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April 22, 2002 Developing Short And Long Term Antiterrorist Approach Networked sensors to detect the movement of hostile forces and materials -- and longer-term approaches for changing the environment in which terrorism breeds -- are being developed at Sandia National Laboratories. Long-term fixes also include new ideas for monitoring borders, materials and agents. In the near term, dozens of Sandia researchers over the next few months will develop sensor systems that identify and track large objects such as missile launchers in a desert environment. The ultimate intent over the next few years is to link hundreds of sensors that will...

When authorizing the new Missile Defense Agency, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced he wanted to field initial elements of the overall "layered” system in the 2004-2008 time frame. Pentagon officials now say they are optimistic about opening a prototype hit-to-kill ballistic missile defense site in Alaska by October 2004, according to the New York Times. "It is becoming increasingly clear and we are becoming increasingly confident that we will be able to make hit-to-kill work reliably enough to be effective,” said Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, chief of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency. Pentagon officials said work would...

WASHINGTON, April 14 — Buoyed by four successful missile defense tests in a row, senior Pentagon officials say they are on schedule to open a rudimentary missile shield site in Alaska by the fall of 2004. Just last summer, the Pentagon was expressing at best a guarded optimism about its antimissile program, which had had a string of failures. Since then, prototype interceptors have scored four consecutive direct hits on targets, three of them long-range ballistic missiles.Now, senior officials say, they have much greater confidence that their main antimissile technology, known as hit-to-kill, has turned a developmental corner. They say...

US looks to create robo-soldier{WELCOME TO THE NWO} Today's soldiers carry tons of equipment By Jane Wakefield BBC News Online technology staff The soldier of the future could be able to leap buildings, heal his own wounds, deflect bullets and become invisible. These are just some of the futuristic plans of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which has been selected by the US army to create the battlefield equivalent of Robocop. The $50m research centre will be known as the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN). Among the goals of the newly-created ISN will be gadgets that can heal soldiers,...

The Pentagon is studying the possible use of nuclear-tipped interceptors in a national missile defense system, The Washington Post said quoting experts.Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld encouraged the Defense Science Board to explore the idea in a future study on alternative approaches to intercepting enemy missiles," board chairman William Schneider told the daily in an interview."We've talked about it as something that he's interested in looking at," Schneider said. President George W. Bush in December withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia to allow the development of a controversial missile defense system that would destroy enemy nuclear missiles...

Key Issue: ABM-Missile Defense Continue the Sea-Based Terminal-Phase Missile Defense Programby Baker Spring Link to: | PDF (69k) | No. 797 December 19, 2001  Produced by the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies Published by The Heritage Foundation 214 Massachusetts Ave., N.E. Washington, D.C. 20002-4999 (202) 546-4400http://www.heritage.org On December 14, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Edward C. Aldridge announced that the Department of Defense is canceling the Navy's missile defense program for protecting small areas such as port facilities. This program-until recently known as the Navy Area-Wide (NAW) program-was designed to destroy attacking missiles in...

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — In preparation for its upcoming deployment, the USS Kitty Hawk has become the first aircraft carrier in the Navy to test a new defensive missile system. The Rolling Airframe Missile, or RAM, is designed to shoot down incoming threats. The ship, which spent three months in the Arabian Sea last fall participating in Operation Enduring Freedom, is expected to return to the same area for a five-month deployment this spring. An initial test firing on March 21 was designed to see if the new system would harm the superstructure of the ship. A second testing...

The Pentagon's interest in repackaging existing nuclear payloads on earth-penetrating weapons may not violate the 1994 congressional ban on developing new nuclear weapons, according to Gen. John A. Gordon, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and undersecretary of energy for nuclear security. The Department of Defense is interested in concepts that could fit its requirement for defeating hard and deeply buried targets, including the use of repackaged nuclear weapons, Gordon told defense reporters in Washington April 2. "There is, as you know, an effort that came out of [the Department of] Defense to look at a strengthened...

The White House has been stymied so far in making a compelling case to take military action against Iraq. But according to a retired Air Force colonel who played a key role in shaping U.S. military strategy in the first Gulf War, the issue of what technological advances mean for modern warfare has muddied the dialog. In fact, the radically improved capabilities of air power require a major perspective shift that actually tries to spare the lives of enemy troops and concentrate on making precision strikes against infrastructure, according to John Warden. "If we look back at the Gulf War,...

Marine Lt.Gen. Emil Bedard recently stated: "The kind of fire support that the Marines need for maneuver ashore in the littorals is not the tactical Tomahawk, it's the kind that comes from a gun. We don't have it…We have a hard requirement for a gun. We are not going to fall off that requirement." Despite the Navy's successful firing of Alliant Techsystems' (ATK) 5-inch autonomous naval support round (ANSR) to a range of 51 nautical miles, its 25-pound-combined high explosive/tungsten fragments payload remains ineffective against tanks and other hard targets. Navy destroyer magazines are too small to stow a sufficient...

<p>Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will soon create uniforms that will shield U.S. soldiers from bullets and poison gas, heal wounds and allow them to leap over 20-foot walls.</p> <p>MIT won a U.S. Army competition for a $50 million contract to develop an Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, where the uniforms will be created within the next five years. A total of 100 students and 35 professors from MIT's schools of engineering, science and architecture and planning will begin the project next month.</p>

The Army will deploy the leased Joint Venture (HSV-X1) high-speed catamaran to the Persian Gulf for operations in the war on terrorism, a departure from the vessel's previous experimental activities, sources said last week. Following the Navy's scheduled handover of the vessel to the Army March 20 in southern Spain, the ground service has been working to modify the ship and train Army sailors for deployment to the Persian Gulf, where it will participate in activities related to the war on terrorism, sources said. Though sources declined to provide the ship's date of deployment, they said the move from Spain...

03/29/02 - WASHINGTON -- It has been called the "monster truck" of the U.S. bomber fleet. It flies low, fast and long distance, and has the largest payload of any bomber, including the B-52 Stratofortress. For Operation Enduring Freedom, it has been the B-1B Lancer that has done the lion's share of the work, dropping nearly 40 percent of the ordnance, while flying only 5 percent of the strike sorties. "The picture that is etched into my mind about the B-1 is the picture of an Afghan mountainside and a string of (GBU-31/32 joint direct attack munitions) marching down a...

What's Next For Navy Missile Defense ROBERT WALL and DAVID A. FULGHUM/WASHINGTON The Pentagon's decision to kill the Area-Wide ballistic missile defense program opens the door for competitors to propose a new approach to enable the Navy to eventually field a point-defense missile shield. The program cancellation is good news for other Pentagon projects that stand to receive some of Area Wide's money. High on the list is the Airborne Laser project, which is slated to get about $70 million this year alone. Another beneficiary would be Aegis radar improvements that aren't related to ballistic missile defense. Navy Area development,...

Aviation Week & Space Technology: March 25, 2002 Missile Defense's New Look To Emerge This Summer ROBERT WALL/WASHINGTON Airborne Laser, other projects get makeover as Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty restrictions fall by the wayside The Pentagon's plans for an expanded anti- missile shield should crystallize this summer when a recently anointed team of industry experts is to express its views on a new missile defense architecture. Senior Defense Dept. officials have been busy, in recent months, creating a new management and oversight structure for missile defense endeavors. Moves included establishing two industry panels-- one led by Boeing focused on system engineering...

Rise and Fall of a Navy Missile Interceptor, Hit by Delay and Cost Overruns, Was Grounded By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 28, 2002; Page A03 When the Bush administration canceled a decade-old program to launch missile interceptors from ships, the Navy and prime contractor Raytheon Co. were shocked. Rarely do major new weapons systems get eliminated after years of development. Though still unproven and despite a history of delays and cost overruns, the sea-based system had several things going for it. The Pentagon had poured more than $2.4 billion into developing it. The project enjoyed strong...

Wednesday, 27 March, 2002, 16:41 GMT Sudden impact in space Heading for the edge of space, the interceptor takes off By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor The United States has released details of its latest test involving the interception of a missile target in space, part of what used to be called the Star Wars project. It took place over the central Pacific Ocean on 15 March when a modified Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The prototype interceptor was launched 20 minutes later 7,725 kilometres (4,800 miles) away...

Government asks federal labs to develop underground nuclear bomb By DAN STOBER San Jose Mercury News SAN JOSE, Calif. — The Pentagon and the Energy Department have directed the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories in Livermore, Calif., and Los Alamos, N.M., to compete for the chance to design a hydrogen bomb that could destroy targets underground. To the dismay of arms-control proponents, the Bush administration is advocating such weapons — which would slam into the earth at high speed and then explode underground — as a means of attacking command bunkers or biological and chemical weapons facilities possibly buried in such...

<p>The Pentagon and the Energy Department have directed the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories in Livermore and Los Alamos to compete for the chance to design a hydrogen bomb that could destroy targets underground.</p> <p>To the dismay of arms-control proponents, the Bush administration is advocating such weapons -- which would slam into the earth at high speed and then explode underground -- as a means of attacking command bunkers or biological and chemical weapons facilities possibly buried in such places as Iraq, Iran or North Korea.</p>

cartome.org20 March 2002 Source: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991859 Disc-shaped spyplane could hunt for terrorists New Scientist12:25 04 February 02 by Max GlaskinSiMiCon Rotor Craft (SRC) What looks like a flying saucer, takes off like a helicopter and flies like a plane? The next remote-controlled surveillance aircraft on the hunt for terrorist fugitives like Osama bin Laden, apparently.Pilotless aircraft came into their own in the Afghan conflict, greatly reducing casualties in US Air Force and ground troops on both reconnaissance and attack missions. But today's uninhabited aerial vehicles, or UAVs, have big drawbacks: they need a runway, they are slow and they cannot hover....