• Defense diet: Pentagon chief Gates opposes recommendation of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility to slash the defense budget [PDF] by $100 billion over 5 years and apply the savings to deficit reduction.

• GlobalPost covers ISAF’s pre-winter push on the ground in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the UK hands over command of Kandahar Airfield, with 30,000 personnel, in southern Afghanistan to a US commander.

• Tel Aviv University scientist Fernando Patolsky’s team thinks they have an explosives detector that’s better than bomb-sniffing dogs. The USA, which seems to be looking for a bomb-sniffing, all-terrain golf cart with arms, might want to pay attention.

• Artificial Intelligence guru Douglas Hofstadter discusses his latest book with WIRED.

• Britain takes delivery of its 7th C-17A heavy aerial transport.

• Turkish ultimatum: Turkey wants a leading role in the NATO missile defense system in exchange for allowing radars to be placed on its territory.

• Research and Markets: German military spends 1/3rd of its $43.5 billion defense budget on procurement of military hardware.

• French cabinet shakeup could boost efforts to modernize military, expand ties with UK. Former prime minister Alain Juppé is the new minister of defense.

• New French blast-resistant Aravis VBHP vehicles arrive in Afghanistan [in French, w. video].

• Kaman Corp., a Bloomfield, CT-based maker of components for the military and commercial aviation markets, is offering $100 million worth of 3.25% convertible notes due 2017.

• US universities weigh in on the direction of, and trends in, US defense research as it applies to them.

• Packing Aid: The US is expected to offer Pakistan $2 billion in military aid during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit this week.

• No Tweet Zone: Israel is banning the use of social media sites while soldiers are on base to reduce security leaks.

• HawkerBeechcraft AT-6C light attack turboprop aircraft finish Operational Assessment testing with USAF and Air National Guard pilots at Davis-Monthan AFB, AZ. See also corporate release [PDF]. Meanwhile, the corresponding LAAR program’s status remains very uncertain.

• Up to $249 million to Raytheon to remanufacture, overhaul, and repair equipment for the USMC Logistics Command.

• ATK gets $67 million contract to supply AAR-47 Missile Warning System weapon replaceable assemblies – which include optical sensors, control indicators, and computer processors – for helicopters and transport aircraft.

• Blissed Out: People in the US military are more satisfied at work than their private sector counterparts.

DARPA’s VIRAT

Updates re: Kitware’s win. (Sept 1/10)

The proliferation of UAVs and fighters equipped with stabilized, high-magnification video pods and imaging radars has a number of corollary consequences. Bandwidth has become a key battlefield constraint. Specialized reconnaissance fighter aircraft are a dead concept. And some poor analyst has to sift through the video tsunami at the other end, in order to find items of interest.

The USA is using a number of approaches to help deal with the flood, and one unconventional approach involves a DARPA project called VIRAT (Video Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool). It doesn’t recognize faces, perform before/after analysis, or rely on rewinds. Instead, it aims to distinguish certain types of behaviors, so it can provide alerts to intelligence operatives or ground forces during live operations.

• The VIRAT Concept
• Contracts & Key Events
• Additional Readings
  Continue Reading… »

US Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic in Charleston, SC recently issued cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery /indefinite-quantity, multiple award contracts to 7 universities, who will compete for task orders. Up to $30 million may be requested over the base year and 5 option years, in exchange for ”...technical and maintenance services to obtain analytical and technical support services, and research and development efforts from undergraduate and graduate students and faculty… in support of advanced research and development projects on behalf of multiple customers in the South East region to include, but not limited to, SPAWAR Atlantic.”

These educational institutions will compete for the task orders under the terms and conditions of the awarded contract. Work will be performed in Charleston, SC (40%), Norfolk, VA (30%), and New Orleans, LA (30%). Work is expected to be complete in September 2011, and could continue until September 2015 if all options are exercised. The multiple award contracts were competitively procured by full and open competition via the SPAWAR e-Commerce Central website, with 8 offers received. The 7 winners were:

• Clemson University in Clemson, SC (N65236-10-D-6834)
• Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA (N65236-10-D-6835)
• Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA (N65236-10-D-6836)
• University of New Orleans in New Orleans, LA (N65236-10-D-6837)
• University of South Alabama in Mobile, AL (N65236-10-D-6838)
• University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC (N65236-10-D-6839)
• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Institution in Blacksburg, VA (N65236-10-D-6840)

Four teams get up to $100 million in DARPA funding to develop superfast supercomputers. (Aug 6/10)

The US Department of Defense (DoD) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) was set up in 1992 to modernize DoD’s supercomputing capabilities. The HPCMP was assembled out of a collection of small high performance computing departments run by the services, each with supercomputing capabilities independent of the others.

The HPCMP brings these capabilities together. The program provides supercomputer services, high-speed network communications, and computational science expertise that enables the DoD labs to develop new weapons systems, prepare US aircraft for overseas deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, and assist long-term weather predictions to plan humanitarian and military operations throughout the world…

• Chinese Exercises: China is conducting major air defense exercises in Shandong and Henan provinces involving more than 10,000 troops from the naval and army aviation units and land-based air defense forces, as well as 100 aircraft, including the J-10 fighter.

• How Many Is ‘Some’?: Boeing plans to keep only “some” of the employees when it moves its C-130 AMP and B-1B bomber modernization programs from Long Beach to Oklahoma City over the next 2 years to cut costs.

• Deeper Cuts: QinetiQ, formerly the state-owned UK Defense Research Agency, plans to cut 325 jobs, most of them at the firm’s Boscombe Down military aircraft testing facility, on top of 391 layoffs announced in July.

• Off-Limits: The 3,500-strong French army continent in Afghanistan is off-limits in terms of budget cuts, says French defense minister.

• Mantracker UK: TV show leads to a personal education from a Canadian cowboy for pre-deployment British troops.

• Bloodhound supersonic car unveiled. No, it won’t deploy to any front lines. But its driving force is an RAF Wing Commander. And it’s a freakin’ supersonic car! ‘Nuff said.

• It’s the human factor. British commando hit 3 times, continues to lead engagement and evacuates his wounded over 4+ hours. Just a reminder that the gear we cover isn’t everything – though Lt. Anrude is pretty chuffed about his helmet…

• When You Assume… : Boston University professor and former US Army colonel challenges assumptions of the US defense establishment in new book.

JHU/APL photo

Over $300M in missile defense related work. (July 30/10)

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory works closely with the US military on a range of research topics. As a Navy University Affiliated Research Center, these capabilities have been established and maintained at the JHU/APL since the 1940s, when the proximity-fused shell was developed for fleet defense. More recent examples of their involvement include the AEGIS system’s successful intercepts of ballistic missile targets using SM-3 missiles, successful OPEVAL and transition to industry of the APL-conceived Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC), the Littoral Warfare Advanced Development project, artificial arm research, engineering issues around underwater launches from SSGN stealth strike submarines, the Precision Engagement Transformation Center, space-based laser communications, the Global Information Grid (GIG), and more.

JHU/APL has received several billion dollars in contracts since 2002…

• Work without Pay?: The US DoD is warning that it might run out of money to pay US troops if Congress fails to pass a $33 billion supplemental defense spending bill before its August recess.

• India’s “Project 75I” looks to add 6 submarines, reach out to the private sector, as its fleet ages and its “Project 75” Scorpene submarines remain years behind.

• Bargain Basement Prices? A Citigroup analyst says that stock prices of major US defense firms, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Gumman, and Raytheon, are undervalued given the expected growth in the global defense market. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion; not everybody agrees.

• Heart of Darkness: France’s Thales to provide the Democratic Republic of Congo with PRC-6809 multiband inter/intra team radios and TRC 3700 HF tactical radios under a US-funded program.

• RIA Novosti provides an update re: Russia’s plans for its 5th generation PAK-FA fighter.

• Boeing to assemble Antonov’s AN-124 super-heavy transports? We tend to doubt it.

• The UK government names General David Richards as the next Chief of Defense Staff, taking over from Air Chief Marshall Jock Stirrup, effective October 2010.

• Beyond the Roomba: iRobot, a Bedford, MA-based company that makes the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, looks to clean up in the market for military robots. Check out DID’s coverage of the company.

• Shipshape Midshipmen: The US Naval Academy awards contract to Vend Natural to provide vending machines with healthy snacks at the school. Obesity costs the US military $1 billion annually in medical costs. Hear that, Private Pyle?

Bruce Willis missed…

Kirkland AFB, NM recently entered into a cooperative effort with the University of Hawaii of Honolulu, Hawaii under the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) multi-year program.

PanSTARRS will address numerous science applications ranging from the structure of the Solar System to the properties of the Universe of the largest scales. It will also be able to detect and catalog large numbers of earth-orbit crossing asteroids, or near earth objects (NEO) that present a potential threat to mankind. That last component to the mission is especially intriguing, as there is a long history of partial efforts in this direction within the US and elsewhere. So, where does this award fit in?

• PanSTARRS and its Predecessors [updated]
• Contracts & Key Events [updated]
• Additional Readings [updated]
  Continue Reading… »

Carnegie Mellon has long been one of the USA’s best universities for computer science, and was well known in those circles long before Prof. Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture made it more broadly famous around the world. Platforms like Alice are gaining wide traction for teaching computer science, and their Capability Maturity Model for software development has become a certification goal for many defense industry systems integrators. On the security side, their Software Engineering Institute’s Computer Emergency Response (CERT) group remains one of top public resources in the world for computer security, and their CyLab is a multi-disciplinary cybersecurity education and research center, involving 6 colleges from Carnegie Mellon, over 50 faculty, and over 130 graduate students.

The SEI was established in 1984 at Carnegie Mellon University as a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) dedicated to advancing the practice of software engineering and improving the quality of systems that depend on software. Their CMMI defines 5 levels of proficiency under a Total Quality Management approach; most commercial organizations are at Level 1 or Level 2. Through its sponsor, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, the SEI carries out its mission by focusing on software engineering management and technical practices…