Free Republic

Future Naval Force May Sail With the Strength of Titanium For Immediate Release: April 3, 2012 ARLINGTON, Va. — Steel may have met its match: An Office of Naval Research (ONR)-funded project will produce a full-size ship hull section made entirely with marine grade titanium using a welding innovation that could help bring titanium into future Navy ship construction, officials announced April 3. The contractor team building this section recently completed the industry’s longest friction-stir titanium alloy welds and aims to complete the ship hull section this summer. Friction stir welds more than 17 feet long joined the titanium alloy...

A Navy crew might only have seconds to react to an incoming missile before it rips a hole into a ship. Existing anti-missile systems include rapid-fire guns designed to shoot down missiles at close range. But a reliable laser weapon could do the same job with higher precision, speed-of-light engagement and without running out of ammunition. It's an idea that's been in development at the U.S. Office of Naval Research since the 1980s. The goal is to create a megawatt, or 1 million-watt, laser weapon. Last month, scientists at the Los Alamos National Lab demonstrated they are capable of producing...

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...

Last week the Pentagon revealed the existence of a new weapon in the war against roadside bombs: a beam of radio-frequency energy that can detonate hidden Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) at a distance. And its creators say the potential does not stop there—the beam could be also used to set off other types of warheads before they reached their target. In theory it might be used to set off ammunition before the enemy even has a chance to fire. "The capabilities are not limited to improvised devices," Lee Mastroianni, program manager at the Office of Naval Research (ONR), told Popular...

ATK-Designed Scramjet Flies in Excess of Mach 5 in a Missile Configuration MINNEAPOLIS, Dec. 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alliant Techsystems (NYSE: ATK - News), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) successfully ground-launched and flew a hypersonic scramjet-powered vehicle from the Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA in a pre-dawn launch on Saturday Dec. 10th. This was the first- ever freeflight of a scramjet-powered vehicle using conventional liquid hydrocarbon jet fuel. The launch and flight test were part of the Freeflight Atmospheric Scramjet Test Technique (FASTT) program sponsored by DARPA and ONR. As the...

NAVAL STATION EVERETT, Wash. (NNS) -- The Navy unveiled its future as it officially christened its revolutionary new Littoral Surface Craft - Experimental, commonly referred to as "X-Craft," Feb. 5. Developed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), this high-speed, aluminum catamaran is designed to test a variety of technologies that could allow the Navy to operate more effectively in littoral, or shallow, waters. Officially, the ship's been named Sea Fighter and has been assigned hull number FSF 1, which stands for fast sea frame. X-Craft marks the first time a catamaran was designed and built specifically for the Navy....

Everyone has heard the horror stories—from rescue units frantically trying to communicate during the terrifying first hours after the Twin Towers were struck, to communications crises during the most recent war. The cause? Emergency radios that could not find a clear channel amidst the noise of all the other signals, and systems that are not compatible. The Office of Naval Research has moved the Navy—and all the services—a big step closer to needing only one radio to talk to the many already in service with the development of an all-digital radio receiver. The inherent accuracy and very high processing speed...