Armed with Science | Providing You Information on Military Science and Technology

When Minutes Matter Most

Filed under Technology, Videos by jtozer on May 3, 2013 at 7:36 am {no comments}

The Naval Research Laboratory supported both the 2009 and 2013 Presidential Inaugurations with a technology called CT-Analyst, developed by researchers in the Laboratory for Computational Physics and Fluid Dynamics.

In the event of a chemical, biological, or radiological incident, CT-Analyst is designed to provide first-responders with a tool that can provides accurate, instantaneous, three-dimensional predictions of chemical, biological, & radiological agent transport in urban settings.

Video provided by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory YouTube Channel

CT-Analyst can provide answers to first responders in approximately 0.05 seconds versus computational fluid dynamics models, which can take one to two hours to run per scenario. CT-Analyst also provides more detailed information, quicker, and with better results than industry accepted “Puff/Plume” models that take several minutes to run.

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Discovering DARPA

Filed under Featured, Technology by jtozer on May 2, 2013 at 7:19 am {no comments}

(Graphic photo provided by DARPA)

If you’re familiar with the advancements in science and technology in any way, chances are you’ve heard a thing or two about the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. You might know them better by their buzzworthy acronym DARPA.

Ah, DARPA.

Mother of the cheetah robot. Creator of magnificent stealth machines. Problem solving with science so spectacular it brings science fiction to life in front of our very eyes. Yes, this agency is one that makes my life – all our lives, really – more exciting. As a science journalist, the word DARPA is to me what the word Enterprise is to a Star Trek convention: immediately interesting and intrinsically on topic.

But for as much as I love the robotastic DARPA, there are a lot of people who don’t really know what the agency is, or what they do.

That, my friends, is about to change.

Surprising satellite was surprising. Also, frankly, pretty neat looking, too.

Let’s start with a little bit of history. In 1957, the Soviet Union surprised the world with their launch of Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial Earth satellite. Shortly after that (in 1958), President Eisenhower founded the Advanced Research Projects Agency – what we now know as DARPA. It’s mission? To be at the forefront of scientific and technological development. Basically, he wanted to make sure that there would be no more, ahem, surprises.

Basically, this institution was designed to put the government in a position where they would be seeking and exploring science and technology, rather than learning about it second hand.

And now, 55 years later, they’re still doing just that.

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They Are Listening

Filed under Cyber Security, Logistics by jtozer on May 1, 2013 at 7:54 am {no comments}

Even high in the air, they have their ears close to the ground.

Tech. Sgt. Justin Longway checks a patch panel aboard an EC-130 Compass Call March 23, 2013, at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan. The 41st EECS flies nightly missions in support of troops on the ground. Longway is an airborne maintenance technician with the 41st Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron . (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. David Dobrydney)

Linguists from the 41st Expeditionary Electronic Combat Squadron, are trained in the art of employing electronic attack for the purpose of denying, degrading and disrupting enemy communications from aboard the EC-130 Compass Call.

“We’re a precision electronic attack platform,” said Tech. Sgt. Dallas Allen, a cryptologic language analyst with the 41st EECS. “We can go out and … stop (the enemy) from communicating with each other.”

When on a mission, the airmen of the Compass Call employ precision electronic attack capabilities in support of U.S. and coalition tactical air, surface and special operations forces.

“You really have to have a lot of confidence in yourself when it comes to identifying certain kinds of communications,” Allen said.

“Sometimes you’ll be listening and think ‘did I just hear him say that, or did I expect him to say that?’”

The linguists’ confidence comes from the amount of practice they go through while at home station, Allen said.

“We have to spend hours in the listening lab studying our language,” he said. “We go to simulations and that’s where we’re able to hone our skills. We listen to known communications so we can practice identifying them.”

The linguist career field is relatively small and with the group of linguists who fly, even smaller. Allen said there are probably less than 1,000.

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There’s Space In Space For Data Security

Filed under Cyber Security, Space by jtozer on April 30, 2013 at 7:12 am {no comments}

Committed to promoting safety and transparency in the space domain, U.S. Strategic Command maintains a registry of tens of thousands of man-made objects in space and shares the information freely with anyone who seeks it through a command-run website.

Air Force Space Command, recognizing that collisions could damage orbiting satellites and cause more space junk, started the database as a pilot program before turning the project over to Stratcom in 2010, said Air Force Col. Lina Cashin, Stratcom’s division chief for space, cyber and deterrence policy and security cooperation.

The project, which involves regular tracking of old rocket bodies, debris and about 1,000 active satellites, has become one of Stratcom’s most universally popular products, Cashin said.

Space-Track.org has 85,000 account holders in 185 countries.

In addition to providing basic satellite catalog data to all account holders, Stratcom provides more advanced data services on request. The command also has agreements in place with 35 commercial companies to expedite information-sharing, and hopes to enter similar agreements with space-faring nations to better support their space operations, Cashin said.

Space situational awareness is crucial to Stratcom’s efforts to understand what is going on in space and to cope with the increasing amount of space debris, she explained.

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SPACE MATTERS

Filed under Featured, Space by jtozer on April 29, 2013 at 7:45 am {no comments}

Artist’s rendering of Orbital’s Antares medium-
class space launch vehicle. (graphic by Orbital Sciences)

When someone asks you if you want to go see a rocket launch, what else can you say except ABSOLUTELY.

Which, incidentally, is exactly how I responded when I was given the opportunity to get a (reasonably distanced) front row seat to the Orbital Sciences Antares rocket launch at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

As many of might already have noticed, space is sort of a big deal to me. The chance to reach out and touch the stars. To be a part of something greater than the world in which we’re tethered. To move forward as a species.

Now that’s something I want to be a part of, and the Antares rocket launch was a way to make that happen.

So why is the Antares rocket such a big deal, you ask? Let’s break it down.

First of all, it’s a rocket. Rocket = big deal.

This is no ordinary rocket. This is one in a series of rockets that are being used – quite fiscally responsibly, I might add – to push the human race out of lower Earth orbit and into the Solar System.

Antares is a two stage vehicle, with optional third stage, that provides low-Earth orbit (LEO) launch capability for payloads weighing over 5,000 kg.

Antares is one of 10 projects with the same point and purpose: risk-reduction missions designed for easy resupply services to the International Space Station. It has the added benefit of delivering substantial payloads into a variety of low inclination, low-Earth, sun-synchronous and interplanetary trajectories.

It has streamlined vehicle/payload integration and testing via simplified interfaces to reduce time from encapsulation to lift-off.

It can also accommodate major payloads, so it can carry more things than the average rocket might. It’s also capable of launching single and multiple payloads.

So I guess you could say it’s a multi-tasking rocket. (more…)

First Nighttime Vertical Landing

Filed under Videos by jtozer on April 28, 2013 at 7:22 am {no comments}

Check out this awesome hovering military aircraft!

An F-35B Lightning II completed the first short takeoff and vertical landing during a test mission at night to expand the flight envelope and deliver capability to the warfighter.

Marine Corps test pilot Maj. C.R. Clift conducted the flight to gather data on the helmet and lighting conditions for night operations. The test was one of a series of events being conducted to prepare for the second of three scheduled at-sea test periods during the development program.

“The F-35B will enable the Marine Corps to preserve its expeditionary nature and bring the next generation of war fighting capabilities to the Joint Force,” said Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle, Marine Corps Deputy Commandant for Aviation.

Footage courtesy of F-35 Integrated Test Force, Patuxent River, Md.

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Saturday Space Sight: Saturn’s Hexagon

Filed under Photos, Space by jtozer on April 27, 2013 at 7:57 am {no comments}

Saturn’s north polar hexagon basks in the Sun’s light now that spring has come to the northern hemisphere. Many smaller storms dot the north polar region and Saturn’s signature rings, which appear to disappear on account of Saturn’s shadow, put in an appearance in the background.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft‘s wide-angle camera using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 750 nanometers.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 403,000 miles (649,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 21 degrees. Image scale is 22 miles (35 kilometers) per pixel.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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How Could Light-emitting Monolayers Benefit Soldiers?

Filed under Featured by jtozer on April 26, 2013 at 7:17 am {no comments}

Army scientists want to make sense of the fascinating properties of novel layered materials that can exist in a single or a few atom-thick layers, such as graphene.

Penn State researchers working with the Army Research Office showed that tungstenite formed from layers of sulfur and tungsten atoms has light-emitting properties that could be useful to plenty of Army applications, like optical sensors or even lasers. (Graphic courtesy of Penn State University)

Recently Penn State researchers working with the Army Research Office showed that tungstenite, or WS2, formed from layers of sulfur and tungsten atoms has light-emitting properties that cold be useful to plenty of Army applications, like optical sensors or even lasers.

University scientists saw an extraordinary glow from the honeycomb edges of monolayered triangular islands of WS2 for the first time and knew this would be groundbreaking.

The discovery was one of several milestones for a small team of experts from four universities working on a Multi-Disciplinary University Research Initiative, or MURI, project.

Along with the principal investigator of this project, professor Pulickel Ajayan of Rice University, this team is helping the Army “make sense of the fascinating properties of novel layered materials that can exist in a single or a few atom-thick layers,” said Pani Varanasi, Ph.D., program manager for the Physical Properties of Materials Materials Science Division of the U.S. Army Research Office, of U.S. Army Research Laboratory, known as ARL.

The MURI project, which explores the synthesis routes of two-dimensional, or 2-D, atomic layers of nitrides, oxides and sulfides and characterization of these materials, is in its second year.

“The most recent finding forms the building blocks for improvements to future Army technologies such as sensors, transistors and flexible displays.”

Mauricio Terrones, Ph.D., a professor of physics and of materials science and engineering at Penn State, is one of the team members of the MURI, and leads the present research on WS2 materials.

“We wanted to work on a layered system that people were not working on already,” Terrones said. “There were several reports on [molybdenum disulfide] but not that much research regarding WS2, so we thought this could be a nice avenue to investigate.”

The research team used a method similar to the one they developed in their earlier research.

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