Category: technology

Not Safety and Simplicity, Too Many Parts

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So someone has decided that it might be a good thing to add even more moving parts to a rotorcraft:

A strange, 16-propeller vertical take-off and landing craft has been awarded the Lindberg Prize for Innovation at the Aero-Friedrichshafen 2012 airshow in Germany. It is an example of the unusual configurations made possible by distributed electric propulsion.

This is true. It is unusual.

It’s also completely impractical.

There is not a single multi-engine aircraft that takes off with an engine out, and in this case, there are 16 engines that might fail.

If you lose an engine, you either don’t take off, or, if you are in flight, you set down as soon as you can.

While this aircraft may (according to its inventors) be able to land safely with “several props failed”, it won’t make its destination with even one of the props failing.

Skylon Development Continues Apace

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Aspiring space plane manufacturer Skylon is beginning test with their key heat exchanger technology:

UK engineers have begun critical tests on a new engine technology designed to lift a spaceplane into orbit.

………

Its major innovation is the Sabre engine, which can breathe air like a jet at lower speeds but switch to a rocket mode in the high atmosphere.

Reaction Engines Limited (REL) believes the test campaign will prove the readiness of Sabre’s key elements.

This being so, the firm would then approach investors to raise the £250m needed to take the project into the final design phase.

………

Sabre is part jet engine, part rocket engine. It burns hydrogen and oxygen to provide thrust – but in the lower atmosphere this oxygen is taken from the atmosphere.

The approach should save weight and allow Skylon to go straight to orbit without the need for the multiple propellant stages seen in today’s throw-away rockets.

………

But it is a challenging prospect. At high speeds, the Sabre engines must cope with 1,000-degree gases entering their intakes. These need to be cooled prior to being compressed and burnt with the hydrogen.

Reaction Engines’ breakthrough is a module containing arrays of extremely fine piping that can extract the heat and plunge the intake gases to minus 140C in just 1/100th of a second.

Ordinarily, the moisture in the air would be expected to freeze out rapidly, covering the pre-cooler’s pipes in a blanket of frost and compromising their operation.

But the REL team has also devised a means to stop this happening, permitting Sabre to run in jet mode for as long as is needed before making the transition to a booster rocket.

The technology, first mooted in the early 1980s, is using the cryogenic hydrogen to extract oxygen from the air up to about 30,000m, and then convert to onboard oxygen for the rest of the journey.

The heat exchanger is a full size flight representative component so this is significant, but I really don’t see this becoming an actual aircraft without a major government backing.

Some background on Skylon here.

It Won’t Happen, It Makes Too Much Sense

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In consideration of the current budget trends the US Air Force is looking at smaller and simpler single purpose satellites:

Smaller, simpler satellite designs could begin making their way into service for mainstream U.S. Air Force missions in the middle of the next decade, a shift that would break with a longtime tradition of building large, expensive spacecraft for the Pentagon.

This shift from complex and expensive satellites could come about because Gen. William Shelton, Air Force Space Command chief, and other military leaders are embracing the concept of “disaggregation,” or separating capabilities once resident on a single platform onto multiple systems. It could simplify satellite design and create what Shelton calls a “targeting problem” for an adversary looking to cripple U.S. space-based services, by expanding the number of satellites in a constellation.

If disaggregation materializes, it could underpin a shift for major constellations—military satellite communications, missile warning, precision timing and navigation, weather and space situational awareness. While it could prompt an end—or at least slow procurement—of today’s satellites, the strategy could also be an opportunity for an industry facing reduced government spending to keep design teams intact.

Two possible near-term opportunities could be Shelton’s interest in using a smaller, simpler approach for both the next-generation space situational awareness (SSA) and weather spacecraft.

The advantages are:

  • You can develop and field satellites more quickly.
  • If a contractor really screws the pooch in terms of performance, schedule, or cost, it’s small enough to cancel.
  • You can have real competition, or perhaps competitive dual sourcing between vendors.
  • The resulting network would be a much more tolerant to a failure of a single satellite.

The downside is that the contractors who make this stuff will have less of an opportunity to over-promise and under-deliver, generating the necessary profits to employ retired generals as high priced consultants.

All things considered, I consider this initiative doomed because of this, but I’m a cynic.

Israeli’s Get to Qualify Their Own Missiles on the F-35

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I think that the folks at Lockheed and the F-35 program office were pretty desperate to get the Israelis in as a customer for the JSF, as evidenced by the facility with which the IDF/AF has been able to incorporate indigenous systems into the aircraft:

The Israeli air force’s Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighters will be armed with a mix of US- and Israeli-made weapon systems, sources have confirmed.

“At least one main weapon system” for the nation’s conventional take-off and landing F-35As will be of Israeli origin, sources related to the issue said on 17 April. The Israeli air force has previously expressed its wish to equip the type with a nationally-developed new-generation air-to-air missile.

………

While the first batch of aircraft will carry the integral electronic warfare system being supplied under the Lockheed-led Joint Strike Fighter programme, it is expected that this will later be “enhanced” by additional units developed in Israel.

You’ll notice that none of the other customers, or for that matter the partners in the development program, have had this sort of ability to integrate their own systems into this.

Basically, the market dynamics are such that the if the Israelis are not willing to buy a US aircraft, it would seriously hinder other foreign sales, so they got some special considerations with regards to integrating their own systems.

I’m Not Sure if These are Winglets or Stators

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Click for full size


I Think that it’s more of a stator than a winglet

Aviation Week has an article about looking at winglets to increase the performance of the V-22 Osprey (paid subscription required):

The ability of the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor to fly farther, as well as faster, than helicopters has been a key factor in its fight for survival for more than a decade. But now, with both CV-22B and MV-22B versions recently pressed into service on longer-range, self-deployed combat and rescue missions in Libya and Afghanistan, the hunt is on for greater unrefueled performance.

Squeezing more range out of the V-22 is not easy, however. Constrained from birth by the need to fit on the restricted decks of U.S. Navy amphibious assault ships, the tiltrotor was necessarily limited to smaller-than-optimal wing and rotor dimensions leading to an inevitable impact on range. Without the options of increasing wingspan or rotor diameter available to them, designers are taking a leaf out of the Boeing Commercial Airplanes playbook and studying nacelle-mounted “sails” that work on the same principle as winglets.

Although Bell Boeing declines to comment on the development, Naval Air Systems Command (Navair) confirms it is preparing to flight test a modified MV-22 with the upgrade which could boost range by almost 5%. The concept, which was studied by Boeing for the Special Operation Forces CV-22 version as far back as 1994, harnesses the energy from the vertical upwash around the wing and nacelle. In the case of the V-22, Bell Boeing’s research indicates upwash angles of 10-20 deg. around the nacelles at the nominal cruise pitch attitude of 8 deg. The additional upwash velocity produces a propulsive force by tilting the lift vector forward.

I should note that I am not an aerodynamicist, but it looks to me a lot of the gains from these surfaces are from straightening the rotational wash off the props, much in the same way that stators do in a multi-stage turbine.

Because it increases effective wing area, it would have the effect of reducing longitudinal stability, so the flight test regime will target this concern.

This is Prize

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Unfortunately, the following is totally fictional, but I’d love to see some of the Facebook snooping employers get shafted like this:

One of the new terms is that every prospective new hire allow their manager to “shoulder surf” as they browse their Facebook or better still, to voluntarily log their manager into their Facebook account. If I recall correctly, she claims that we have the obligation to do a “background check” on prospective hires. I’m extremely vague on the correlation between faux-promiscuous sex or drinking and employee performance, but as she is a seasoned veteran, I have to trust her when she says that things like this overrule my judgment as to who is and who isn’t fit to be a programmer in our employ.

I was willing to go along with things and see how they panned out. But today something went seriously wrong. I have been interviewing senior hires for the crucial tech lead position on the Fizz Buzz team, and while several walked out in a huff when I asked them to let me look at their Facebook, one young lady smiled and said I could help myself. She logged into her Facebook as I requested, and as I followed the COO’s instructions to scan her timeline and friends list looking for evidence of moral turpitude, I became aware she was writing something on her iPad.

“Taking notes?” I asked politely.

“No,” she smiled, “Emailing a human rights lawyer I know.” To say that the tension in the room could be cut with a knife would be understatement of the highest order. “Oh?” I asked. I waited, and as I am an expert in out-waiting people, she eventually cracked and explained herself.

“If you are surfing my Facebook, you could reasonably be expected to discover that I am a Lesbian. Since discrimination against me on this basis is illegal in Ontario, I am just preparing myself for the possibility that you might refuse to hire me and instead hire someone who is a heterosexual but less qualified in any way. Likewise, if you do hire me, I might need to have your employment contracts disclosed to ensure you aren’t paying me less than any male and/or heterosexual colleagues with equivalent responsibilities and experience.”

I got her out of the room as quickly as possible. The next few interviews were a blur, I was shaken. And then it happened again. This time, I found myself talking to a young man fresh out of University about a development position. After allowing me to surf his Facebook, he asked me how I felt about parenting. As a parent, it was easy to say I liked the idea. Then he dropped the bombshell.

His partner was expecting, and shortly after being hired he would be taking six months of parental leave as required by Ontario law. I told him that he should not have discussed this matter with me. “Oh normally I wouldn’t, but since you’re looking through my Facebook, you know that already. Now of course, you would never refuse to hire someone because they plan to exercise their legal right to parental leave, would you?”

What could I say? I guess we have another hire whether he’s qualified or not. Here’s the bottom line: My ability to select the best candidates for our positions has been irreparably compromised by looking into their private lives. I’ve been “tainted” by knowledge of their sexual orientation, illnesses, religion, political affiliations, and other factors that expose us to anti-discrimination legislation. We can’t even claim that the employee improperly disclosed these matters to us, as we are the ones initiating the investigation of their private doings

Worse, I cannot manage these people once they’re hired. I would be diffident about censuring them or passing them over for advancement for fear of incurring a lawsuit that would be a distraction to our business and damaging to our reputation as fair employers.

You know I think that this may very well be true.

If you look at someone’s Facebook page, you might very well determine that they are a member of a protected group (no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, national origin, sexual preference [in some states], etc.)

So in addition to having Mark Zuckerberg suing you for hacking Facebook, which is what coercing a password against their TOS is, you might very well have a discrimination suit on your hands.

Oopsie.

It’s Stalker in a box!

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There is an iPhone App called Girls Around Me, and it is way beyond evil.

Basically, it integrates Facebook and Foursquare to allow you to find easy girls:

………

It’s an app that can be interpreted many ways. It is as innocent as it is insidious; it is just as likely to be reacted to with laughter as it is with tears; it is as much of a novelty as it has the potential to be used a tool for rapists and stalkers.

Girls Around Me is a standard geolocation based maps app, similar to any other app that attempts to alert you to things of interest in your immediate vicinity: whether it be parties, clubs, deals, or what have you. When you load it up, the first thing Girls Around Me does is figure out where you are and load up a Google Map centered around your location. …

…Immediately, Girls Around Me went into radar mode, and after just a few seconds, the map around us was filled with pictures of girls who were in the neighborhood. Since I was showing off the app on a Saturday night, there were dozens of girls out on the town in our local area.

………

“How does it know where these girls are? Do you know all these girls? Is it plucking data from your address book or something?” another friend asked.

“Not at all. These are all girls with publicly visible Facebook profiles who have checked into these locations recently using Foursquare. Girls Around Me then shows you a map where all the girls in your area trackable by Foursquare area. If there’s more than one girl at a location, you see the number of girls there in a red bubble. Click on that, and you can see pictures of all the girls who are at that location at any given time. The pictures you are seeing are their social network profile pictures.”

………

I tapped on Zoe. Girls Around Me quickly loaded up a fullscreen render of her Facebook profile picture. The app then told me where Zoe had last been seen (The Independent) and when (15 minutes ago). A big green button at the bottom reading “Photos & Messaging” just begged to be tapped, and when I did, I was whisked away to Zoe’s Facebook profile.

“Okay, so here’s Zoe. Most of her information is visible, so I now know her full name. I can see at a glance that she’s single, that she is 24, that she went to Stoneham High School and Bunker Hill Community College, that she likes to travel, that her favorite book is Gone With The Wind and her favorite musician is Tori Amos, and that she’s a liberal. I can see the names of her family and friends. I can see her birthday.”

“All of that is visible on Facebook?” one of the other girls in our group asked.

“More, depending on how your privacy settings are configured! For example, I can also look at Zoe’s pictures.”

I tapped on the photo album, and a collection of hundreds of publicly visible photos loaded up. I quickly browsed them.

“Okay, so it looks like Zoe is my kind of girl. From her photo albums, I can see that she likes to party, and given the number of guys she takes photos with at bars and clubs at night, I can deduce that she’s frisky when she’s drunk, and her favorite drink is a frosty margarita. She appears to have recently been in Rome. Also, since her photo album contains pictures she took at the beach, I now know what Zoe looks like in a bikini… which, as it happens, is pretty damn good.”

My girlfriend scowled at me. I assured her Zoe in a bikini was no comparison, and moved on.

“So now I know everything to know about Zoe. I know where she is. I know what she looks like, both clothed and mostly disrobed. I know her full name, her parents’ full names, her brother’s full name. I know what she likes to drink. I know where she went to school. I know what she likes and dislikes. All I need to do now is go down to the Independent, ask her if she remembers me from Stoneham High, ask her how her brother Mike is doing, buy her a frosty margarita, and start waxing eloquently about that beautiful summer I spent in Roma.”

And if it doesn’t work with Zoe, you have a dozen other women at the club for whom you also have a dossier.

Let’s be clear:  If you were stalking A girl, it probably wouldn’t help you much, you would already have her data from Facebook and Foursquare.  This allows you to go after every girl in the immediate vicinity.

This is not quite digital roofies, its victims, assuming that they are adults, have a lot more independent agency than someone who has been drugged, but seriously, this is some  evil sh%$.

It’s beyond creepy.

Huh, I Interviewed There

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RedX Defense, where we now have allegations of self dealing on DARPA contracts:

Top Pentagon research arm Darpa gave a well-connected firm millions of dollars to build bomb-detectors — despite deep internal reservations about the technology involved. After years of work and millions spent, the company’s sensor was less effective than “a coin flip” in spotting homemade explosives, in the words of one military insider.

By itself, the washout wouldn’t be terribly remarkable. Darpa’s charter is to try out risky technologies, many of which don’t pan out. It’s that dedication to high-risk, high-reward projects that leads to breakthroughs like GPS and the internet. But these contracts were given to RedX Defense, a company partially owned by outgoing Darpa director Regina Dugan and led by Dugan’s family. Agency bosses were repeatedly told that investing in RedX was a waste of time — and moved ahead with the contracts anyway. The bottom line, says a second source familiar with RedX’s work: “The technology just didn’t work.”

………

Then, in July of 2009, Dugan was named the director of Darpa. Her father, Vince, became RedX’s CEO. Her sister, Christina Haney, worked as vice president of marketing. Some Darpa employees assumed Dugan would sell her shares in RedX, since the firm continued to pursue contracts from an agency now headed by its co-founder and former chief executive. Dugan didn’t sell those shares, however. Nor did she forgive the $250,000 loan she gave to RedX.

Dugan did officially recuse herself from any business dealings between the agency and the company. An internal Pentagon review later found that the recusal was “consistent with the letter and spirit of relevant laws, regulations, and policies governing conflict of interest,” according to Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a Pentagon spokesperson. But the move wasn’t consistent with Darpa’s recent history. Under previous director Tony Tether, contracts that posed a potential conflict of interest were passed to someone higher up in the Pentagon hierarchy, who would theoretically be immune to pressure from subordinates. Instead, Dugan left the decisions about RedX to her employees — people acutely aware of their new boss’s background and her family ties to RedX.

A few weeks after Dugan assumed command of the agency, her family firm submitted a proposal to fund MAE WEST for $3.5 million. The proposal ignited a firestorm within the agency, one source familiar with the inspector general’s investigation says. Not only was the company tied to the new director, there were glaring gaps in the proposal — everything from the schedule of experiments to the scientific approach involved. Nevertheless, this source contends, agency deputy director Ken Gabriel told employees to put the RedX proposal at the “top of the list.”

“No other program had this kind of pressure,” the source adds. “Or even this much interest.”

Dogs still work better than anything else, FYI.

The revolving door is spinning awfully fast.

Orwell Much?

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It looks like Samsung has come up with a telescreen that has cameras and microphones that it can use to watch you:

Samsung’s 2012 top-of-the-line plasmas and LED HDTVs offer new features never before available within a television including a built-in, internally wired HD camera, twin microphones, face tracking and speech recognition. While these features give you unprecedented control over an HDTV, the devices themselves, more similar than ever to a personal computer, may allow hackers or even Samsung to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.

While Web cameras and Internet connectivity are not new to HDTVs, their complete integration is, and it’s the always connected camera and microphones, combined with the option of third-party apps (not to mention Samsung’s own software) gives us cause for concern regarding the privacy of TV buyers and their friends and families.

Samsung has not released a privacy policy clarifying what data it is collecting and sharing with regard to the new TV sets. And while there is no current evidence of any particular security hole or untoward behavior by Samsung’s app partners, Samsung has only stated that it “assumes no responsibility, and shall not be liable” in the event that a product or service is not “appropriate.”

…………

A Samsung representative showed how, once set up and connected to the Internet, these models will automatically talk to the Samsung cloud and enable viewers to use new and exciting apps.

These Samsung TVs locate and make note of registered viewers via sophisticated face recognition software. This means if you tell the TV whose faces belong to which users in your family, it personalizes the experience to each recognized family member. If you have friends over, it could log these faces as well.

In addition, the TV listens and responds to specific voice commands. To use the feature, the microphone is active. What concerns us is the integration of both an active camera and microphone. A Samsung representative tells us you can deactivate the voice feature; however this is done via software, not a hard switch like the one you use to turn a room light on or off.

Seriously Eric Arthur Blair must be spinning in his grave at sufficient velocity to power all of Totnes on Devon.

Yes, we have a TV that watches you back, just like Big Brother in 1984.

Any bets on how long before the NSA hacks the cloud that this interfaces, so they can spy into people’s homes?  Certainly, the TOS described here would allow it, so perhaps they would not even have to hack into the system.  They just need to twist some arms at Samsung.

Lovely.

H/t Slashdot.

It Looks Like Ion Drive is Going Commercial

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Following the success of the Dawn Spacecraft in exploring the asteroids, I suppose that it was inevitable that ion propulsion would hit the commercial satellite industry:

It’s no secret that Boeing’s space systems unit is aggressively pricing bids in an effort to grow its commercial business segment as government spending flags. But even the most bullish observers were taken aback by an estimated $400 million deal just signed with Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) and Satellites Mexicanos (SatMex) to build the first all-electric commercial telecom spacecraft intended for launch to geostationary orbit.

The technology—which uses light-weight xenon-fueled ion thrusters rather than conventional chemical propulsion to maneuver a spacecraft into position—is promising. Imagine cutting in half a satellite’s weight, and subsequently its launch costs, which can top $100 million depending on the size of the spacecraft. All-electric satellites could potentially save fleet operators hundreds of millions of dollars in annual launch expenditures, with potentially no impact to their satellites’ capability or performance.

The downside is that while most commercial communications spacecraft are expected to be on station and making money within a few weeks of launch, new all-electric satellites could spend up to six months using slow pulses from ionic propulsion systems to maneuver into their final orbital slot—months when the spacecraft is not generating any revenue. This might not pose a problem for large operators with established revenue streams who can accommodate the lag in revenue as they incorporate new satellites into fleet-replenishment programs. But it could put small companies at a disadvantage as they sacrifice up to half a year’s income waiting for the spacecraft to enter service.

In either case, employing an all-electric spacecraft requires getting an early start on the capital-spending cycle to accommodate the lengthy orbit-raising process.

“It is easier for a company with a large fleet that has to anticipate replacement satellites several years in advance to tolerate the several months it takes for an electric satellite to reach position once it has separated in orbit,” says Romain Bausch, chief executive of Luxembourg-based SES, the world’s second-largest fleet operator by revenue.

Basically, chemical maneuvering thrusters have something like a hundred times more thrust, but have about 100x lower ISP (fuel efficiency).

The downside to ion propulsion close to earth is time, but the lines cross for anything farther the earth-moon system.

Kind of a Working Sunday

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I’m looking up a number of patents.

I’ve been checking out some patents in a matter completely uninvolved  to my day job.  (I’m trying to see if I possess the expertise to qualify as an expert witness)

Here’s another good idea for patent reform:  How about requiring that they not be written in the most obtuse manner possible?

Well, Imagine That? A Countermeasure.

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We develop a 30,000 pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) GBU-57A/B, and the Iranians develop a super tough concrete that should neutralize the threat:

A DUAL-USE technology is one that has both civilian and military applications. Enriching uranium is a good example. A country may legitimately do so to fuel power stations. Or it may do so illegitimately to arm undeclared nuclear weapons. Few, however, would think of concrete as a dual-use technology. But it can be. And one country—as it happens, one that is very interested in enriching uranium—is also good at making what is known as “ultra-high performance concrete” (UHPC).

Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Such materials could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs.

It appears that, among other things, it is quartz powder rather than sand that is mixed in, and polyethylene fibers are added, which further improve impact resistance.

It appears that this would reduce the penetrating capability of the MOP from 40+ meters to less than 8 meters.

We’re going to see a lot more of this going on from potential opponents, because our military has become increasingly dependent on high tech gizmos, as opposed to people, which limits the tactics that can be employed. This means that avoiding any countermeasures that a determined and intelligent enemy are likely to develop, and they are all likely to be both, and so the the countermeasures are both easier to devise, and more likely be a effective.

Overspecialization, the Devil’s volleyball.

Here’s Some Insanely Great Tech

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It looks like someone has come up with a method of simultaneously transmitting different signals in the same frequency:

A team of Italian radio boffins – and one Swede – have one-upped their pioneering countryman Guglielmo Marconi by demonstrating a method of simultaneously transmitting multiple signals on the same frequency.

“This novel radio technique allows the implementation of, in principle, an infinite number of channels in a given, fixed bandwidth, even without using polarization, multiport or dense coding techniques,” the team explains in a paper in the March issue of the New Journal of Physics.

If refined and commercialized, the technique developed by Fabrizio Tamburini and his team could radically increase the carrying capacity of today’s cramped bandwith of radio, television, Wi-Fi, and wireless telecommunications.

Essentially, it appears to be some sort of phase/geometry trick:

The breakthough achieved by Tamburini and his crew is based on adding orbital angular momentum to the signal-carrying mix, essentially twisting the directed signal in a way that offsets multiple signals in the same frequency.


The signal-spinning Venetian antenna

The team “spun” the signal in their successful demo by simply slicing one radius of a conventional parabolic antenna and raising one end of the slice above the other. Doing so gave the part of the transmitted signal from the elevated section of the antenna a small “head start” on the part from the lower segment.

The sent beam was then encoded with two separate signals timed to occupy opposite angles of the spin, and antennas were set up to receive each of them. Theoretically, much more discrete signal-slicing could fit more signals into the same transmitted frequency.

One beam, two signals received by antennas on either side of the signal’s centerpoint

Team member Bo Thide of Swedish Institute of Space Physics first conceived the orbital angular momentum idea in a 2007 paper focussed on radio astronomy, but in which he wrote that the concept “paves the way for novel wireless communication concepts.”

I’ve heard of some other techniques that will provide similar capabilities, and I would hope that if we do see a massive expansion in the carry capacity of wireless capacity, that much of this delta would be directed away from the incumbent carriers.

If there is any lesson to be learned about the history of data transmission, wired, and wireless, it is that incumbent monopolies, and near monopolies, are the enemies of innovation, not its source, because their profit margins are driven by preserving their monopolies.

I Was Wondering When Someone Would Do This

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It’s a fact that from its beginnings, the 7-inch diameter AIM-120 AMRAAM has outperformed its 8-inch diameter predecessor, the AIM-7 Sparrow, (30 miles for the final version of the Sparrow as versus 40+ for the first version of AMRAAM) even though it weighs less than half as much, and contains less far less fuel than its predecessor.

Part of this is due to improvements in propulsion, new propellants and whatnot, and part of it is because the aerodynamic configuration (tail steering rather than the Sparrow’s mid body control surfaces), but most of this is from an optimized flight path, because with its active seeker and sophisticated autopilot, the AMRAAM does not need to keep its nose constantly on target.

I’ve always wondered why someone hasn’t applied active radar homing on a Sparrow sized missile.

Well, it looks like Japan is looking at doing this (paid subscription required):

Japan already has bought Raytheon AIM-120 Amraams, so why is it spending ¥36 billion ($468 million) to upgrade about 60 F-2 fighters with the Mitsubishi Electric Corp. AAM-4B missile?

Although the benefits to Japanese industry are obvious, details of the upgrade and the missile itself suggest that the program is giving an enormous boost to the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries fighter’s ability to counter enemy aircraft. The weapon has at least one advanced feature that other such missiles lack: a seeker with an active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radar.

The program will move into high gear in the financial year that begins April 1. The work is progressing in two parallel programs: integration of the AAM-4B missile, and upgrade of the J/APG-1 radar to a more powerful standard called J/APG-2. The improved radar, needed to exploit the new missile, will incidentally raise the capabilities of the aircraft by offering greater detection ranges.

Both systems have been developed by the Japanese defense ministry’s Technical Research and Development Institute with considerable help from contractors, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for the missile integration and Mitsubishi Electric for the radar. The same companies are contracted to do the installation work. Ministry officials tell Aviation Week that development went smoothly and is now complete.

Early in the development program, in 2001, the ministry gave rough indications of the AAM-4B’s capabilities. It could be launched at a 20% greater range than could the then-current AAM-4 and at least as far as an “AIM-120B+,” a standard that was expected to appear around 2004. The crucial claim was that the AAM-4B could switch to autonomous guidance at a 40% greater range than either of the other two missiles and would similarly outperform what was expected to be the 2009 standard of the Russian R-77 (AA-12 Adder). In a 2010 paper, the ministry attributed the seeker’s greater performance to the higher transmitting power available from the AESA.

The implication is that an F-2 firing AAM-4Bs can stop tracking the target for missile guidance much sooner than an unmodified F-2 can—and officials tell Aviation Week that the key aim of the project is indeed to increase the range at which an F-2 can turn away.

The AAM-4B won’t make any international sales, of course, because the Japanese constitution, and it won’t fit in the F-22 or F-35 weapons bays, but I can see a larger being an equalizer on other aircraft.

The Stupidest Thing Ever Written

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Surprisingly enough, it’s not Thomas Friedman who wrote this, it was David Graeber, in his book, Debt: The First 5000 Years.

I have to admit that I have not actually read this book, (and now, I never will) I am relying on a review from LizardBreath at Unfogged, and this is what she finds:

But then he starts talking about how democratic methods of structuring organizations are often more efficient than rigid hierarchies, and so will often arise spontaneously when people really need to be get things done. And he uses Apple Computers as an example:

Apple Computers is a famous example: it was founded by (mostly Republican) computer engineers who broke from IBM in Silicon Valley in the 1980s, forming little democratic circles of twenty to forty people with their laptops in each other’s garages.

I don’t know all that much about the history of Apple or of the computer business generally, but I’m pretty sure that’s as wrong as it could possibly be. Apple was founded by two guys, neither of whom (AFAIK) worked for IBM (maybe for a very short time? But certainly not extendedly). It was notoriously a rigid, top-down hierarchy, it was founded in the ’70s, not the ’80s, and who had a laptop until the very end of the ’80s? That’s a whole lot of wrong for one sentence.

It’s so stupid, that I am amazed that this wasn’t written by Tom Friedman.

Next Generation Missile Cancelled

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The missile, intended to replace both the AMRAAM air-to-air missile and the HARM air-to-ground missile has been dropped from the Pentagon budget:

The US Air Force has cancelled the next generation missile (NGM) meant to replace both the anti-air AIM-120 AMRAAM and the anti-radiation AGM-88 HARM, both mainstays of the USA and its international allies.

The NGM programme, also formerly known as the joint dual-role air dominance missile and projected to cost up to $15 billion, was cancelled “for affordability reasons”, according to Gen Edward Bolton, USAF chief budget officer.

This is unsurprising.

In order to achieve what are almost diametrically opposed roles, the AMRAAM is a 7″ diameter missile which is designed to take a lofted trajectory to maximize range, and the HARM is A 10″ diameter missile which takes a direct route to the target to minimize time to target, you have to develop a whole series quantum leaps in propulsion and lethality, and gets the entire weapons system onto the cost escalation-schedule slippage hamster wheel.

It’s a good thing that this is canceled.

You Can Always Depend on Flight International for a Cutaway

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Full Size Pic at Link

This time, they are doing the Boeing F-15 Silent Eagle.

Seeing as how the F-15SE is supposed to have a very small forward aspect radar cross section, I have to wonder about their guess about the radar.

I am not am expert in low observability, but it seems to me that the radar would be angled off the centerline in order to reduce RCS.

While the full fit-out for the aircraft is not certain, how IRST is integrated into the airframe is unclear, for example, but the flight control system is is going to a digital fly by wire system.

It should be a good deal on fly away cost, but cost per hour might be higher than its likely competitors.

I’m Expecting an Alien Tort Claim Act Against Apple

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William Black makes the convincing case that the widespread abuse of contractors’ employees in the manufacture of Apple products is the product of deliberate management decisions:

Apple has released a report on working conditions in its suppliers’ factories. It highlights a form of control fraud that criminology has identified but rarely discussed. I write overwhelmingly about accounting control fraud because it drives our recurrent, intensifying financial crises. The primary intended victims of accounting control frauds are the shareholders and the creditors. Other private sector control frauds target customers (e.g., George Akerlof’s 1970 article on “lemons”), and the public (e.g., the unlawful disposal of toxic waste, illegal logging, and tax fraud).

Anti-employee control frauds most commonly fall in four broad, but not mutually exclusive, categories – illegal work conditions due to violation of safety rules, violation of child labor laws, failure to pay employees’ wages and benefits, and frauds based on goods and loans provided by the employer to the employee that lock the employee into quasi-slavery. Apple has just released a report on its suppliers that shows that anti-employee control fraud is the norm. Remember, fraud is hidden and is often not discovered and Apple did not have an incentive to make an exhaustive investigation. Apple calls its inquiries “audits” and it is apparent that most of its information comes from reviewing written and electronic records at its suppliers. That is exceptionally revealing. The suppliers know that they can defraud their employees with such impunity that they don’t even bother to get rid of records that prove their frauds. Apple has resisted making public its suppliers and the report refused to identify which suppliers committed which violations – often for years despite repeated, false promises to end their anti-employee control frauds. Two other facts are evident (but not reported). First, Apple rarely terminates suppliers for defrauding their employees – even when the frauds endanger the lives and health of the workers and the community – and even where Apple knows that the supplier repeatedly lies to Apple about these fraudulent and lethal practices. Second, it appears unlikely in the extreme that Apple makes criminal referrals on its suppliers even when they commit anti-employee control frauds as a routine practice, even when the frauds endanger the worker’s and the public’s health, and even when the supplier repeatedly lies to Apple about the frauds. Apple’s report, therefore, understates substantially the actual incidence of fraud by the 156 suppliers (accounting for 97% of its payments to suppliers).

The ATCA has been used in cases like this, and what is clearly a policy of deliberate blindness to these abuse by Apple, seems to me to bean opening for a very well deserved lawsuit.