Armed with Science | Tag Archive

DOD Officials Detail $1 Billion in Space Program Savings

Filed under Cyber Security, Featured, Policy by jtozer on May 13, 2013 at 7:08 am {no comments}

Senior Defense Department officials testified before Congress highlighting the activities the department has undertaken to save an estimated $1 billion and provide a balanced national security space program.

(Photo graphic by Jessica L. Tozer)

Gil I. Klinger, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space and intelligence, and Douglas L. Loverro, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, appeared before the House Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on strategic forces to review the department’s fiscal year 2014 budget request for national security space activities.

Klinger said the Defense Department is introducing competition as early as possible with a more efficient contracting strategy for acquiring space launch services and associated launch capabilities, resulting in significant savings.

“These actions resulted in an estimated savings of over $1 billion in the Future Year Defense Program, below the fiscal year 2013 President’s budget, without excessive and unacceptable risk,” he said.

Klinger said the department continues to consider potential alternative acquisition and procurement strategies across the national security space portfolio and remains committed to a disciplined cost approach.

“The undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and the service acquisition executives have established affordability targets for the majority of our large, critical space programs,” Klinger said.

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Space Domain Vital To National Defense

Filed under Education & Culture, Space by jtozer on May 10, 2013 at 7:24 am {no comments}

(Photo graphic by Jessica L. Tozer)

A senior defense official told Congress it is critical for the Defense Department to develop and implement space programs and policies to maintain U.S. space advantages in a perpetually changing environment.

Douglas L. Loverro, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee’s subcommittee on strategic forces regarding the fiscal year 2014 budget proposal for military space programs.

“[It's a] basic reality that space remains vital to our national security,” he said. “But the evolving strategic environment increasingly challenges U.S. space advantages — advantages that both our warfighters and our adversaries have come to appreciate.”

As space becomes more congested, competitive and contested, Loverro said, the department must formulate programs and policies that will secure those advantages for years to come.

But reality, he added, is juxtaposed with providing these capabilities in an environment with increasingly restrained budgets.

Loverro said the growing challenges of budgeting, in addition to increasing external threats, compels the department to think and act differently.

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Top Tech: Solar Blankets

Filed under Energy, Top Technology by jtozer on May 7, 2013 at 7:33 am {no comments}

The Top Tech series highlights the latest and greatest federal laboratory inventions that are available for transfer to business partners. Want to suggest an invention? Email us at science@dma.mil.

Flexible solar blanket of aSi solar cells. (photo provided by the Naval Research Laboratory)

Technology: High Power Flexible Solar Blankets

Agency: Naval Research Laboratory

What is better than a warm blanket on a cold night? How about a blanket that can produce energy by soaking up rays from the sun? We’re talking about the Naval Research Laboratory’s high power flexible solar blankets (or Blanket 2.0 I like to call it). The common comforter is getting an upgrade.

What is it?

It’s like a blanket on solar steroids. NRL is developing photovoltaics (solar cells) that combine high power output with lightweight and flexibility. It works by using crystalline, high efficiency multi-junction solar cells, which are lifted off the growth substrate and laid down onto a lightweight, flexible blankets. This forms a blanket with potentially three TIMES the power output of current technologies.

What does that mean?

This is, essentially, how we create portable solar panels.

Think about some of the advantages this blanket can have, starting with convenience. Being able to transport a regenerating power source that doesn’t weigh a ton is awesome. Also, given the particular environment with which troops tend to find themselves, using the natural resource of the sun just makes sense. It’s also eco-friendly, which means these blankets are in keeping with the Department of Defense’s going green initiative. They’re also more cost effective, since they’re designed to be used over and over again and they can recharge equipment in the field.

Truthfully, people in general could benefit from this technology. (more…)

Improving The Science Of Decision Making

Filed under Education & Culture by jtozer on May 5, 2013 at 7:37 am {no comments}

Defense Department personnel pride themselves on their decision-making ability, but Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman believes there are ways to systematically improve and help remove biases from the process.

Kahneman presented his opinions during the “New Ideas @ OSD” seminar in the Pentagon this morning. Former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig moderated the discussion.

Defense leaders literally make life-or-death decisions. They decide how to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money. They decide how best to approach leaders in other countries and how to best implement programs and policies.

Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 and wrote the New York Times bestseller “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” He said there are three elements in making decisions: options, judgments and evidence. The judgments and evidence feed into providing options, which constitute the crux of decision making.

Stressing the need for quality control in the process, Kahneman urged that defense leaders be aware of the role their biases play.

“Institutions in general can be viewed as factories that produce decisions,” he said. “When there is a production line, there is a need for something called quality control.”

He suggested a quality control checklist for decision making.

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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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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…)

Sneaky Discovery Can Identify Counterfeits, Track Materiel

Filed under Technology by jtozer on April 10, 2013 at 7:10 am {no comments}

The DTEK system optically analyzes the surface of an electronic component. [ChromoLogic/Covisus]

The U.S. Army Research Laboratory‘s (ARL), Army Research Office‘s (ARO) initial concept of exploring DNA as a tagging and tracking method has led to the discovery of an optical scanning technology that can identify counterfeit electronic components before they are integrated into Army materiel.

The technology also provides the capability to identify and track materiel in the absence of external tags or barcodes.

This timely discovery will help address a significant challenge within the Army and DoD: the presence of counterfeit electronic components in military equipment.

A 2011—2012 investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) found overwhelming evidence that international counterfeiters are taking old, sub-standard electronic components and altering them to appear as new, brand-name parts that are then integrated into DoD munitions, aircrafts, sensors, and other electronic devices.

SASC chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, stated that the “flood of counterfeit parts, overwhelmingly from China, threatens national security, the safety of our troops, and American jobs.”

Although the SASC uncovered the sources of many of these counterfeit parts, an ongoing challenge is to consistently and reliably identify these forgeries and prevent their integration into DoD and Army materiel.

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