AUV Fest 2007 Set to be Largest Ever Maritime UV Demonstration

BAE’s Talisman

Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City (NSWC PC) is busy preparing to host the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Performance Demonstration, called AUV Fest, on June 4-16, 2007. These events started in 1997, and are hosted at 18 month intervals or so. NSWC PC’s AUV Fest 2007 Coordinator Phil Bernstein said that this AUV Fest is expected to draw more than 100 teams from government, industry, academia, and foreign military, bringing in excess of 80 unmanned vehicles equipped with a variety of sensor packages. He believes this will be the world’s largest-ever in-water unmanned systems demonstration.

Underwater mines will be a particular focus of AUV 2007, and cooperative behavior will be another area of special interest. the center of operations will be conducted from NSWC PC’s Littoral Warfare Research Facility, but would also involve coordination with multiple facilities located throughout Naval Support Activity Panama City. AUV 2007 will operate from the Joint Gulf Test Range; there will be a total of 14 operational areas in St. Andrews Bay and the Gulf of Mexico involved in deploying and testing Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUVs), Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs).” See US Navy Newsstand release.

EDA Sets Out Long Term “Vision” for Europe’s Defense Base

The EU’s European Defence Agency recently released a “Long-Term Vision report” intended to serve as a compass for defence planners over the next twenty years. The report was the product of 11 months of study involving officials and experts from governments, defense bodies, academia and industry across Europe, and was debated by the EDA Steering Board which consists of the Defence Ministers of the Agency’s 24 participating Member States and the European Commission.EDA head Javier Solana:

“Given the lead times typically involved in developing defence capability, decisions we take, or fail to take, today will affect whether we have the right military capabilities, and the right capacities in Europe’s defence technological and industrial base, in the third decade of this century…”

Against Solana’s speech, we offer the Jane’s Group’s description of their October 10, 2006 conference “Europe – Policies. Budgets. Markets“:

TFD Group Transformation for Effective Sustainment Conference

Today’s edition of DID is rather foreshortened, as I’ve just returned from the “Transformation for Effective Sustainment” conference in Monterey, California. DID has consistently covered issues like the emergence of through-life support contracts in Britain, maintenance overhangs and impending budgetary shortfalls, et. al. over the past year. The influence these trends exert on military procurement will continue to rise in the coming year.

The Tools for Decision Group’s conference speakers were:

ELROB 2006: German Military Sponsors Eurobots Event

Wiesel DOV: air-portable
UGV carrier/ controller
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America’s rapid development and fielding of land robots, as well as the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, are inspiring serious interest across the Atlantic. A Rheinmetall news release touting its multiple entries led us to the European Land Robots Exhibition (ELROB) 2006 site. The event had been held in May 15-18, 2006 in Hammelburg, Germany by the German Armed Forces. It was designed to provide an overview of the European state-of-the-art in the field of UGVs, UGV carriers, self-driving vehicles, et. al., and included a number of entries from commercial firms and universities including QinetiQ’s battle-proven TALON.

US Army Awards for Top 10 Inventions of 2005

Technical innovation is present in all militaries, but America’s combination of do-it-yourself types, large defense budgets, and a gadget-happy national character makes it particularly fertile ground. Now add a global war and its challenges, plus a defense sector with a strong small business component made up of ex-military types. The overall innovation transmission belt may not be as tight or as effective as Israel’s or Singapore’s, but the scale of the US defense establishment more than compensates in terms of the sheer number produced.

Adoption, of course, is another matter. One way to improve it is to raise the profile of sucessful innovations through awards. Along those lines, the US Army recently recognized some special innovators by naming its “Top 10 inventions of 2005,” a list that should be of interest to many militaries around the world.

It includes…

US Missile Defense Agency In the Public Eye

The stated mission of the Missile Defense Agency is to field a layered missile defense system that integrates land, sea, and air-based missile defenses to protect the U.S. homeland, deployed troops, and America’s friends and allies. They seek to create systems that will defend against all types of ballistic missiles in their boost phase; during their mid-course flight, normally outside of the Earth’s atmosphere; and as they descend toward their target. The goal is to have several cracks at shooting down enemy missiles in various stages of flight, as well as to hedge against an accidental ballistic missile launch.

The MDA recently had something of a public event in which it showed reporters et. al. some of its systems, explained its mission, and ran a simulation at the 4th Annual U.S. Missile Defense Conference here March 20, 2006. Having said that, the Project On Government Oversight notes that the Department of Defense Inspector General is having problems auditing the $10 billion a year program because MDA has been flouting DOD policies on document access.

Fuel & Energy Issues Continue to Get Spotlight in US Military

Sticker shock

Following our reports today covering the USA’s recent purchase of $3.15 billion worth of various fuels and almost $230 million worth of electricity over the past week, it seems like a fuller picture is in order. A CNN online article notes that according to the Defense Energy Support Center, the U.S. military consumed 144.8 million barrels of fuel in 2004, spending $6.7 billion. In 2005, it consumed only 128.3 million barrels, but spent $8.8 billion. For 2006, the energy support center estimates the military will need 130.6 million barrels and pay more than $10 billion.

Fears of shortages after Hurricane Katrina gave the issue even more urgency, and set in motion a cascade of events from Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England’s September 2005 fuel conservation memo, to by a December 2005 directive asking all defense facilities to cut their energy consumption and increase the use of renewable energy sources. The goal is reduce energy consumption by 2% each year, while increasing renewable energy use to 7.5% of total demand by 2013 and 25% by 2025.

B-52H: gas guzzler

There are certain to be procurement-related implications from these moves up and down he chain. Re-engining the USA’s 1950s-era B-52 bombers was previously dismissed as not worth it, but odds are pretty good that it will happen in the new climate. DID’s March 17, 2006 “Energy Conservation Moving Up Pentagon’s Agenda” article describes a number of other initiatives that are already underway, excerpts and links to a key report from the US Army Corps of Engineers covering future military sustainability, and offers (updated) information about the Pentagon’s upcoming inter-agency Energy Conversation events at the end. We enjoyed seeing Rep. Bartlett’s [R-MD] office quote and reference that article in the invitation to former CIA director R. James Woolsey’s upcoming talk.

Energy Conservation Moving Up Pentagon’s Agenda

NAB Coronado parking

DID has covered contracts that begin to illustrate the US military’s massive requirement for fuel, and also noted measures like wind power installations, the US Navy’s alternative energy projects, R&D efforts like camouflage solar structure surfaces from Konarka, Solar Integrated, et. al., the installation of fuel cells, and more. And how about this solar parking lot? Meanwhile, advanced green technologies like hybrid drive vehicles offer both fuel economy and stealth benefits in combat, a significant plus in the urban warfare scenarios that appear to be such a big part of future wars. The truth is that the military can’t live without fuel, but every gallon of it is both a logistics burden and a financial burden.

While some military items cannot realistically be converted, every conservation success or renewable energy conversion within the military’s jurisdiction makes it more deployable to the field, and more self-sufficient once there. Now add the fact that diversified “green infrastructure” lowers vulnerability to the kind of “system disruption” attacks one sees in Iraq, and the military/ security benefits become compelling. That means the military will be willing to invest in these technologies even when the dollars and cents case alone may be in question. It’s a trend that has already started… and it’s about to pick up speed.

AGM-154 JSOW Wins US DoD Acquisition Award

JSOW-A: Not confetti…
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The USA’s AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW) precision glide-bomb has proven to be popular with the US DoD as well as foreign buyers. Indeed, the program has gone so well that the U.S. Department of Defense presented Raytheon’s JSOW program with its highest acquisition honor in November 2005. The David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award is given to civilian and military organizations that have made highly significant contributions or demonstrated exemplary innovations and best practices in the defense acquisition process.

Block II JSOW manufacturing began in FY 2006, maintaining all standoff and survivability capabilities but costing less.

Future Combat Systems: Linux Inside?

“I pwned the enemy!”

The US Army’s program manager for the $120+ billion Future Combat Systems Brigade Combat Team was recently speaking in Fort Lauderdale, FL at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual winter conference. He said they want a common computing environment throughout FCS’s myriad vehicles, flying UAVs, UGV ground robots, sensors et. al.

Maj. Gen. Charles Cartwright added that Linux running on Intel-based computers seems to provide the best common operating environment and central processing unit for computers in FCS, as it works best with the service’s current and future applications.

Federal Computer Weekly has the report.