Ares: A Defense Technology Blog

Army Command Surges to Equip Iraqis

The U.S. Army's Security Assistance Command is conducting a surge of its own trying to get equipment to Iraqi and Afghani soldiers, according to Richard Alpaugh, deputy to the commander at USASAC at Fort Belvoir, Va. Alpaugh told conference attendees at ComDef West 2007 in San Diego yesterday that his office expects $12 billion to $15 billion in foreign military sales each year for the next several years as a result of supplemental spending bills. That's up from $3 billion to $4 billion a year during peacetime.

Robot Wingman

Despite cuts to some of the unmanned components of the Army’s ambitious Future Combat Systems in the 2008 budget, the service is driving on with development of the systems and procedures for controlling aerial drones from manned helicopters. The idea, says Colonel Charles Bush, FCS chief for the Army’s force development division, is to eventually afford helicopter pilots the same “first-look” advantage that unmanned air and ground vehicles already give to ground troops. “We’re trying to use robots to be point men.”

Drones trailblazing for choppers might help the military avoid the kinds of fatal shoot-downs that have plagued the U.S. forces in Iraq in recent months. The Army and Marines lost nine helicopters in a six-week period in January and February.

My Question for Admiral Mark Fox

I had the opportunity to participate yesterday morning in a bloggers' round table conference call with Rear Admiral Mark Fox, Communications Division Chief, Strategic Effects, MNF-I. I asked him what technology he had that was helping him do his job.

His answer: YouTube.

Fox was quick to promote the work his unit is doing getting the word out using Web 2.0 rage YouTube.

OBE, Admiral Fox! I wrote about your YouTube page two weeks ago! ;-)

But, seriously, Fox said one of the problems they were trying to solve with their YouTube site was video rolling off of their other news pages after only one news cycle. There were certain stories they wanted to highlight. They want to allow middle America access to interesting video from Iraq, like Predator videos and video of night vision technology at work, Fox said.

Japanese Abroad

"The Japanese Cabinet approved a two-year extension of Japan's air force mission in Iraq after it expires in July, the foreign minister announced Friday," the Associated Press reports:

Tokyo has been airlifting U.N. and coalition personnel and supplies into Baghdad and other Iraqi cities from nearby Kuwait since earlier last year as part of efforts to support reconstruction in Iraq.

The deployment involves just four Lockheed Martin C-130s, compared to scores of similar airlifters provided by the U.S. and British militaries. But for Japan, even this modest deployment is a big deal. "The Iraq mission is part of Japan's bid to boost its international profile," the AP story continues. But it's more complicated than that. In fact, Japan has been quite media-shy about its contributions to the Iraq occupation. I was briefly embedded with the Australian troops who provided security for the Japanese Army contingent building a power plant in southern Iraq; the Aussies told me that even they weren't allowed on the Nipponese compound, so of course I'd never get anywhere near it.

Red Flag for the Union Jack

The British government is being warned that it needs to increase financial and policy support for the UK aerospace sector, or risk seeing it wither in the medium-to-long term. While industry is benefiting from a commercial boom, as well as production runs of key defense programs, it faces significant threats in the longer term, warns Chris Geoghegan, president of the Society of British Aerospace Companies. Geoghegan, who is also a group executive director with BAE Systems, was addressing the SBAC annual conference March 29. Geoghegan is calling for increased government support in terms of research and technology expenditure. He also wants to see the value of the sector better reflected in overall government policy.

--Douglas Barrie

Fighter Four-Ship Rushes ... to Fort Worth

The Netherlands Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) in Amsterdam is delaying the official opening of its Fighter Four-Ship networked simulation environment until September. The four-cockpit system, designed to replicate a four-ship of Lockheed Martin F-16 or F-35 fighters, was set up in September 2006 and was to be officially opened around this time.

Keeping RGB Straight

A big part of life is getting things done with limited resources. This is especially true in combat. Every commanding officer would like to have more assets at his disposal. Manpower is another obvious limitation in combat. At the most basic level, commanders usually want, in a perfect world, more brigades at their disposal. Sometimes the personnel shortage comes in important specialties. For example, I wrote the other day about the limited number of maintainers TRANSCOM has.

Taiwan Caves

As far as China is concerned, the democratic island nation of Taiwan, which acheived independence from the communist Chinese mainland in the wake of a post-World War civil war -- is no more than a rebellious province. The eventual retaking of Taiwan has long been the engine driving Chinese military modernization. But until recently, the mainland lagged behind Taiwan in the most critical categories of weapons including fighter jets and air-to-air missiles, thanks to the Taiwan's quiet alliance with the U.S. and steady supplies of the most modern weapons. But now Taiwanese legislative squabbles threaten to derail those supplies, leaving the island vulnerable to attack.

Wanted: Biometrics

Carnegie Mellon has announced a new partnership with the National Biometric Security Project to develop technologies to identify and track terrorists and criminals. The National Biometric Security Project is a nonprofit testing research and analysis organization based in Washington, D.C., that is trying to help government and the private sector beef up their biometric security. The Project's laboratory is in West Virginia. One item on the list that is particularly interesting is biometric encryption. Instead of just scanning a person's iris or taking their fingerprint and then storing that information in a database. The scan and/or fingerprint could be encrypted with some other identifer such as a PIN number or account number. Encryption adds a layer of redundancy to biometrics that reduces the rate of false matches.

UAV Pilots Cleared for Takeoff

The Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News has unearthed a Federal Aviation Administration report setting out guidelines for the medical certification of unmanned aircraft pilots operating in U.S. skies. As Secrecy News points out, it may seem odd that unmanned aircraft need pilots, but they do. These pilots are just on the ground somewhere. Of course, because they're on the ground, UAV pilots don't have to pass quite the level of rigorous physical screening as their colleagues in the skies. The report says FAA officials believe UAVs offer an opportunity for disabled persons to pilot aircraft. Here's what the FAA concluded after researching the issue: