligence and support business continue to be in demand.”

BAE is also battling an image problem, after US and UK bribery and corruption inquiries ended with it paying £255m in fines to the US department of justice (DoJ) after admitting to irregularities over the sale of fighter planes to Saudi Arabia and eastern Europe.

In a court filing, the DoJ claimed that BAE transferred millions to Swiss bank accounts controlled by an agent, with a high probability that a payment would go to a Saudi Arabian official in a position of influence. In the past, there have been allegations that BAE had a £60m slush fund to underpin the Saudi al-Yamamah arms contract, which has been worth £43bn over the past 20 years. BAE has denied the allegations.

In Britain, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) dropped an investigation into BAE’s Saudi business after intervention by the Blair government in 2006. But the company must pay £30m after agreeing to plead guilty to a lesser offence of failing to keep accurate accounting records for its activities in Tanzania.

Although the UK National Audit Office investigated al-Yamamah, the conclusions are shrouded in secrecy. The Ministry of Defence informed: “The report remains sensitive. Disclosure would harm both international relations and the UK’s commercial interests.” Anti-armaments campaigners have accused the government of a cover-up.

King has tried to draw a line under the corruption investigations by stating: “The company regrets and accepts full responsibility for past shortcomings. The firm has systematically enhanced its compliance policies and processes.”

Francis Tusa, of Defence Analysis, informed: “If you ask people what they think of defence companies, they would be extremely cynical and assume that dodgy stuff is going on all the time. Of course, that doesn’t make it right.”

Rita Clifton, chair of the branding agency Interbrand, informed: “No one expects a defence company to be a hearts-and-flowers organisation. Customers are primarily concerned about product quality and service but reputation can be a factor when potential clients are shopping around in a highly competitive marketplace. And image matters in the wider public and political arena. BAE cannot afford to rest on its laurels.”

Conference Showcases Surveillance Technology

Massive helium-filled blimps known as “aerostats” have been a fixture in the skies over the Texas-Mexico border since at least the early 1990s.

Authorities use them to deliver long-term surveillance of illegal immigration and drug-trafficking.

A new company is marketing a smaller, more mobile version of the giant blimps that would mimic the surveillance capability of unmanned aerial vehicles, such as the predator drones used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Overhead Communications unveiled its fleet of aerostats at the Texas Homeland Security Conference at the Convention Center in downtown San Antonio on Wednesday.

Overhead Communications was one of 5,000 representatives of law enforcement, transportation and cyber security officials that attended the conference, which concludes today.

The gathering is a chance for law enforcement agencies to share ideas about border security, terrorism and emergency management, according to officials from the Texas Division of Emergency Management.

But it also was a forum for defense contractors and inventors to showcase the latest in law enforcement gadgetry, such as license plate-recognition technology systems, pickups retrofitted with machine guns and Kevlar siding designed to better withstand the impact of an improvised explosive device.

Officials at the year-old Houston company see their blimps — which can be equipped with a communications network that includes radio, video cameras and Wi-Fi — as a cheaper alternative to satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle surveillance systems. Overhead Communications’ aerostats top off at around $3 million while predator drones have a $4.5 million price tag, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a research group in Alexandria, Va.

“The Texas border is 1,500 miles long, and 80 percent of it is without communication,” stated Rob Campbell, vice president for business development at Overhead Communications. “We can come into an area with nothing and re-establish communications and put a hi-def video camera with infrared capability 2,000 feet in the air for weeks at a time.”

Drones, on the other hand, are only able to stay in the air for around 20 hours before needing to be refueled.

The aerostats developed by Overhead Communications are the latest in a series of ideas from companies looking for new ways to alleviate communication obstacles that often compound emergency-response efforts during natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, Campbell said.

He said his company’s aerostats, which can be deployed in minutes from the back of a pickup, also would be useful for authorities needing to monitor crowded public events such as the Super Bowl from above or for firefighters who wanted to use an infrared camera to pinpoint the best place to attack a blaze.

“Say Hurricane Ike blows down your communication towers,” he informed. “Emergency responders will have to rely on mobile command systems with 40-foot towers.

“If I can take those same systems and put them 500 feet in the air, you can see for 27 miles in every direction and communicate in an area the size of San Antonio.”

Simulators Prepare Soldiers For Real War

The Improvised Explosive Device Battle Drill simulator after being hit by a simulated I.E.D. attack during an exercise at Fort Eustis, Va.

A Humvee bumps along a dirt road fringed by mountains, their snowy peaks glinting in the sun. Rifle shots crackle from a rocky bluff, signaling a Taliban ambush. Suddenly an explosion rocks the vehicle, tossing it from side to side before it bounces to an uneasy stop, smoke billowing into the cab.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Clinton Atwell wearing 3D glasses in an environment simulator.

This is a roadside bombing, Hollywood style. But this is no film set. The Humvee is part of an elaborate simulator that prepares soldiers for one of the most hazardous jobs in Afghanistan today — driving.

Training to defend against the Taliban’s most lethal weapon, the improvised explosive device, or I.E.D., can feel a bit like taking a ride at Disney World these days. Or watching a 3-D movie. Or playing an interactive computer game.

The simulator is just one example of how the Pentagon is trying to harness the high-tech wizardry of the entertainment industry to counter the low-tech bombs, which have killed more American troops in Afghanistan over the last two years than gunfire.

Known as I.E.D. Battle Drill, the system uses amusement-ride hydraulics that can make passengers feel as if they are hitting potholes or buried mines. Screens surrounding the vehicle on three sides display Afghan-like terrain in high-definition video sharp enough to discern rocks on the roadside and leaves on the scrubby bushes.

“This is better than anything I can recreate in the field,” informed Maj. Michael Dolge, a Fort Eustis trainer who experienced several bombs attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think my gunner would have had some unpleasant memories if he rode in it.”
The simulator is just one of several game playing or virtual-reality devices the Defense Department has hustled into operation as I.E.D. casualties have risen.

At Fort Bragg, N.C., and Camp Pendleton, Calif., soldiers and Marines have begun training on a program created by the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California that uses fictional video narratives and a multiplayer computer game.

In one video, an insurgent played by an actor demonstrates how I.E.D.’s are built, planted and detonated; in another, an American soldier describes how his team responded to a bomb attack. The session finishes with a 15-minute interactive computer game in which one team tries to avoid getting blown up by the other.

In another application of gaming technology, Defense Department programmers working in a strip mall near Fort Monroe, Va., have taken daily intelligence reports, surveillance data and satellite images from Iraq and Afghanistan to produce computer-generated simulations of the latest I.E.D. tactics and technology.

The high-quality graphics, which can depict Blackhawk helicopters or sandal-shod insurgents, are generated by a commercially available war-gaming software called Virtual Battle Space 2. Completed simulations are then e-mailed to commanders and intelligence officers around the world.

Mark Covey, who oversees the simulations unit, stated many officers were initially skeptical about his simulations until someone compared an insurgent video posted on the Internet to one of his productions depicting the same attack. They were virtually identical.

The counter-I.E.D. systems are just one part of a broader trend by the military to use virtual reality, 3-D technology and computer game software to train deploying troops and treat combat-scarred veterans.

The firm that helped convert an actor into the creature Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Motion Reality, has created a 3-D virtual reality training program that simulates small-unit combat missions.

Therapists at several military and veterans hospitals are also using a system known as Virtual Iraq to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. The system, based on a computer game called Full Spectrum Warrior, helps patients to re-imagine, with the help of virtual reality goggles and headphones, the sights and sounds of combat experiences as a way of grappling with trauma.

The effectiveness of the new technology is still being studied. But some critics warn that computer games and virtual reality systems used for training are only as effective as their software, meaning that programs that underestimate the creativity of the enemy may leave even the best-trained troops with a false sense of mastery.

But advocates say the new training systems can be easily updated to reflect changing realities on the ground. And they point to other advantages, including that most systems can be transported to the war front.

Trainers say that the I.E.D. Battle Drill’s greatest benefit may be in teaching soldiers to stay alert for unusual details in the landscape that might signal buried bombs or impending ambushes. Those clues could be as obvious as a speeding truck or as subtle as a pile of rocks. Crews that spot those clues and respond are rewarded by moving onto more complex scenarios. Those who do not get blown up.

“The best way to defeat an I.E.D is to find it,” informed Master Sgt. David Richardson, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq who now trains soldiers at Fort Eustis.

Getting blown up is also instructive, trainers say, because it gives soldiers a taste of disorientation that might help them recover faster from a real attack.

“The first reaction is to freeze,” stated Gary Carlberg, training chief for the Joint IED Defeat Organization, or Jieddo, a Pentagon agency. “But if I can build up your threshold through one or two explosions, you won’t freeze and become a target.”

The simulator grew out of the kind of alliance between the military and the entertainment industry that has become more common since 9/11.

At the behest of Jieddo, Richard Lindheim, a former film studio executive and past director of the Institute for Creative Technologies, recruited a team of experts. Cinematographers invented a high-definition camera capable of seamless 360-degree shots. A veteran sitcom writer plotted the training scenarios. Gaming programmers built those scenarios into videos. And a company that has created rides for Universal Studios and Disney manufactured the equipment.

Mr. Carlberg stated: “We’re not going to armor ourselves out of this problem. But if we can, we take the most valuable, flexible resource we have, the human being, and maximize it, that will make a significant difference.”