The institute will investigate and evaluate advanced fuels and fuel technologies, fuel systems component development, advance combustor and augmenter designs, advanced fuel properties measurement, fuel system component development and safety, combustion emissions and their integration into advanced aerospace applications.
The institute received its 1st USAF contract for the fuel research program in 2003…
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded a $31 million contract to a team lead by Lockheed Martin to develop a network protocol to improve the confidentiality, integrity, and security of US military networks.
In developing this new protocol, Lockheed Martin’s team will develop router technologies that include strong authentication and self-configuration capabilities to improve security and bandwidth allocation and lower overall life cycle costs for network management.
A decade ago, the US Army turned to the University of Southern California, the gaming industry, and Hollywood to develop virtual reality systems to simulate the battlefield situations and cultural interactions that soldiers would face in deploying overseas. The result was the establishment of the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICF).
The institute uses technologies in artificial intelligence, graphics, and immersion to create interactive simulations that help soldiers not only see the training situation but also interact with virtual soldiers, insurgents, and civilians.
To continue that work, the Army awarded the institute a $78.5 million, 7-year indefinite delivery/ indefinite quantity contract…
The NEXT program is designed to enable revolutionary advances in nitride electronic devices and integrated circuits resulting in their ability to operate at very high frequencies while maintaining extremely favorable voltage breakdown characteristics. DARPA is looking for ways to overcome the limitations of nitride-based electronics technologies, such as gallium nitride (GaN). “GaN: DARPA’s 3-Pronged R&D Strategy” has more on DARPA’s GaN research efforts.
The program aims to develop high-speed, high-power transistors for use in radar and electronic warfare systems…
The US Air Force Academy is having a 3 megawatt solar farm built on its campus in Colorado Springs, CO to provide solar electricity to the educational complex. Currently, all of the academy’s electricity comes from external sources.
USAFA’s 10th Contracting Squadron awarded a $18.3 million contract (FA700-09-F-0023) to Colorado Springs Utilities (CSU) to provide renewable photovoltaic solar electrical energy through construction of the solar farm.
The CSU sent an interoffice memorandum to the Colorado Springs mayor and city council about talks it was having with the USAFA concerning the solar farm…
Wyle Laboratories in Huntsville, AL received a $38.6 million option on a previously awarded contract (HC1047-05-D-4005) to provide support to the U.S. Defense Technical Information Center’s Reliability Information Analysis Center (RIAC). The center is the technical focal point for information, data, analysis, training, and technical assistance in the engineering fields of reliability, maintainability, quality, supportability, and interoperability (RMQSI) for Department of Defense (DoD) military and support systems. The 55th Contracting Squadron, Offutt Air Force Base, manages the contract.
DID has more on Wyle contract and the work of the RIAC…
Penn State University Electro-Optics Center in Freeport, Pa., received an $11.5 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide research, design, development, and delivery of sub-systems for the U.S. Navy’s next-generation radars and Common Data Sensor Architecture (CDSA) program to support Integrated Warfare Systems 2 (IWS 2). The CDSA is a centralized system for collecting input information from a variety of sensors and providing information from 1 group of sensors to another.
The University of California, Los Angeles, received a $7.2 million firm-fixed-price contract to provide family support services for U.S. military personnel being deployed overseas. The services include group level briefings for pre- and post-deployment military and family, individual consultations, skill-building sessions for families, and multi-session family interventions. The services also include consultation to military staff, schools, family, and community on parenting and combating stress, traumatic grief, and other deployment-related stresses.
The contract awarded by the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) is part of the FOCUS Project (Families OverComing Under Stress), which is a resiliency-building program designed for military families and children facing the challenges of combat operational stress during wartime. DID has more on the FOCUS program…
DID has reported extensively on research contracts related to Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors, which offer significantly higher power and performance. Unfortunately, they present manufacturing and cost challenges that have stymied their use in commercial applications.
In May 2005, Compound Semiconductor Magazine offered an excellent overview of the GaN wide-bandgap semiconductors program and DARPA’s goals. Key program objectives include rapid transition of the technology developed into military systems. Other important goals include a “great” improvement in understanding the physical reasons behind device failures and the development of physical models to predict performance, reproducible device and MMIC fabrication processes, and improved thermal management and packaging. Reliability is expected to be a key challenge.
GaN represents an innovation in materials technology. DARPA’s approach adds innovative procurement strategies, via a 3-pronged approach that aims to speed the development of GaN-based microelectronics…
Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and the United States Air Force have signed an agreement to advance research into hypersonic (Mach 5 or higher) flight. The 8-year program has been established as a Project Arrangement under an existing research and development agreement between Australia and the USA, and the USD $54 million Hypersonic International Flight Research Experimentation (HIFiRE) project is one of the largest collaborative ventures to be undertaken between the two nations. It will have obvious implications for projects like DARPA’s FALCON, both as a boost to its ambitions for lower-cost satellite launches and an obvious feed-in to spaceplane projects (see our FALCON HTV Focus Article). Hypersonics also has potential implications for missile projects like the $120 million RATTLRS contract, not to mention the dual-combustion ramjet approach of HyFly et. al.
With the project underway, the latest news includes some related testing by Aerojet under HyFly/RATTLRS, and also of a combined cycle turbine-scramjet engine.
