Category: technology

V-22 AWACS

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It’s called the Tactical Organic Sensing System (TOSS), though Boeing is trying to change the rather unfortunate name.

One wag suggested that the radar be named Cerberus Advanced Battlespace Extension Radar (CABER).

This may very well be a winner for the various operators of V/STOL carriers, with the V-22 having better persistence and altitude performance than a helicopter based solution.

The aperture (antenna) size does appear a bit small, though it will be at least as good as the existing Sea King ASaC7.

Regulation Fuels Competition In Euro Broadband

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So now, the New York Times finally notices that the rest of the industrial world is beating our brains out in boradband.

It’s very simple. If you don’t regulate in a market with high barriers to entry, it is more profitable for the incumbent to work on keeping, and raising, those barriers to entry. It’s more profitable than attempting to build a better cheaper product.

The US have given thousands in subsidies to the incumbent telcos, and done nothing by way of regulation, and as a result we have 2nd rate service (hi Comcast users):

Ms. Reding emphasized her determination to encourage greater competition in the market and to give regulators the power to force “functional separation” — obliging the owners of telecommunications networks to free the networks from their operating divisions.

Word up on Ms. Reding.

XM360 Gun for MCS Variant of the Future Combat System

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While I think that the entire manned vehicle portion of the Future Combat System is a waste*, there are some technologies that look to be interesting from a military perspective.

Case in point, the lightweight XM360 120mm gun for the MCS (Tank) variant of the FCS-MGV†.

It’s about a ton lighter than the 120mm gun used on the Abrams, with significant reductions in recoil, both due to a more effective recoil system, and because it uses a muzzle break that is compatible with sabot rounds.

It achieves the weight savings through a high strength steel barrell with a composite wrapping to keep tension on the barrel, and by using largely titanium components in the recoil assembly, much like the lightweight towed M777 155mm howitzer.

Of interest, the gun is also capable of indirect fire out to 12 km, which would be an improvement on M256 used on the Abrams, which does not have this capability.

Image courtesy of Wiki.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, etc. that form the full FCS.

What Technically Competent ISPs Do to Provide Service

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Verizon is investing resources in a technology called P4P, a PEER TO PEER technology which promises to reduce the burden on ISPs with regard to the distribution of commercial and licensed high bandwidth products.

This is what Bit-Torrent was designed to do. It was developed for things like Linux distros, and the idea was that when you released an upgrade, you would get the downloaders to share amongst themselves, so your server would not be vomiting blood.

Ars spoke with Verizon senior technologist and P4P workgroup co-chair Doug Pasko, who tells us that Verizon observed download performance improvements of approximately 200 percent during tests conducted with Pando. The performance boost can climb as high as 600 percent in some cases. Verizon believes that P2P technology is moving into the mainstream and is being legitimized for large-scale commercial content delivery. The company sees P4P as a way to enable broader commercial adoption of P2P tech while unclogging the tubes and relieving network congestion.

Since the efficacy of the P4P protocol largely relies on the availability of network topology information, Verizon and the P4P workgroup aim to make the new protocol an industrywide standard and convince other carriers to share their own data and participate. “Quite frankly, any carrier should benefit from this,” Pasko told Ars. The initiative has drawn support from a number of ISPs, including Comcast, which is currently facing scrutiny for impeding peer-to-peer traffic on its own network.

This is not to say that Verizon is not evil, after all they are the phone company, but they are not evil and stupid as ComCast is.

A GBU-57 Theory

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You may recall my linking to a blog post by Stephen Trimble about a mystery bomb, the GBU-57, for the USAF is letting out a contract for integration with the B-2.

While cleaning out my pockets, I came across an article from the Defense Technology International January/February Issue, there is an article on page 14 (no direct link because of the oddball way it displays pages) about three new/old bomb technologies.

Specifically, the use of ES-1 super hard “Eglin Steel”, the “precise time of arrival munitions, where multiple bombs dropped are given flight paths which will result in simultaneous detonation, and “skip bombing”, the Marnes Wallis’ technique used by the Dam Busters. in WWII.

It may still be some sort of MOP integration for a sneak attack on Iran, though how they can ask for bids when Congress has specifically forbidden spending money on this is beyond me.

The Stupid, Mindless Security State

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In this case, it’s USAF Gen. Michael Hamel, who feels the need to warn us about the extential threat that Google Earth poses to the United States.

“It could be as simple as how is it that an adversary gets an image off of Google Earth that could somehow threaten American lives or interests ….. “That is an example of a space threat that we may face in the future.”

And as a commenter said, “Right… and pigs can fly. Or rather, the good General may wish a Pig Ban because if pigs could fly they might somehow hurt US interests.”

I’m beginning to wonder why a disproportionate number of these mind-boggling stupid statements coming from generals seem to come from USAF generals.

Must be something in the water at Colorado Springs…Come to think of it, that is where dog and child beater James Dobson’s Focus on the Family is located.

Successful Test of Meteor Breathing Air to Air Missile

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On the 6th of this month, at the Vidsel Missile Test Range in Sweden.

It’s generally in the AMRAAM range of performance, though it offers significantly better kinematics (Range 100+km reported on the wiki, and I’d bet on more than 150km) due to its solid fuel ramget/ducted rocket propulsion system.

Of note, it will
never fit in an F-22 weapon’s bays, though it might fit in those of an F-35.

It’s supposed to enter service in about 5 years….Yeah…I know…what takes so %$#@ing long.

Many Security Exploits Financial, Not Technical Issue

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El Reg writes about an academic article that calls for making vendors liable for security exploits.

This is a good idea:

In the real world investment in risk avoidance may not be profitable. Security failures often arise due to perverse incentives rather than the lack of suitable technology. For example, credit card firms can rely on business models that push the cost of fraud onto merchants and consumers rather than investing in reducing the problem themselves. That’s because such investments would place them at a commercial disadvantage to their competitors.

Establishing economic incentives for IT suppliers to produce more secure products is arguably an even greater problem because software publishers are not held liable for the shortcomings of their products. These shortcomings may damage consumer faith in ecommerce but fail to effect sales, so a market-based solution in absence of regulatory pressure is difficult to imagine.

Microsoft would be bankrupt in 6 months.

Just When You Think that Drug Companies Can’t Get Any More Contemptible

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Pfizer is going to court to try and force the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) to reveal the names of its anonymous peer reviewers.

They are trying to subvert the most basic principal of scientific journals, the peer review process, and making the bogus claim that “Scientific journals such as NEJM may have received manuscripts that contain exonerating data for Celebrex and Bextra which would be relevant for Pfizer’s causation defence,” for cases involving its Cox-2 inhibitors Celebrex and Bextra.

One hopes that the just slaps them down.

Note to Self: Don’t Do Business in the United States

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The New York Times reports on the case of a British Travel Agent living in Spain, who had his domain names seized by his US domain registrar at the request of the Treasury Department.

They felt that he, “helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba”, so they seized the sites, including one about Earnest Hemingway, and two in Italian and French.

A whois shows that the Pirate Bay uses Key-Systems GmbH?

Perhaps they are in a country of laws, and not men.

GM to Use LiIon Batteries in Hybrid Car Models

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I think that it’s clear that the lithium-ion batteries chosen by GM are superior to the standard NiMH, they are more efficient and lighter, but there are problems.

The article mentions overheating, but they actually heat up less in use.

The real problem is what is euphemistically called “rapid disassembly” in battery manufacturing*, which occurs when batteries overheat or are overcharged.

Basically because of the chemistry of a LiIon battery, these can cause dendrites, basically metal whiskers, to form between anode and cathode, shorting out the battery and discharging all of its energy in a matter of seconds.

Think about the Dell exploding laptops on crack. It looks a lot like a flare going off.

Of course, this would not be a problem with a properly designed system, but we are talking about General Motors, the folks who used the same aluminum alloy as Mercedes Benz for its Vega engine, but but chose a coolant that corroded aluminum.

I’d wait for at least the 3rd model year before buying.

*I worked for a battery manufacturer for a while.†
†And now my regular readers, both of them, are wondering if there is any field of endeavor where I haven’t worked. Well, yes. High finance. If I had worked on that, I’d have the money to spare for a domain name.