New doodads for the robot wars

[unhappycamper]

UAVs Next Step For AESA Radar
By Colin Clark Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 11:03 am
Posted in Air, Intelligence

Farnborough Air Show – Imagine a UAV with radar built into its wings, its nose and its tail. Now imagine a squadron of UAVs sharing that data among themselves and building a huge field of regard. Add a few Super Hornets or F-35s to enlarge the field even more and to give the squadron not just eyes, but also weapons to destroy any targets identified during the run. Put all that together and you possess a likely view of the next five years of development for Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar.

The first operational AESA radar was developed by Raytheon for the F-15C fighter. The first systems were flying by December 2000. Since then AESA radars have racked up 150,000 flight hours, according to a Raytheon press release. The growing UAV market offers opportunities for AESA now because Raytheon looks to build conformal radar that weigh 2 to 5 pounds per square foot and are less than an inch thick. That will allow them to be installed in places current radar just can’t go and they could be placed in UAVs with a six-foot wingspan.

On top of that, Raytheon believes it can expand the capabilities of the radar so it can be used within the next two to five years to feed ISR and other data to other sources at the speed of an email. AESA radar already provides pilots with detailed radar maps and those maps can be shared with ground personnel via Rover or Link 16.

So far, Raytheon executives are reluctant to discuss whether any programs are underway yet for AESA radar on UAVs. Fred Lanes, head of business development for Raytheon’s Tactical Airborne Systems, told reporters today that “we are waiting to be approached.“






The Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate, or GUSS, can be programmed to follow Marines on patrol while toting up to 500 pounds of equipment.


New gear could lighten your load downrange
By Amy McCullough - Staff wruter
Posted : Tuesday Jul 20, 2010 8:26:53 EDT

An unmanned, tactical golf cart is among gear undergoing tests this month that could reduce the load Marines have to carry while downrange.

Other examples include a high-tech radio system the size of a BlackBerry and a remote-controlled machine gun.

The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab is testing the gear during an experiment within small-unit teams deployed to austere locations.

Called Limited Objective Experiment-4, the tests are occurring at Marine Corps Training Area Bellows in Hawaii and about 20 miles away in parts of the Kahuku Mountains. It is piggybacking on the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercises, which includes 14 participating nations and 34 ships.

The experiment marks the culmination of six years of studies at the war-fighting lab, based at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., that started in 2004 with a look at distributed operations — a form of maneuver warfare where small units can gain the advantage over the enemy by spreading out over large areas — and has evolved to today’s focus of empowering small units and giving them the tools they need to operate more efficiently, said Vince Goulding, the director of MCWL’s experiments division.



on edit to add:


Paging Wall-E: Air Force Wants Robo-Cargo to Load Itself
By Spencer Ackerman Email Author
July 21, 2010 |
1:07 pm

How many times have you been stuck helping a friend move into a new apartment and thought, God, this couch needs to find a way to get into the U-Haul on its own. The Air Force wants you to run with that concept — except with bombs and sensors, not your buddy’s chest of drawers.

The Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio is calling for small businesses to build what it calls an Intelligent Robo-Pallet: mechanical platforms that can haul stuff onto its planes autonomously. It’s got to be able to move on its own, lift and stack as cargo masters instruct, possess a built-in navigation capability, fit and operate in tight quarters, and talk with all other tech that’s used to get things on and off planes. Basically, imagine a C-130 full of gear opening up and the pallets in the center raise up and roll out of the belly. Yes: the Air Force wants its Wall-E.

And it won’t just be for peacetime operations. According to the solicitation, the Intelligent Robo-Pallet has to be able to work not just at huge established bases but “contingency airbases” as well — that is, war zones and other dicey areas, where “qualified man-power and cargo handling equipment” is sometimes scarce. (Danger Room has seen the frustrations of Air Force cargo transport up close.) Why contract out when you can build a robot?

This is obviously years away from delivery, assuming that engineers out there somewhere can come up with working plans for the Air Force to consider. But if they can, the Intelligent Robo-Pallet might one day become a fixture at civilian airports. “he technology developed by this effort will have direct application to commercial air-cargo handling, shipping and receiving, and warehousing,” the solicitation reads.

Some civilians are thinking along similar wavelengths: FedEx’s CEO recently told a Wired business conference that he wants a fleet of drone cargo aircraft led by a single piloted plane. If so, maybe the next step is to have a self-propelled army of pallet-bots to haul stuff onto the trucks. Doesn’t anyone believe in paying a guy to carry heavy things anymore?

[old mark]

1. That GUSS thing I have seen before - It can stay out for months on its own,

"on patrol", gathering and reporting information and actually LEARNING from its experiences. It can carry weapons - machineguns and small missiles so far - and can recharge itself from solar arrays.

I am really starting to think private citizens need to be able to own something much heavier than my .308 rifles...If our government has armed learning robots, I want some hand held missiles myself.

rec.
mark

[Ian David]

2. They eat old peoples' medicine for fuel. n/t