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How to Build a FLYING SAUCER Declassified documents reveal Air Force’s plan to build a UFO Here's a quirky find from the National Archives: the United States Air Force's 1956 plan to build a saucer-shaped aircraft that would zip across the skies with the greatest of ease. As the Archives explain of "Project 1794, Final Development Summary Report": The Air Force had contracted the work out to a Canadian company, Avro Aircraft Limited in Ontario, to construct the disk-shaped craft. According to the same report, it was designed to be a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) plane designed to reach...

2010: After unsuccessful attempts to obtain Western electronics for its new JF-17 jet fighter, Pakistan has announced that it will use Chinese gear instead. China initially offered to fit out the JF-17s with electronics and weapons, but the Pakistanis were leery of the untried Chinese equipment. Meanwhile, India and the United States pressured France not to allow Pakistan to buy advanced radars and other electronics for the Pakistani built JF-17 jet fighter. This was because China did most of the development on the JF-17, and Chinese personnel would be involved in any effort to install French electronics in these aircraft....

The Navy has been seeking its “Holy Grail” free electron laser (FEL) weapon for a while now, but it would rather you think of it more as a multipurpose laser platform than a death ray. While the Navy’s ship-borne FEL, currently under development at Boeing, will certainly be used to knock incoming threats out of the sky, naval officers really want a platform that can also be used for tracking, communications, target designation, disruption, time-of-flight location, and a variety of other tasks. Such a multipurpose tool certainly makes the Navy’s laser system seem a more practical use of funding, and...

In Afghanistan, perhaps more so than in a small Polish town, it’s important to know exactly where you’re going. So you can imagine the frustration felt by Polish troops serving in Afghanistan when faulty GPS equipment told them that they weren’t in Afghanistan, but in one of several African nations or back home in the small town of Zielona Gora in Western Poland. The equipment, according to one Polish officer quoted in the Polish press, has caused some units to become completely disoriented in the Afghan frontier, a place where coalition soldiers really don’t want to be wandering around aimlessly....

Intelligent advanced aircraft is one thing, but if the Air Force wants to be in prime warfighting condition, its pilots had better come with advanced weaponry, too. That’s why the Air Force wants neuroweapons that can enhance airmen’s performance, while degrading the mental states of their foes. The Air Force Research Laboratory’s 711th Human Performance Wing just updated a call for proposals that examine “Advances in Bioscience for Airmen Performance,” according to Wired's Danger Room. The initial announcement came out last November, but no one has yet come up with new stimulants that help airmen focus, or models that fuse...

The military dimension of Sino-Russian ties, particularly arms sales, has been deteriorating since 2006-07. While that decline partly reflects the growing prowess of China's defense industrial base, a major part stems from Russia's growing apprehension about China's growing capabilities and anger over its wholesale piracy of Russian weapons' designs and ensuing competition with Russia for third party markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The unlicensed copying of military arms has made China a formidable military player and a redoubtable competitor with Russia in emerging defense markets. For instance, Russian experts profess surprise at how fast China has been able...

Every May, Russia proudly marches its biggest, fiercest-looking military hardware across Red Square in a show of force one might expect from one of the biggest militaries in the world. Tanks, missile launchers and rockets worth billions of dollars thunder across the cobblestones. But in a small field outside Moscow, two men wheel out a small package that could save the Russian military millions and prevent it from needing to deploy that fearsome arsenal. The men fire up an air pump and within minutes there stands a towering S-300 anti-aircraft missile launcher. Russia's Defense Ministry is in talks with a...

Russia's state arms exporter Rosoboronexport said Tuesday it had signed several contracts with the French defense firm Thales on the transfer of technology and delivery of communications equipment for Russian armored vehicles. "The first contract involves transfer of technologies to Russia, which now will have the right to produce officially licensed thermal imagers at Vologda Optical and Mechanical Plant," said Igor Sevastyanov, Rosoboronexport deputy director general. "The second contract provisionally allows Russia to bring in communications equipment for integration into Russian armored vehicles for testing," Sevastyanov said. He added that the communications equipment would be mounted on T-90 tanks and...

To the untrained eye, U.S. Army radar-generated maps may look like a bird's-eye view of a city at night; however, these images contain useful intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information that reveal concealed objects by penetrating foliage, buildings and some terrain while overcoming camouflage, concealment and deception techniques. These maps, which highlight boundaries not visible to traditional electronic sensors, are made possible by the U.S. Army's Tactical Reconnaissance and Counter Concealment Enabled Radar, or TRACER. Developed by the Research, Development and Engineering Command's communications and electronics center, TRACER is a mid-range, long wavelength synthetic aperture radar system that provides all-weather persistent...

The Rolling Green hills of Sonora, California, no longer lure prospectors with the promise of gold, but for Matthew Hagerty the draw is just as powerful: They’re a secluded hideaway ideal for perfecting his military invention, called SmartSight. Ten years in the making, SmartSight is a gun-cam system that allows a soldier to see around corners and shoot targets without putting himself in the line of fire. It consists of a wireless video camera mounted to the rail of an M4 or .308 SOCOM carbine, a small computer worn on a military vest, and a thumbnail-size color head-up display affixed...

Turkey has been marketing its short-range air defense system to Arab League states. Turkey's military-owned Aselsan has been briefing Arab militaries on the company's Pedestal-Mounted Air Defense System (PMADS). The system, based on the U.S.-origin Stinger surface-to-air missile, was designed for very short-range air defense, particularly the protection of critical sites and military bases. "There is interest [in the system] within the region," an executive said. Aselsan displayed PMADS at Sofex-2010, which took place in Amman, Jordan on May 10-13. Executives said Jordan's military has been examining the feasibility of procuring the system, which could also fire French- and Russian-origin...

military did no advance testing on a specific type of military GPS receiver that had problems picking up locator signals after a change in ground-control software, the Air Force said Monday. The Air Force tested other equipment, but none of it contained the type of receiver that was unable to lock on to Global Positioning System satellites after the change, said Joe Davidson, a spokesman for the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. The manufacturer of the receivers, Trimble Advanced and Military Systems, said it ran its own advance tests using specifications from the Air Force GPS Wing and...

Satellite photos recently revealed that the Chinese Navy has received J-11 jet fighters. These are illegal Chinese copies of the Russian Su-27. This plagiarism has been a source of friction between Russia and China for over five years. It all began, legally, in 1995, when China paid $2.5 billion for the right to build 200 Su-27s. Russia would supply engines and electronics, with China building the other components according to Russian plans and specifications. But after 95 of the Chinese built aircraft were built, Russia cancelled the agreement. They claimed that China was using the knowledge acquired with this Su-27...

The Army says it is recalling 44,000 advanced combat helmets that have been issued to soldiers worldwide because they do not meet military specifications. The Army said in a statement Friday that the risk to soldiers wearing the helmets is still being determined. New helmets are being issued to anyone who has a defective one. The recall amounts to 4 percent of all advanced combat helmets issued by the Army. The helmets are made by ArmorSource LLC. The company, based in Hebron, Ohio, is a leading maker of combat headgear for the military and police. The army said tests showed...

Taiwan needs as many as 66 more Lockheed Martin Corp. F-16 fighter jets to counter China’s growing air defense and attack capability, according to a report by a pro-Taiwan advocacy group. “China’s rapid, sustained military modernization over the last two decades has steadily eroded Taiwan’s relative capabilities in maintaining a viable air defense,” the U.S.- Taiwan Business Council said yesterday in a report released in Washington. Taiwan’s request in 2006 to buy the fighters wasn’t pursued by the administration of President George W. Bush and so far hasn’t been backed by President Barack Obama in the face of opposition from...

The Hudson Institute’s Richard Weitz, posting over at Second Line of Defense, says Russian arms sales to China are drying up as Chinese industry increasingly builds its own high-tech weaponry and Beijing objects to Russian technology transfer restrictions. Since 2001, Russia has sold more than $16 billion worth of arms to China, with yearly sales peaking at $2.7 billion, he writes; accounting for nearly 40 % of all major Russian arms sales. In recent years, however, things have changed: “Since 2005, the PRC has stopped purchasing Russian warships or warplanes and has ceased signing new multi-billion arms sale contracts… The...

Regina Dugan last summer took over as chief of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In a profile of the 47-year-old PhD in mechanical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, The New York Times noted that in recent years DARPA has lost some of the luster it gained over decades as an agency that develops cutting edge military technologies that also filter into the consumer and civilian arena. The agency has been criticized in recent years for shifting its focus too closely to tools and technologies that could have an immediate impact for U.S. soldiers on the front...

U.S. military technologies such as guided bombs and night vision rely heavily upon rare earth elements supplied by China, and rebuilding an independent U.S. supply chain to wean the country off that foreign dependency could take up to 15 years, according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Both "light" and "heavy" rare earth elements represent a family of minerals found in commercial products ranging from TV displays to cell phones, as well as green technologies such as hybrid electric motors and wind turbines. For example, the rare earth element neodymium is very magnetic and is...

Despite a legal pact designed to slow the proliferation of unmanned systems, the Pentagon hopes to export U.S. drone technology to allies, Reuters reported. Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified before a Senate hearing that it was in the United States’ interest to share drone technology with allies despite the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a pact signed by at least 34 countries. "There are other countries that are very interested in this capability and frankly it is, in my view, in our interest to see what we can do to accommodate them," Gates said. The U.S. military's demand for unmanned...

In 2018, the U.S. Navy hopes to take a major step toward fielding a cyber-attack system on a tactically survivable, fighter-size aircraft. Although researchers are cautious about discussing their cyberwarfare and electronic attack projects, one company states that it is "developing a weapon system that can deliver cyber-effects through free space into an aperture." That opaque explanation refers to a cyber-weapon, sized for a tactical aircraft or UAV, that can create a long-range data stream -- most likely from an active, electronically scanned array (AESA) emitter. The emitter will function both as radar and the source of these uniquely tailored...