Ares: A Defense Technology Blog

The Cleos: JASSM

Now making the running for a Cleopatra prize -- awarded by Ares to programs that are terminally snake-bitten -- is the Lockheed Martin Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM). JASSM has been going in fits and starts for years, with runs of reasonable success punctuated by test failures, but the USAF is now getting irritated by the fact that the only thing that JASSM hits 100 per cent of the time is the ground. With reliability at only 58 per cent, even salvoing two missiles at the target only provides an 82 per cent chance of a hit. JASSM  was developed as a low-cost missile, but that objective is rather more than offset if you have to fire two weapons all the time. Moreover, if you don't hit the target you are going to hit something else (probably an orphanage, with JASSM's luck.)

C-Sniper Strikes Again

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has released a solicitation for proposals for its counter-sniper technology called C-Sniper, which we've already written about in this space. Only the agency still isn't saying how it might work. C-Sniper aims to track and target snipers -- with and without telescopic sites and optics -- before they actually shoot, which is a big leap from currently developing technology to track snipers using the sound of muzzle blasts.

Darpa issued a brief announcement about the technology last month and held an industry day May 3. This time, the agency is only saying publicly that the program will have two phases. The first phase will be used to develop the technology and a "fully functional proof of concept system." The second involves the delivery and demonstration of a prototype on a moving vehicle in a "high-clutter environment" filled with false targets. C-Sniper is to be integrated with Darpa's ongoing Crosshairs targeting program, which is being developed by Mustang Technologies in Allen, Texas, and designed to track and intercept bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars fired at vehicles.

As you can imagine, the program has its challenges like how do you identify where fire might come from before it's actually fired?

If you think you've got something that might do the trick, act quick, proposals are due July 9.

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth

Cyborg Moths to Hunt Terrorists

The Times Online has a look at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's efforts to create cyborg moths to spy on terrorists.

Darpa's been looking for years at biological engineering, including building machines that act like animals and insects and using animals and insects in surveillance systems. The cyborg effort is part of Darpa's Hybrid Insect Microelectromechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program and involves injecting computer chips into cocoons. The flesh then grows around the chip, enabling warfighters to control the moth's nervous system remotely. Darpa says because the flesh grows after the chip has been implanted, the tissue heals, creating a "reliable tissue-machine interface." The moths could be flown over suspected terrorists camps to get video and data, presumably without arousing much suspicion.

Rod Brooks, director of the computer science and artificial intelligence lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the newspaper that he expects the cyborg moths to be deployable soon.

“This is going to happen," said Mr Brooks. "It’s not science like developing the nuclear bomb, which costs billions of dollars. It can be done relatively cheaply.”

--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth

High Stakes Contracting

Defense acquisition reform is the buzzkill of defense conferences. Conference attendees are riveted by sessions with titles like "Iraq: The Endgame," and pretty much anything involving UAVs, but panel discussions on streamlining the acquisition process and controlling costs are as likely to put you to sleep as a sleeping pill.

So it is with some trepidation that I introduce a post on defense contracting. It's not sexy, but you should read about it anyway because there are lot of zeros on the checks the U.S. Treasury makes out to Lockheed Martin, Boeing and their friends in the defense industrial complex. Yesterday's post on how the Navy spent $885 million and 13 years building an Advanced SEAL Delivery System that doesn't work is the perfect example of why you should care. In case you missed it, a new GAO report says the ASDS doesn't work because the Navy didn't sensibly manage its contract with Northrop Grumman, assumed most of the responsiblity for what turned out to be a dud and failed to give the contractor any incentive to control costs. Turns out this isn't an isolated problem, according to Federal Computer Week.

Israeli Imager

Elbit Systems announced yesterday that its subsidiary Elop (Elbit Systems Electro-Optics) has sold $50 million worth of Coral-family hand-held thermal imaging systems to the Canadian and Israeli armed forces as well as for additional undisclosed customers. The lightweight (less than 2.5 kg) Coral thermal imagers enable the user to see targets at night at tactical ranges, from either fixed positions or while moving, says Elbit.

--Joris Janssen Lok

Speaking of MRAPs ...

Check out this YouTube video of an Army Buffalo (one of the MRAP designs) surviving an IED blast. It's a two minute video. The money shot is in the last few seconds:

--David Axe

Armchair Generalist Hates MRAP

A defense industry blogger known only as "Armchair Generalist" is one of the few insiders who hates the new blastproof trucks that SecDef Robert Gates has called his number one weapons priority. The military aims to rush as many as 17,000 of the tougher rides to Iraq to protect against IEDs, but A.G. says that's just putting a bandaid on a brain injury:

The guys in the field always want more gear to execute the mission. In the words of Col John Boyd, the military needs to invest in people, ideas, and equipment -- in that order. It's our tendancy to flip that into reverse, not because it's correct but because it's easier. Maybe we ought to be smarter and develop better concepts before defaulting to overly expensive technological solution.

For more, see:

Gates Wants More MRAPs Yesterday
Updating Humvee
Danger Room: Marines 300, Bombers 0

--David Axe

Meteor Milestone

On 22nd May 2007, MBDA conducted the first live test firing in the U.K. of the six-nation Meteor air dominance missile. The event happend on the QinetiQ-managed U.K. Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) Hebrides missile firing range.

The High Altitude Control and Dispersion (C&D) firing was conducted from a Saab Gripen fighter aircraft. This firing is yet another milestone in the European multinational Meteor project and follows on from the lower altitude Air Launched Demonstrator firings conducted in 2006 and a series of seeker data gathering trials completed in early 2007.

Carried out by MBDA in line with the requirements of the Meteor development programme, the purpose of the C&D firing was to test the performance of the missile’s integrated boost, ramjet sustain motor and control systems during high altitude supersonic launch, extended free flight and extensive manoeuvres.

Army "Future" Questioned

Super-reporter Greg Grant has a kickass piece in GovExec about the Army's ambitious but fundamentally flawed Future Combat Systems, a $200-billion networked combination of sensors, robots and new lightly armored ground vehicles that Winslow Wheeler from the Center for Defense Information calls a "money-guzzling fantasy of the wizards of the so-called 'revolution in military affairs.'" Grant argues that FCS grew not out of genuine need for new equipment, but out of "a political battle for taxpayer dollars with the Air Force and Navy in the late 1990s, when the military embraced a questionable vision of warfare fought from a distance with sensors and precision munitions" mounted on thin-skinned, more mobile vehicles. He continues:

The FCS weapons suite is intended to provide soldiers unprecedented knowledge of the location of friendly and enemy forces. This concept is embodied in the Army's new catchphrase: "See first, understand first, decide first and finish decisively." To achieve that level of situational awareness, hundreds of aerial drones would fill the sky above FCS-equipped units, scanning for enemies to be destroyed by long-range missile fire. The entire program is predicated on the belief that unprecedented levels of information will make FCS-equipped units more lethal and more likely to survive.

Sic'em, Spike!

Small, cheap, accurate -– all the words to make a weapon researcher’s heart beat fast. U.S. Navy officials say they have conducted the first successful demonstration –- against a moving target -- of what they contend is the world’s smallest, fire-and-forget, precision guided missile. The Spike, a 5.3 lb., 25-in. long, 2.25-in. diameter missile, used its electro-optical imaging seeker to acquire, track and hit a target moving at 30 mph at a range of over 750 yds. during a test by the Navy’s Air Warfare Center Weapons Div. at China Lake, Calif.