Armed with Science | Tag Archive

MMO War Games For The Military

Filed under Technology, Videos by jtozer on March 1, 2013 at 7:35 am {no comments}

There aren’t a lot of jobs that would allow (I said ALLOW) you to play MMOs at work. This should come as no surprise, though; clearly there are reasons for that. There are, however some careers that welcome massively multiplayer online gaming as a part of their work week. Video game designers. Blizzard employees. Escapist Magazine reviewers. The Navy.

Yeah. You read that right. The U.S. Navy.

Ah-ah-ah, not so fast shipmates. This doesn’t mean you can abandon your proverbial (or in some cases literal) ship and hop online to help your guild blaze through the next dungeon.

Okay, lemme explain.

No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Introducing the Massive Multiplayer Online War Game Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) exercise. Ha. Only the military could create such a crazy acronym for an already complicated acronym to describe online gaming.

Anyway…

MMOWGLI is a joint effort between the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) and Institute for the Future (IFTF). It’s an online game designed to crowd source ideas and strategies that may provide insight into some of the Navy’s toughest problems.

Combining the military mission with online gaming, MMOWGLI creates an environment where players are asked to share new ideas and collaborate with others to earn innovation points and win the game.

The em2 MMOWGLI round that’s currently being played is an effort to generate innovative ideas advancing the Navy’s capabilities in the electromagnetic spectrum.

“em2 MMOWGLI is my first crowd sourcing experience and an idea that I viewed with skepticism before joining the fray,” says Gerald O’Donnell, concepts developer at Navy Warfare Development Command. “Experiencing the game has made me a believer.”

Here are the details:

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Surviving The Future Through Computer Science

Filed under Education & Culture, STEM, Technology by jtozer on December 14, 2012 at 4:07 pm {no comments}

How many of us have that one computer friend who knows everything?

A tool in the hands of many to combat when it’s a weapon in the hands of few.

You know, the one you call when your email suddenly erases all your contacts, or your hard drive fails when you’re on the last page of your dissertation. You call in a shrieking panic and they ask you a bunch of questions you can’t answer. Then they sweep in, crack their knuckles, plunk down in the chair and start typing.

Fifteen cups of coffee (and likely a few colorful metaphors) later and voila! Your work is saved! All thanks to the skills and knowledge set forth by your computer savvy friend and their super computer skills.

How did they do that? How do they even know how to fix that? Why aren’t they wearing a cape (like all superheroes should)?

These days it seems like computer skills and knowledge are vital in many professional fields, but being an expert? Now that’s a desired set of skills.

In more ways than one.

Think about it. Computer scientists are not the odd men and women out in the social equation. As a matter of fact, they’re becoming a necessary constant.

There’s a reason that computer person is a day-to-day techno-hero. There’s a reason you feel so overwhelmingly glad to have them in your life when things go wrong. There’s a reason what they do is important, because what they do is fix and improve the elements of our lives that are omnipresent and vital. They are the doctors, maintenance crew, mechanics, researchers, diagnosticians and inventors of our technological world.

They are computer scientists. And they are building the digital future around us.

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Hybrid Fuels & The Military

Filed under Energy, Videos by jtozer on November 2, 2012 at 7:02 am {no comments}

A summary of Office of Naval Research (ONR) on-going development of solar/fuel hybridization technologies that dramatically reduce fuel required for tactical Marine Corps operations. This video highlights the efforts of three key performers.

Video provided by the Office of Naval Research

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NRL First In History To Remotely Fly Pilotless Aircraft

Filed under Scientific Military History, STEM by jtozer on November 1, 2012 at 7:03 am {no comments}

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, are becoming a greater force in today’s military arsenal of reconnaissance and weaponry.

This U.S. Navy Curtiss N-9H floatplane was used in the first radio-controlled flight experiments at Dahlgren, Virginia, 1924.

Although the concept of using manned aerial platforms as a device of military strategy is many centuries old, the ability to fly an unmanned, full-size, powered aircraft remotely from the ground and return it safely to its departure point has been possible only since the 20th century.

As early as World War I (1914–1918), the U.S. military began to experiment with unmanned aircraft. Merely 10 years after the Wright brothers first flew in 1903, aviation entrepreneur and inventor Lawrence B. Sperry, building on the gyro-compass developed by his father Elmer Sperry, stunned civilian and military spectators at the 1914 Airplane Safety Competition (Concours de la Securité en Aéroplane) held in France.

During a low-altitude pass, Sperry and his assistant, Emil Cachin, climbed onto the wings of the aircraft to demonstrate the enormously safe and stable operation of what became the modern autopilot.

Several years after this perilous display, Sperry continued to work with the U.S. Army Air Service toward the development of a pilotless, gyro-stabilized aircraft capable of fully unmanned flight for the purpose of delivering explosive ordnance over enemy lines without imperiling military aviators. In 1920, the Army, also working with inventor Charles Kettering on a similar vehicle called the “Kettering Bug,” contracted with Sperry to build a small number of his lightweight Sperry aircraft, known as Sperry Messengers, solely for this purpose.

The Army named this aircraft the Messenger Aerial Torpedo (MAT), a crude precursor to the cruise missile, and began field test trials to determine the accuracy and feasibility of this novel machine.

Flying with a safety pilot onboard for observation, the “drone” aircraft proved capable of short distance accuracy, but failed the Army requirements for greater distance navigation and accuracy due to the inability to correct for unpredictable wind direction and velocity. Sperry devised a solution that included adding radio-operated controls to the aircraft and began working with engineers at the Army Air Service’s Radio Section.

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Can We Make Jet Fuel From Seawater?

Filed under Energy, STEM by jtozer on October 4, 2012 at 7:32 am {no comments}

Turns out…Yeah, it looks like we can.

Refueling U.S. Navy vessels, at sea and underway, is a costly endeavor in terms of logistics, time, fiscal constraints and threats to national security and sailors at sea.

In Fiscal Year 2011, the U.S. Navy Military Sea Lift Command, the primary supplier of fuel and oil to the U.S. Navy fleet, delivered nearly 600 million gallons of fuel to Navy vessels underway, operating 15 fleet replenishment oilers around the globe.

From Seawater to CO₂

Refueling Navy vessels at sea can prove in many ways to be a costly endeavor. The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is developing the chemistry for producing jet fuel from renewable resources in theater. The process envisioned would catalytically convert CO2 and H2 directly to liquid hydrocarbon fuel used as JP-5. (U.S. Navy Military Sea Lift Command)

Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are developing a process to extract carbon dioxide (CO₂) and produce hydrogen gas (H₂) from seawater, subsequently catalytically converting the CO₂ and H₂ into jet fuel by a gas-to-liquids process.

“The potential payoff is the ability to produce JP-5 fuel stock at sea reducing the logistics tail on fuel delivery with no environmental burden and increasing the Navy’s energy security and independence,” says research chemist, Dr. Heather Willauer.

NRL has successfully developed and demonstrated technologies for the recovery of CO₂ and the production of H₂ from seawater using an electrochemical acidification cell, and the conversion of CO₂ and H₂ to hydrocarbons (organic compounds consisting of hydrogen and carbon) that can be used to produce jet fuel.

“The reduction and hydrogenation of CO₂ to form hydrocarbons is accomplished using a catalyst that is similar to those used for Fischer-Tropsch reduction and hydrogenation of carbon monoxide,” adds Willauer. “By modifying the surface composition of iron catalysts in fixed-bed reactors, NRL has successfully improved CO₂conversion efficiencies up to 60 percent.”

A Renewable Resource

CO₂ is an abundant carbon (C) resource in the air and in seawater, with the concentration in the ocean about 140 times greater than that in air. Two to three percent of the CO₂ in seawater is dissolved CO₂ gas in the form of carbonic acid, one percent is carbonate, and the remaining 96 to 97 percent is bound in bicarbonate. If processes are developed to take advantage of the higher weight per volume concentration of CO₂ in seawater, coupled with more efficient catalysts for the heterogeneous catalysis of CO₂ and H₂, a viable sea-based synthetic fuel process can be envisioned. “With such a process, the Navy could avoid the uncertainties inherent in procuring fuel from foreign sources and/or maintaining long supply lines,” Willauer said.

NRL has made significant advances developing carbon capture technologies in the laboratory. In the summer of 2009 a standard commercially available chlorine dioxide cell and an electro-deionization cell were modified to function as electrochemical acidification cells. Using the novel cells both dissolved and bound CO₂ were recovered from seawater by re-equilibrating carbonate and bicarbonate to CO₂ gas at a seawater pH below 6. In addition to CO₂, the cells produced H₂at the cathode as a by-product.

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Saturday Space Sight: Farewell, Neil

Filed under Photos by jtozer on September 29, 2012 at 7:13 am {no comments}

Members of the US Navy ceremonial guard hold an American flag over the cremains of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong during a burial at sea service aboard the USS Philippine Sea (CG 58), Friday, Sept. 14, 2012, in the Atlantic Ocean. Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, died Saturday, Aug. 25. He was 82. (Photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls)

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Navy’s Close In Weapons System

Filed under STEM, Technology by jtozer on September 5, 2012 at 7:47 am {no comments}

HEADPHONE WARNING!

MK 15 Phalanx CIWS provides ships of the U.S. Navy with an inner layer point defense capability against Anti Ship Missiles (ASM), aircraft, and littoral warfare threats that have penetrated other fleet defenses. Phalanx automatically detects, evaluates, tracks, engages, and performs kill assessment against ASM and high speed aircraft threats.

The current Phalanx variant (Block 1B) adds the ability to counter asymmetric warfare threats through the addition of an integrated, stabilized, Electro Optic sensor. These improvements give Phalanx the added ability to counter small high speed surface craft, aircraft, helicopters, and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS). Phalanx is the only deployed close-in weapon system capable of autonomously performing its own search, detect, evaluation, track, engage and kill assessment functions.

Phalanx also can be integrated into existing ship combat control systems to provide additional sensor and fire-control support to other installed ship weapon systems.

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Walking (Well, Rolling) On Water

Filed under STEM, Videos by jtozer on August 22, 2012 at 7:23 am {2 comments}

This video depicts testing of a 1/5 scale demonstrator of the Captive Air Amphibious Transporters (CAAT). The CAAT has air-filled pontoons on a tank tread-like design, enabling them to carry containers over water and directly onto shore.

The vehicle is part of DARPA‘s Tactically Expandable Maritime Platform (TEMP) program, which seeks new sea and air delivery systems to enable direct support to disaster zones from offshore container ships. All technologies developed under TEMP are transportable using standard 20-foot or 40-foot commercial shipping containers.

This technology demonstrator is jointly funded with the Office of Naval Research, who is looking at it for potential use as an amphibious transport for the Marines/Navy.

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