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Thor Global Defense Group of Van Buren, Ark., has developed a .408-inch modular tactical weapon system capable of satisfying military applications for anti-sniper and anti-personnel missions.

The Thor XM408 sniper rifle fires a .408 Chey-tac 419-grain bullet, uses a 30-inch match grade barrel with easily removable muzzle brake, has an adjustable monopod, a fully adjustable hardened aluminum stock with sliding mechanism, and a CNC and EDM-machined 42 Rockwell hardened receiver and bolt.

The rifle weighs 26 pounds, its length extended is 54 1/2-inches, and it uses either a 5-round standard or 7-round optional magazine.

Max Rodriguez, director of business development for Thor Global Defense Group, says the basic concept behind the SM408 “is to provide the longest possible range with the largest firepower possible for target interdiction, whether individual targets or vehicles.”

Rodriguez notes the sniper rifle uses a copper-nickel alloy projectile that’s armor piercing without having a steel core.

“It can defeat armor at various distances,” he says, “from one-quarter-inch to one-inch thick steel plate, depending on the distance.”

Bill Ritchie of EDM Arms in Hurricane, Utah, the rifle’s developer, says the .408 case is based on the .505 Gibbs and was developed to reach out to long range with superior accuracy.

“The XM408 is a 2,500-yard rifle that will outshoot a .50 BMG,” Ritchie says. “For example, shooting at 1,760 yards (one mile), with a .50 BMG from a zero setting you’d have to dial in 84 minutes of elevation to drop a round on target and the projectile has a three second flight time. With the XM408, you dial in 54 minutes of elevation. At 700 yards the projectile would overtake the .50 BMG projectile because of its flatter trajectory, and hit the target in only two seconds.”

Ritchie says the XM408 barrel can be changed out to another of a different caliber, including .416 Barrett, .338 Winchester, and .308 Winchester.

“There’s a lot of flexibility in this rifle that the users have told us they like,” Ritchie observes.

Ritchie says the XM408 has been used successfully in Afghanistan and Iraq by U.S. Marine Corps units, the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne and Ranger units, Special Operations teams and SEAL Team 5.

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz., freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the mystery novel, Full Moon, and several books on historical military small arms.

Soldiers at the tip of the spear — dismounted troops and Special Forces — routinely have to patrol in dense urban environments and rural walled compound areas to clear routes and track insurgents. So situational awareness and standoff distance can be critical elements in a successful mission.

Minnesota company ReconRobotics has developed a throwable micro-robot that gives U.S. Army soldiers the ability to increase standoff and enhance situational awareness, essentially providing them with a set of eyes behind walls or inside buildings.

The Recon Scout XT can be thrown through a window, over a wall, or down stairs, and it lands ready to go and transmits real-time video to its operator.

Ernest Langdon, director of U.S. Military Programs for ReconRobotics, says the 1.2-pound robot deploys in five seconds, is infrared equipped, and throwable with accuracy to 120 feet through windows and onto rooftops.

“Indoors, we can get 100 feet of distance through concrete walls between the robot and the controller,” Langdon says. “In most instances, we can clear an entire floor at one time. With line of sight operation, we can get 300-plus-feet of distance depending on the radio frequency environment.”

The Recon Scout XT transmits to its handheld 1.8-pound controller in a low frequency range, Langdon points out, to give greater penetration in and around buildings.

“Our video image is in black and white because the robot has infrared capability where color is not effective,” Langdon says. “With current technology, you have to stay in the black and white spectrum in order to see the infrared.”

The Recon Scout XT, which traces its development to a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-funded program at the University of Minnesota, is water resistant to 12 inches submerged for five minutes and survives repeated 30-foot drops onto concrete. It can operate for an hour with all systems running continuously and can recharge off of military 2590 (rechargeable) and 5590 (nonrechargeable) radio batteries.

To enhance the robot’s capabilities, ReconRobotics developed the SearchStick, a pole extendable to six feet with a push-button articulating jaw that holds the robot and turns the unit into a pole camera.

“A six-foot [-tall] soldier with his arms extended can use it to look over a 15-foot high wall,” Langdon observes. “He also can look into a second story window, then push a button to release the robot, and have it roll around examining the room.”

ReconRobotics also developed a lightweight bayonet mount device that clips onto an M4 or M16 rifle, turning it into a smaller version of the SearchStick. The mounting device doesn’t interfere with the weapon firing and allows a soldier to look around a corner or over a wall without exposing himself.

Langdon says the company has thousands of the robots in the field with the military and law enforcement. For the U.S. Navy, ReconRobotics is developing a version of the Recon Scout XT with magnetized wheels that, among other things, can climb up and over the hull of a ship.

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz., freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the mystery novel, Full Moon, and several books on historical military small arms.

The new face of the military could include “active protection” technology – finally ready after almost a decade of testing:

Trophy uses a system of flat-panel radars to monitor the skies for incoming fire. Should an incoming projectile be detected and verified as a weapon, Trophy’s active protection tools will decide the best angle to return fire with jets of molten metal. The entire process, from detection to destruction, takes just seconds.

The system being built for the United States military, to be used for armored vehicles in Afghanistan, is actually a combination of something similar to Trophy and a remote weapons station.

And just so you get your fix of explosions and cool tech stuff, check out the video of the already launched Israeli version of “active protection” technology!

Read the full story “Video of the Day: U.S. Military Prepares Truck That Returns Fire“  in The Atlantic for more tech details on the new systems ready for the field!

An Austin, Texas, company has developed holographic maps for the U.S. Army that give soldiers a realistic look at the terrain and obstacles they might be facing in the field.

Zebra Imaging, with help from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has made a flexible plastic map that becomes 3-D when exposed to an LED flashlight beam or a halogen light. The maps can be rolled and folded and can even get wet, yet still can retain their ability to provide 3-D information when needed.

Printed on 3-foot by 2-1/2-foot panels, the maps can be linked together into larger displays.

“We can mosaic the maps together to show large terrain,” says Rick Black, manager of defense and intelligence programs for Zebra Imaging. “For example, if an aviation unit is flying over a large mountain pass, we can put four or six of the maps together, and when the unit’s completed the mission, separate them and put them back in a flat storage box.”

But the chief advantage to the 3-D maps are with the soldiers in the field, Black points out.

“These maps are used at the company through brigade level, and the guys on patrol — both mounted and dismounted — have access to the maps,” Black says.

Black notes more than 10,000 of the 3-D maps have been produced for the Army since 2006.

“There’s a plan in place to allow these kinds of holograms to go to all services through a government agency,” Black says.

The founders of the holograms worked out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology beginning in 1996 and worked on holographic projection without the use of goggles or glasses.

The 3-D maps use a holographic element called a “hogel,” according to Black, which is a very small element similar to a pixel in an image.

“Inside each hogel is a 360-degree view of a particular spot looking out,” Black says, “and it projects what would be on the ground as if you were seeing it with your eyes.”

Black says that Zebra Imaging uses monochrome to display the information for military use, but it has the ability to render the 3-D maps in color.

“But doing it in color limits its use to white light, which is not a good idea in the field,” he points out. “Green light is better in the field.”

The hogels build up the hologram of each section until a true perspective view of a specific spot on the ground is attained,” he says.

“Whether it’s a building or a mountain, you can’t see through it to the other side,” Black maintains. “You have to spin the hologram or go around to see the other side.”

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz., freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the mystery novel, Full Moon, and several books on historical military small arms

Submarines, which depend on stealth to fulfill their missions, are being constructed using less-sonic-reflective materials and with ultra-quiet machinery.

But what submariners truly would like is the ability to disappear completely beneath the waves. They might get their wish.

Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge have recently produced an acoustic cloak that bends sound waves around an underwater object, essentially making it disappear.

Professor Nick Fang of the mechanical engineering department led a team that devised and demonstrated an acoustic cloak covering wavelengths from 40 kHz to 80 kHz.

Fang says the acoustic cloak owes its inspiration to the discovery of an optical cloak that bends light waves.

“It is similar to what happens in optical fibers, where, as they bend, the light still follows the fiber,” Fang says. “We applied that principal to acoustic waves.”

An important concept in developing the acoustic cloak is the principle of resonation, Fang notes.

“In looking at resonators, especially those in musical instruments, if we decompose the acoustic resonators into different elements, we realize each element is used to form the resonator but are not resonators themselves.”

Fang and his team applied the principle to a cascaded series of inductors and capacitors that are not resonant themselves, but when combined have the effect of slowing down or speeding up sound waves.

“That’s how we construct the acoustic cloak,” Fang says, “where we have the advantage that sound speed can be rendered differently inside and outside of the cloak.”

The farther into the cloak the acoustic waves move, the faster they travel, Fang points out. But sound waves prefer to stay in a medium that moves slower, rather than faster.

“If we take a sound wave into the acoustic cloak, the sound bends toward the outer rim of the cloak, instead of the inner part,” Fang observes. “We try to bend the sound waves in such a way to avoid the cloak’s center area. To an outsider trying to measure the area, it seems as if there is nothing inside the hole, but it could be a submarine or whatever you want to hide from the sonar.”

While the current prototype is only five inches wide, Fang says the principle can be applied to much larger objects.

“The acoustic cloak’s shadowing might reduce the size of a submarine to something between the size of a shark and a sardine,” Fang says.

He expects to have a larger, more three-dimensional prototype ready by the end of the year.

Fang, who began the acoustic cloak research while he was a professor at the University of Illinois, says he worked with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the project’s initial stages but now is pursuing funding with the Office of Naval Research and other DoD agencies.

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz., freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the mystery novel, Full Moon, and several books on historical military small arms.

The launch of the Endeavour, with its research payload for two new vaccines aboard, marked yet another milestone in VA’s longstanding collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The payload, which carries National Pathfinder Vaccine 10, is the last in a series working toward vaccines for two common infections: salmonella, which commonly contaminates the U.S. food chain, leading to food recalls and gastrointestinal illnesses, and an antibiotic resistant form of Staphylococcus aureus, also known as “golden staph,” the most common bacterial agent found in combat infections.

By using the unique environment of microgravity to determine the cellular changes that determine bacterial virulence, especially changes in gene functioning, scientists have sought to use these space flights to help speed vaccine development.

“The NASA space program has been invaluable to advancing VA research,” says VA Chief Research and Development Officer, Joel Kupersmith, MD. “The knowledge gained from this outstanding collaboration has improved health care for our Nation’s Veterans and has demonstrated the vital role research partnerships play in VA’s mission to provide Veterans with the care and benefits they have earned.”

VA research has flown payloads related to a variety of vaccine targets on the last 10 space shuttles and is scheduled to fly another payload on the final journey of the Atlantis in June 2011. This ongoing work has been in collaboration with the University of Colorado – Boulder, Banting, Best Lab at the University of Toronto, and Astrogenetix LLC. Additionally, the Durham, North Carolina VA Medical Center (VAMC) houses a lead laboratory for the International Space Station Pathfinder program.

Several VA investigators, such as Millie Hughes-Fulford, Ph.D., director of Laboratory of Cell Growth at the San Francisco VAMC, have accompanied the numerous VA research studies that have been sent into space. A payload specialist astronaut aboard space shuttle flight STS-40, Dr. Hughes-Fulford has studied a variety of key questions in immunology, including why T-cells – key to the immune system – stop working in mi-crogravity.
For more information on VA research, please see www.research.va.gov/.

There’s a breed of Asian snake that can glide through the air for long distances, something that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is taking a long, close look at.

The flying snakes are found in southern China, Southeast Asia, and in India and can undulate from side to side, unlike other animals that glide with fixed wings or parts of their body that are wing-like.

Jake Socha, a researcher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, has used a DARPA grant to study the snakes’ physical dynamics in flight and how such information might be used in a military context.

Socha, a professor of engineering science and mechanics and biologist who studies biomechanics, says the Asian snakes live most of their lives in trees, requiring them to move from tree to tree by gliding or flying between them.

“DARPA wasn’t interested in a direct application per se,” Socha says, “but first to understand the fundamental science and mechanics of how these animals can fly.”

Socha collaborated with Pavlos Vlachos, a fluid dynamics expert.

Before an application can be developed, Socha says researchers have to understand how the snake controls its muscles, the texture of its skin, the shape the snake takes when gliding, and the motion it uses in swimming through the air.

Socha notes the snake has a body like a cylinder, not the sort of body type one would begin with to create a flier.

“Mechanically, it seems so ill-suited for gliding, but the snake is able to flatten out its ribbed body, spreading its ribs and making it change from a roughly circular cross-section to more pancake-like,” Socha says. “Its body doubles in width at its widest point, which gives it favorable aerodynamic characteristics that help the snake to glide.”

In addition, the shape of the snake’s body is symmetrical in cross-section fore and aft, Socha pointed out, so  when it undulates in the air, “one side of its body faces the oncoming air, but a half-second later that side is on the back side of the wind.”

Socha says understanding how the snake is able to physically produce the forces that allow it to stay balanced in the air without flipping over is a key to the mechanics of its gliding ability.

So is a gliding robotic snake on the horizon for the military?

“I think we’re fairly far away from a robot that can fly like these snakes,” Socha says. “It’s up to DARPA if they want to continue studying the aerodynamics of the snake’s shape in the air.”

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz., freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the mystery novel, Full Moon, and several books on historical military small arms.

Veterans dealing with symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can turn to their smart phones for help anytime with the PTSD Coach application created by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense.

PTSD Coach lets users track their PTSD symptoms, links them with local sources of support, provides accurate information about PTSD, and teaches helpful individualized strategies for managing PTSD symptoms at any moment. The free PTSD Coach app is now available for download from the iTunes store and will be available for Android devices by the end of the spring.

The PTSD Coach is primarily designed to enhance services for individuals who are already receiving mental health care, though it is certainly helpful for those considering entering mental health care and those who just want to learn more about PTSD.

The application is one of the first in a series of jointly designed resources by the VA National Center for PTSD and the Defense Department’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology to help Servicemembers, Veterans, their families and friends manage their readjustment challenges and get anonymous assistance. Given the current popularity of mobile devices, VA and the Defense Department hope to reach tens of thousands of Veterans, Servicemembers, and their family members with the new suite of apps.

Information on the PTSD Coach app is on the VA’s National Center for PTSD Website. And check out these other apps from DoD’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology!

It shouldn’t be long before U.S. Marines are getting cargo delivered to them in the field by an unmanned aircraft system (UAS).

The U.S. Navy has awarded contracts to Boeing Defense, Space & Security, a unit of the Boeing Co., and to Lockheed Martin/Kaman to deploy UAS units in support of Marine Corps forces in Afghanistan. The UAS would augment ground and air logistics operations, supplement rotary-wing assets and reduce warfighters’ exposure to IEDs in theater.

Boeing builds the A160T Hummingbird and Lockheed Martin/Kaman builds the Unmanned K-Max. Each system is made up of three ground stations and two air vehicles that will be tested this summer, with one system being deployed to Afghanistan late in 2011 for a six-month trial. After the initial deployment, U.S. Navy and Marine Corps leadership will assess the value of the UAS and determine if an extension or recompete contract should be pursued.

Ernie Wattam, program manager for Boeing’s A160 program, says the A160T uses an optimum speed rotor that allows for fixed-wing performance out of a rotor craft. The A160T recently set a 18.7 hour record flight in Yuma, Ariz., carrying a payload of 300 pounds, he notes.

“That makes it attractive in places where the troops don’t have runways where they need them,” says Wattam.

The A160T Hummingbird is 35 feet long and 10 feet tall, with a 36-foot rotor diameter, and weighs 2,500 pounds.

Wattam says the Cargo A160T Hummingbird recently did a 10.5-hour mission in Florida, carrying a 1,000-pound payload, and also was fitted for a test in Belize, carrying a 22-foot long antenna for a FORESTER unit, foliage penetrating radar.

Wattam says he sees applications for the Navy and Air Force, as well as the Army and Marine Corps.

“This is a unique vehicle with a multi-mission capability,” Wattam says. “It has good speed, altitude, and durability, which allows it to be used in a lot of different applications.”

He notes in today’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military wants intelligence and surveillance capabilities over long periods of time, so instead of a cargo payload, the A160T Hummingbird could be fitted with a sensor package and kept in the air for half a day.

For instance, the Navy might be interested in putting a sensor-laden A160T Hummingbird in the air for half a day to provide early warning capability for its ships or keep it in its cargo capability and use it for ship-to-shore cargo resupply.

About the author: Alan M. Petrillo is a Tucson, Ariz., freelance writer who works in a wide variety of fields, writing for national and regional magazines and newspapers. He’s also the author of the mystery novel, Full Moon, and several books on historical military small arms.

A new blog post- Fuel: Enabling the Navy’s Great Green Fleet, discusses the myriad ways the U.S. Navy is working toward energy efficiency and independence on behalf of the military. Pretty interesting if you’re into that science-y stuff!

Moving to a Green Future:

Beyond just biofuels, the Navy is hard at work on a number of other alternatives, explained Rear Admiral Philip Cullom, director of the Navy’s Energy and Environmental Readiness Division.

“We have a number of other things that are in the works and this gets back to the other part of the energy vision and the energy strategy is that there are a lot of tests and developments on the efficiency side of the house on lighting, on new hull coatings, on new propeller coatings, and the first pilot program to put a hybrid electric drive onto a destroyer that are also reaching their completion,” Cullom said. “Additionally on the shore side, we’ll be doing a pilot test towards ocean thermal energy conversion, which will use the delta-T in the ocean to be able to power an ammonia engine, and that ammonia engine will then provide enough electricity to power a place like Diego Garcia or Guam or Hawaii, and oh, by the way – it can produce fresh water in addition to making electricity.”

Check out their energy goals:

1. Increase Alternative Energy Use Department-Wide: By 2020, 50% of total department energy consumption will come from alternative sources.
2. Increase Alternative Energy Ashore: By 2020, the department will produce at least 50% of shore-based energy requirements from alternative sources, and 50% of the department’s installations will be net-zero.
3. Reduce Non-Tactical Petroleum Use: By 2015, the department will reduce petroleum use in the commercial fleet by 50%.
4. Sail the “Great Green Fleet”: The Department of the Navy will demonstrate a Green Strike Group in local operations by 2012 and sail it by 2016.
5. Energy Efficient Acquisition: Evaluation of energy factors will be mandatory when awarding contracts for systems and buildings.