Bruce Willis missed…
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Kirkland AFB, NM recently gave the University of Hawaii of Honolulu, Hawaii a modified contract for $8 million for the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (PanSTARRS) multi-year program. The initial effort to develop and deploy a telescope data management system was awarded via a Grant to the University of Hawaii (considered a Minority Institute) and “as the various phases progressed, the Air Force determined that a Cooperative Agreement would be the more appropriate instrument as now we would be substantially involved.” At this time all $8 million has been committed (FA9451-06-2-0338, P00002).

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 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?

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Merry Xmas, K-Dog!
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The global proliferation of advanced, ultra-quiet diesel electric submarines has prompted a number of responses around the globe, from initial-stage efforts to mimic a shark’s senses in the USA, to the most obvious route of using more powerful active sonars. In Western countries, concerns have been expressed that these sonars may disorient or scare marine mammals, leading to decompression sickness or disruption of their biological sonar navigation systems. This has led to (unsuccessful) lawsuits aimed at curtailing submarine exercises by Western navies.

In December 2007, USN Rear Adm. Lawrence S. Rice, director of Naval Operations Environmental Readiness, discussed some of the measures that are being taken to investigate the issue, and also mitigate any possible effects. In January, a court battle erupted over undersea training off the coast of San Diego, CA, throwing the issue back into the limelight….

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Over the Christmas holidays, the NY Times ran an interesting story that talked about experts and innovation – especially the paradox that more experts can produce less innovation. The results of the following experiment may provide a clue, and offer a useful reminder to our industry as a whole as it attempts to communicate with the broader public:

“Elizabeth Newton, a psychologist, conducted an experiment on the curse of knowledge while working on her doctorate at Stanford in 1990. She gave one set of people, called “tappers,” a list of commonly known songs from which to choose. Their task was to rap their knuckles on a tabletop to the rhythm of the chosen tune as they thought about it in their heads. A second set of people, called “listeners,” were asked to name the songs.

Before the experiment began, the tappers were asked how often they believed that the listeners would name the songs correctly. On average, tappers expected listeners to get it right about half the time. In the end, however, listeners guessed only 3 of 120 songs tapped out, or 2.5 percent. The tappers were astounded. The song was so clear in their minds; how could the listeners not “hear” it in their taps?”

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir, VA is awarding contracts to find new anti-viral compounds that are effective against hemorrhagic fever viruses, a class that includes Ebola et. al.

DID would caution readers that drug development is a long and expensive process ($100 million is often mentioned as the table stakes to get a drug through approvals), and that promising therapies don’t all make it through the research and testing stages. Even so, we think the research is interesting, and worth our time to share and explain. The latest award is contract to Alnylam for the RNA interference approach, which will be researched in the USA and Canada. DID explains that, and more, below…

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Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) in San Diego, CA received a $9.1 million one-year follow-on contract under previously awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, cost-reimbursement contract (N66001-04-D-2504) to exercise an option to provide support for the Naval Health Research Center (NHRC), San Diego, to include studies of symptoms, morbidity, hospitalizations, reproductive outcomes, mortality, and other health-related issues among service members and Department of Defense beneficiary populations.

The The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine has also received awards under this contract for this purpose; the original 2-year contract included three 1-year options, and this award represents exercising of the 2nd option year. The cumulative potential value of the contract, if the third option is exercised, is $45 million. Work will be performed in San Diego, CA (90%) and at NHRC Detachment at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio (10%), and is expected to be complete July 2008. The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, CA issued the contract.

DID covered evolving US anti-submarine warfare strategy back in 2005, including the growing importance of dealing with super-quiet diesel-electric submarines in shallow-water littorals.

In response, one of the early-stage Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) approaches involves thinking entirely outside the sonar box. We talk about “submariner dolphins” – but maybe the creature they really need to emulate is the shark. Now a recent contract indicates that the US military is making real progress toward that goal…

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Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) announced a federal investment of more than C$ 48.8 million (about $45 million) for 29 new projects under the Chemical, Biological, Radiological-Nuclear and Explosives (CBRNE) Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI). These projects will address diverse requirements such as the development of more rapid, accurate and portable tools to detect chemical, biological and radiological agents, the fast-track development of an antiviral drug against Avian influenza, and the enhancement of decision-making support tools that assist the first responder and national security communities in coordinating a more efficient response to CBRNE incidents.

Canadian government departments and agencies working on this round of projects include DRDC, Department of National Defence, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Environment Canada, Health Canada, National Microbiology Laboratory, National Research Council of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada, and Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Projects funded under this round include…

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US ORNL laser test
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Readers who follow the tech press may be familiar with the concept of quantum computing. Computers use binary bits: on/off, yes/no, represented by 0 or1. A quantum bit, or qubit, can be 1, or 0… or both. Whereas 111 = 7 in binary, and each entry is a choice among all the possibilities in the number of binary digits, 3 qubits can hold all 8 possibilities (0-7), which means you can do calculations on all of them at once. The more qubits used, the more computation, so 32 qubits theoretically gets you 2 to the 32nd power computations (about 4.3 billion) at once – much more power than conventional computing, and it keeps on rising exponentially. It’s worth noting that quantum computing has limits; they are not fully understood yet, but have been shown to exist at the theoretical level. So far, all we can say is that certain kinds of problems will be solved much, much more quickly. The uses of such a system for searching large domains of information, of cracking codes, or creating codes, or running simulations that include the quantum level as a number of modern physical and medical science applications do, are clear. As an additional benefit, quantum cryptography methods benefit from quantum principles whereby eavesdropping is not only incredibly difficult, it will create noticeable interference.

Here’s a good introductory primer written in 2000 A.D. at Caltech, plus a more technical Wikipedia article and an extensive set of resources at Cambridge University UK’s Center for Quantum Computing.

The USA’s DARPA is interested, of course. A DARPA Quantum Network became fully operational on October 23, 2003 in BBN’s laboratories, running the world’s first Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) network using 24×7 quantum cryptography to provide unprecedented levels of security for standard Internet traffic flows. DARPA’s “Quantum Information Science & Technology” program lists as a completed effort and explored a number of facets of quantum computing and associated technological leaps, but its “High Productivity Computing Systems” effort includes some quantum related efforts and appear to be ongoing. So are the contracts…

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The Department of Defense Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) is a multi-agency Department of Defense program that supports research teams whose efforts intersect more than one traditional science and engineering disciplines. They’re especially interested in efforts where cross-fertilization can accelerate research progress, hasten the transition of basic research findings to practical applications, further key infrastructure such as research instrumentation development, or just help to train students in science and/or engineering in areas of importance to the US DoD.

In April 2007, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research announced the FY 2007 competition MURI awards, which will fund 10 awards to to 29 academic institutions, totaling about $60 million over 5 years. MURI awards are typically larger and longer in duration than traditional awards, with a 3-year base period plus a 2-year option contingent upon both availability of appropriation funds and satisfactory research progress. Topics ranged from “Dynamic Decision making in complex task environments: Principles and neural mechanisms” to “Biologically-Inspired Flight for Micro Air Vehicles” and many points in-between; this PDF file contains the entire list. Winners included teams at:

• Boston University, MA
• Brown University, RI
• University of Colorado
• George Mason University, VA
• Harvard University, MA
• University of Michigan
• Northwestern University, IL
• Princeton University, NJ
• Stanford University, CA
• University of Virginia
  
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A JIN to make IEDs vanish?

Ionatron in Tucson, AZ received a $9.8 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to fund the development of an advanced Ultra Short (femtosecond – 10^-15)Pulse Laser, physics modeling and experiments related to laser guided energy effects (i.e. Laser Induced Plasma Channel) requirements, a transportable demonstrator, and effects testing. This contract was not competitively procured by the energetics specialists at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, IN (N00164-07-C-8901). See also Ionatron release.

Ionatron has done previous work on an IED land mine neutralized called the JIN, as well as nonlethal and lethal short-range energy weapons based on its technology. Work will be performed in Tucson, AZ (95%); Los Alamos, NM (3%); and Urbana, IL (2%), and is expected to be complete by April 2009. The contract includes technical development support from Los Alamos National Laboratories in Los Alamos, NM; and the University of Illinois in Champaign Urbana, IL. Ionatron also has a strategic development agreement with DRS.

UPDATE: WIRED’s Danger Room also reports, with background links re: Ionatron and their JIN.

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