Category: technology

VASIMR Plasma Drive Hits Rated Power in Bench Test

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I’ve mentioned the technology before, and now it appears that the VASIMR plasma drive has hit a major milestone in the lab. The first stage (helicon) of the system has hit its rated 30 KW power.

Thrust levels are relatively low, though they are high compared to something like Ion, around 10N in low ISP mode, and in the 100mN range in high ISP mode.

The developer of this technology, Ad Astra Rocket Company, hopes to get a space-rated model to the ISS in the next few years to validate performance in space.

Picture pr0n:

Lab picture


VASIMR Space Craft Concept

I believe that the spacecraft shown uses nuclear power for propulsion requirements.

Submarine Designers Start Smoking Weed

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DCNS unveiled this concept, the SMX-24, at Euronavale in Paris.

It’s an all fuel cell concept, displacing about 3500 tons, which makes rather larger than the Diesel-Electric boats, but a rather smaller than most Nuke boats, it’s about the size of an Alfa class submarine.

It’s supposed to have 30 days endurance, whether surfaced or submerged, and it has a cruise motor at the rear of the ship, and sprint motors, as well as fuel tanks and weapons, mounted at the tips of stub “wings”.

This is not the first radical concept from DCNS, they also have the SMX-23, which was shown at last year’s Euronavale, and has since been dubbed, “Andrasta,” a small boat intended for littoral waters, which carries its entire weapons load outside of the pressure hull, so reloads can only be done in port.

IMHO, I think that the SMX-23 is far more likely to see service than the SMX-24.

While there are many different sorts of nastiness carried on board submarines, the idea of carrying large amounts of liquid oxygen and possibly liquid hydrogen, for fuel cell operations makes me profoundly uncomfortable.

Israeli 120mm Mortar Carrier

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It’s called the CARDOM, and it’s based on the M113 APC.

It includes digital systems to lay the mortar on target in less than 30 seconds from receipt of coordinates, and then can fire with a burst rate of 16 rpm, followed by a sustained rate of 4rpm.

I will simply note that it does everything that the Future Combat Systems NLOS-M (Non-Line-of-Sight Mortar) does in a lighter, and much cheaper package.

This stuff isn’t rocket science, so why is the US military paying rocket science prices?

Another Problem With FCS

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David Axe notes a potential problem with the NLOS-C (Non Line of Sight-Cannon), the Howitzer variant of the the Future Combat System Manned Ground Vehicles (FCS-MGV) which the Army intends to have replace nearly all existing US armored vehicles.

Specifically, by virtue of the high level of sophistication and automation, the NLOS-C has a crew of only two, as compared to 4 for the current howitzer, the Paladin.

If the future NLOS-C units reduce their manning requirements to fill the minimum number of people needed to operate the systems without considering the need to maintain continuous operations and endure battle losses, the expensive high-speed cannon might be silent when needed because an adequate number of Soldiers are not available to operate it.

A commenter on his blog notes that for for a 6 tube battery, you have 42 men, 4 per paladin, and 3 on each of the 6 ammunition carriers, for a total of 42 men.

For NLOS-C, with automated firing and loading, this is likely down to 24 men, possibly fewer depending on how the army allocates loading vehicles, and the loss of one man on any of these vehicles will likely take that out of action.

With the current setup, the Paladin and its loading vehicles can operate at reduced capacity with short crews. The same is not realistic with a lone crewman operating a vehicle.

Additionally, in a situation like Iraq and Afghanistan, which is still the most likely conflict scenario, it is likely that these troops would not just be assigned to artillery duty, but also to, “non-standard missions, which require the Soldiers to anything from patrols to base security”, which, “demand at least the current number of Soldiers, if not more, to complete such missions.”

It appears that one of the institutional myths present in Pentagon doctrine is that the individual soldier is ruinously expensive, and replacing him/her with technology or private contractors will create a more effective, and more cost effective war fighting force.

The performance of systems and reduced crews, in addition to the performance of mercenaries private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, has proven this assumption to be disastrously wrong.

Neat Tech: Gel Fueled Rocket Motor

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The Germans have developed a gel-fuel rocket motor, and are getting ready to flight test (paid subscription required).

I’ve not worked with the technology, but I did work with someone who did work with liquid propellant artillery, and I imagine that the tech is rather similar.

Basically, it allows for a monopropellant rocket, much like solid fuel rockets, with the ability to easily throttle the motor by varying the flow of the propellant into the combustion chamber.

Additionally, since it’s the consistency of toothpaste, or at least it was in the LP gun, it means that if the tank is punctured, you do not get leakage.

The Bayern–Chemie demonstrator uses a single gas generator designed to support a range of missions. It is used to drive a piston that forces the gelled propellant and, in a bi-propellant mode, oxidizer, into the combustion chamber. The gel passes through a valve to regulate its flow, and then through injectors that effectively turn it into a liquid as it enters the combustion chamber to optimize the burn. The motor will use a pyrotechnic ignition system.

An entirely non-explosive configuration has also been conceived. It would replace the solid propellant gas generator with an air pressure reservoir and the ignition would be triggered through a gas burner.

It’s more complex and bulkier than solid fuel motors, but should have interesting applications where a complex thrust profile is required.

The NASA Clown Show

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I am, of course referring to NASA’s Ares manned vehicle, which has hit yet another snag.

First, the rocket was not powerful enough, then it threatened to shake its occupants to death, and now it appears that the interface with the tower is such that it could hit or significantly the launch gantry tower (launch drift).

A fix to the launch pad configuration would take over a year and require money not in the budget.

Jeebus, what a clusterf%$#….Guys, it’s not like this is rocket science…Oh, wait…It IS rocket science, isn’t it?

The real lesson from all this is just how much damage was done to NASA by the space shuttle. It’s been hollowed out as an organization.

When the F-15 Would be Better Than the F-22

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The USAF is looking at replacing all the mechanically scanned radars with electronically scanned AESA radars.

A dirty little secret is that this would make the F-15 superior to the F-22 in some of the missions that it is most touted in, particularly cruise missile interception, because of basic physics.

The F-15 has a larger space in the nose for a radar, so the aperture, and hence resolution and range, woudl be greater.

Picture pr0n below:

Neat Tech: Fiber Optic

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NASA is using Fiber-optic stress and strain gauges to evaluate dynamic loads on wings and other aerodynamic surfaces. (paid subscription required)

In addition to being lower profile than conventional strain gauges (see pictures) the technology looks likely to be small enough, light enough, and unobtrusive enough so it would be embedded in aircraft for real time structural health reporting.

It could also be used as a part of a wing that actively changes its camber, a “son of the mission adaptive wing” that NASA tested on the F-111 over a decade ago.

DARPA Looks at Riverine Submersible

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I think that what they want is extremely ambitious, and may be very difficult to achieve.

They are looking at the vehicle being able to semi-autonomously deploy in the treacherous waters of, “rivers, inlets, harbors and other shallow waters,” burrow in the mud, and conduct surveillance.

It would need to navigate its way quietly through the frequently murkey, with turbulent currents and things like sandbars to further complicate things.

Additionally they want to be able to sleep for an extended time.

I don’t think that this is going to happen, but the the pictures are wicked cool:

I Don’t Know About You, But I Just Love Aviation Pr0n

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No women, just aircraft, though I’m not sure how I would classify aircraft nose art.

In any case, this is about NASA cutting contacts with aviation manufacturers to set its aeronautics agenda for the next few decades. (paid subscription required)

What gets my blood going are the concepts, whether SSTs, that look like they came out of the Thunderbirds classic TV show:

Open rotor engines:

And new configurations:


New engine congfigurations


Lowspeed high efficiency aircraft with externally braced wings

Pantagon Slow Walking Directed Energy Weapons

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Not just lasers, but also things like electronics frying high power microwaves, etc.

This appears to be driven by cost and obsolescence issues(paid subscription required):

….

“Cross-domain synergies [result] when a [cyber or electronic] nonkinetic and [an explosive] kinetic weapon of any kind can be used in concert,” says Maj. Gen. William Lord, chief of Cyber Command (Provisional). “This can potentially be a weapon of mass disruption [that unlike a bomb, you can] ratchet back. It’s about changing enemy behavior [without] total destruction. What cyber– [and electronic attack] weapons bring is something between a letter and a 2,000-lb. bomb.”

“We’re trying to bring [cyber– and electronic weapons] all together as a total investment for the benefit of the warfighter,” says Jay Kistler, technology adviser for the Pentagon’s Office of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L). “We’re working with all the players who are trying to get their arms around what we mean by cyber-operations and how we control them. And there is the recognition that electronic warfare overlaps cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”

….

“It can’t take 10-15 years to develop [a cyber– or electronic weapon],” says Lord. “We need things that get created and then [thrown] away in months, weeks or days. There also is a group looking at how to do more rapid acquisition.

So in addition to the inevitable draw down on Pentagon budgets (more on that later), the fact that they are dealing with civilian, and civilian derived, devices that have a total life cycle of less than 5 years from beginning of development to withdrawal from the market, mean that they don’t know how to make all their whiz bang work.

Of course the fact that they are using the term, “synergies,” strongly implies that the people in this field are bullsh#% artists too.

And In An Emergency, Your Lobbyist Can Be Used as a Flotation Device*

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I’ve written about efforts to allow free wireless connectivity access to what is called “White Spaces”, bits of spectrum allocated to over the air TV, but not used.

It has been proposed that these spaces be used for unlicensed devices, much in the same way that WiFi works now.

The difference is that the ranges and penetration of the signals are much greater.

Well, there are two groups lobbying very hard against this, the broadcasters, who have their channels allocated from this spectrum, and the wireless microphone industry, who use the white spaces illegally, and have done so for years.

Since the FCC tests showed that there was no problem with interference with TV stations, the prototypes did the necessary, “sense and avoid,” of occupied space, there isn’t a problem there, so my take is that their opposition is because they think that they “own” this space, and they think that there may be a way to monetize the space, so they have enlisted wireless microphone users: (quoting Harold Feld on
For a good background on all this, check out Harold Feld at Wetmachine.com):

I gotta admire the broadcasters (as represented by their trade orgs, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV)). Even with the facts completely against them, they never give up trying. Sadly, they all too often succeed through a combination of heavy duty lobbying power (what politician doesn’t suck up to his or her local broadcaster?) and the fact that most decision makers don’t know squat about engineering and regard the whole thing as black magic. Heck, it worked to hamstring low-power FM (LPFM) radio, despite a subsequent independent government report showing the broadcaster interference claims were unsubstantiated bologna.

But embracing radio pirates by proposing to expand the availability of wireless microphones in the broadcast white spaces for their political allies and tacitly agreeing to amnesty for illegal wireless microphone users? Even I never thought they would go that far.

He also notes that the US military uses the technology in question for protection of their troops in life threatening situations.

In any case, it looks like the broadcasters have brought in the big guns,† a Megachurch Preacher Rick Warren and Dolly Parton to claim that, white space devices will “will create an unnecessary interference in the worship services of hundreds of thousands of churches across the country,” according to the preacher man, and may have a, “direct negative impact” on Dollywood, the Grand Ole Opry, and “9 to 5: The Musical.”

You are illegally squatting on a public resource already, Ms. Parton.

*Pun most certainly intended.
†Yeah, this pun is intended too.

Major Army Strategist Savages Future Combat System*

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Col. H.R. McMaster, a, “is a highly influential soldier-scholar who is currently putting together a brain trust for Gen. David Petraeus to review U.S. policy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan,” just released a blistering paper condemning the direction of the US military.

He believes that the folks who support the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which espouses high tech communications, surveillance, and precision weapons at the expense of boots on the ground is are profoundly wrong, and unclear on what is actually going on the ground right now.

He also cuts the flyboyz in the USAF a new one while he’s at it.

Good read, check it out.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV* from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).

I Knew that It Did Not Look Right

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When I last posted about the PiperJet, I said that it didn’t look right, though I added the caveat that the same applies to the F-4 Phantom II.

Well, it appears that my hunch meant something. Piper is looking at , modifications to the airframe to deal with pitch changes from changes in thrust. They have an automatic trim system to handle this, but they would like to eliminate this and use, “a Coanda effect device that would channel the jet’s exhaust in an appropriate direction to reduce nose-down moment created by adding power and nose-up trim changes when decreasing power.”

Basically, they are talking a poor man’s thrust vectoring, I think.

“Baby Seal” Report May Have Cost RAND Analyst Their Job

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It appears that John Stillion has abruptly left his job as an analyst at the RAND corporation, He’s best known for writing a report which described the JSF as being clubbed like a baby seal in air to air combat by aircraft already flying.

Dennis Jensen, an Australian MP and a fierce critic of the JSF, who used this report to argue against Australia purchaasing the aircraft, is alleging that he was fired for this report.

Curiouser and curiouser.