2,193 research outputs found

    The 90 GHz radiometric imaging

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    A 90-GHz (3 mm wavelength) radiometer with a noise output fluctuation of 0.22 K (RMS), with a scanning antenna beam mirror, and the data processing system are described. Real-time radiometric imaging of terrain and man-made objects are shown. Flying at an altitude of 1500 ft a radiometer antenna with a 2 degrees halfpower beamwidth can distinguish landforms, waterways, roads, runways, bridges, ships at sea and their wakes, aircraft on runways, and athletic fields. A flight taken at an altitude of 3000 ft with approximately 2000 ft of clouds below the radiometer demonstrates the ability to distinguish bridges, rivers, marshland and other landforms even though the clouds are optically opaque. The radiometric images of a few representative scenes along with photographs of the corresponding scenes are presented to demonstrate the resolution of the imager system

    U.S. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS) and Network Centric Warfare (NCW) impacts on combat aviation tactics from Gulf War I through 2007 Iraq

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    Unmanned, aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an increasingly important element of many modern militaries. Their success on battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the globe has driven demand for a variety of types of unmanned vehicles. Their proven value consists in low risk and low cost, and their capabilities include persistent surveillance, tactical and combat reconnaissance, resilience, and dynamic re-tasking. This research evaluates past, current, and possible future operating environments for several UAV platforms to survey the changing dynamics of combat-aviation tactics and make recommendations regarding UAV employment scenarios to the Turkish military. While UAVs have already established their importance in military operations, ongoing evaluations of UAV operating environments, capabilities, technologies, concepts, and organizational issues inform the development of future systems. To what extent will UAV capabilities increasingly define tomorrow's missions, requirements, and results in surveillance and combat tactics? Integrating UAVs and concepts of operations (CONOPS) on future battlefields is an emergent science. Managing a transition from manned- to unmanned and remotely piloted aviation platforms involves new technological complexity and new aviation personnel roles, especially for combat pilots. Managing a UAV military transformation involves cultural change, which can be measured in decades.http://archive.org/details/usunmannedaerial109454211Turkish Air Force authors.Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

    A Vision of Quantitative Imaging Technology for Validation of Advanced Flight Technologies

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    Flight-testing is traditionally an expensive but critical element in the development and ultimate validation and certification of technologies destined for future operational capabilities. Measurements obtained in relevant flight environments also provide unique opportunities to observe flow phenomenon that are often beyond the capabilities of ground testing facilities and computational tools to simulate or duplicate. However, the challenges of minimizing vehicle weight and internal complexity as well as instrumentation bandwidth limitations often restrict the ability to make high-density, in-situ measurements with discrete sensors. Remote imaging offers a potential opportunity to noninvasively obtain such flight data in a complementary fashion. The NASA Hypersonic Thermodynamic Infrared Measurements Project has demonstrated such a capability to obtain calibrated thermal imagery on a hypersonic vehicle in flight. Through the application of existing and accessible technologies, the acreage surface temperature of the Shuttle lower surface was measured during reentry. Future hypersonic cruise vehicles, launcher configurations and reentry vehicles will, however, challenge current remote imaging capability. As NASA embarks on the design and deployment of a new Space Launch System architecture for access beyond earth orbit (and the commercial sector focused on low earth orbit), an opportunity exists to implement an imagery system and its supporting infrastructure that provides sufficient flexibility to incorporate changing technology to address the future needs of the flight test community. A long term vision is offered that supports the application of advanced multi-waveband sensing technology to aid in the development of future aerospace systems and critical technologies to enable highly responsive vehicle operations across the aerospace continuum, spanning launch, reusable space access and global reach. Motivations for development of an Agency level imagery-based measurement capability to support cross cutting applications that span the Agency mission directorates as well as meeting potential needs of the commercial sector and national interests of the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance community are explored. A recommendation is made for an assessment study to baseline current imaging technology including the identification of future mission requirements. Development of requirements fostered by the applications suggested in this paper would be used to identify technology gaps and direct roadmapping for implementation of an affordable and sustainable next generation sensor/platform system

    Multimission Aircraft Design Study-Operational Scenarios

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    In the most recent years, the Command, Control and Communications, Counter Measures, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C3CMISR) aircrafts are used commonly in many NATO and UN Operations around the world. These aircrafts are AWACS, JSTARS, Rivet Joint, Compass Call and ABCCC. They provide close air support in the name of airborne surveillance, ground moving target surveillance, target reconnaissance, jamming, and command, control and communications issues in operational environments. Those aircrafts are tasked with a wide variety of missions than ever before in operational theaters and each one of them comprises a specific amount of cost and risk factors. As a new vision, while replacing the existing legacy systems, multi-mission architectures are taken into consideration for the C3CMISR missions. The stated objective is designing a one tail number Multi-Mission Aircraft (MMA) that includes all the C3CMISR tasks on one airframe. This study seeks some comments and advises about the MMA design technical feasibility. In order to search for these comments, four notional operational scenarios are created. First of all existing C3CMISR aircrafts are considered and evaluated in these operational scenarios and then different MMA architectures are defined and compared with the legacy systems in the name of adequacy

    Tier-scalable reconnaissance: the challenge of sensor optimization, sensor deployment, sensor fusion, and sensor interoperability

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    Robotic reconnaissance operations are called for in extreme environments, not only those such as space, including planetary atmospheres, surfaces, and subsurfaces, but also in potentially hazardous or inaccessible operational areas on Earth, such as mine fields, battlefield environments, enemy occupied territories, terrorist infiltrated environments, or areas that have been exposed to biochemical agents or radiation. Real time reconnaissance enables the identification and characterization of transient events. A fundamentally new mission concept for tier-scalable reconnaissance of operational areas, originated by Fink et al., is aimed at replacing the engineering and safety constrained mission designs of the past. The tier-scalable paradigm integrates multi-tier (orbit atmosphere surface/subsurface) and multi-agent (satellite UAV/blimp surface/subsurface sensing platforms) hierarchical mission architectures, introducing not only mission redundancy and safety, but also enabling and optimizing intelligent, less constrained, and distributed reconnaissance in real time. Given the mass, size, and power constraints faced by such a multi-platform approach, this is an ideal application scenario for a diverse set of MEMS sensors. To support such mission architectures, a high degree of operational autonomy is required. Essential elements of such operational autonomy are: (1) automatic mapping of an operational area from different vantage points (including vehicle health monitoring); (2) automatic feature extraction and target/region-of-interest identification within the mapped operational area; and (3) automatic target prioritization for close-up examination. These requirements imply the optimal deployment of MEMS sensors and sensor platforms, sensor fusion, and sensor interoperability

    China’s Antiship Ballistic Missile—Developments and Missing Links

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    That China is interested in an antiship ballistic missile seems a logical and natural outgrowth of its history of robust missile development. At what stage is its development? How near to operational readiness are its key components and technologies? What would be its implications for the U.S. Navy and the naval strategic balance between the United States and China

    Debating Space Security: Capabilities and Vulnerabilities

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    The U.S. position in the debate on space security has been that (1) space-based systems could be developed and used to obtain decisive warghting superiority over an adversary, and (2) these space-based systems, because they might give such an inordinate advantage over any adversary, will be attacked. The Russians and Chinese, in contrast, claim to be threatened by U.S. aspirations in space but deny that they pose a serious threat to U.S. space-based systems. They view the development of advanced military space systems by the United States as evidence of a growing gap of military capabilities limited only by technological--not political--constraints. They argue that U.S. missile defense systems operating in coordination with advanced satellite sensors would weaken their nuclear retaliatory potential. This dissertation argues that the positions held by both of these parties are more extreme than warranted. An analytical evaluation quickly narrows the touted capabilities and assumed vulnerabilities of space systems to a much smaller set of concerns that can be addressed by collaboration. Chapter 2: Operationally Responsive Space (ORS): Is 24/7 Warghter Support Feasible? demonstrates the infeasibility of dramatically increasing U.S. warfighting superiority by using satellites. Chapter 3: What Can be Achieved by Attacking Satellites? makes the case that although U.S. armed forces rely extensively on its satellite infrastructure, that does not immediately make them desirable targets. The functions performed by military satellites are diffused among large constellations with redundancies. Also, some of the functions performed by these satellites can be substituted for by other terrestrial and aerial systems. Chapter 4: The Limits of Chinese Anti-Satellite Missiles demonstrates that anti-satellite (ASAT) intercepts are very complex under realistic conditions and that a potential adversary with space capabilities comparable to China's has very limited capability to use ASATs in a real-world battle scenario. Finally, in order to evaluate the chief concern raised by the Russians and Chinese, chapter 5: Satellites, Missile Defense and Space Security simulates a boost-phase missile defense system cued by the advanced Space Tracking and Surveillance (STSS) sensors. It demonstrates that even under best case assumptions, the STSS sensors are not good enough for the boost-phase missile defense system to successfully intercept and destroy an ICBM. Together, these chapters aim to narrow the contentions in the debate on space security thereby fostering the international colloboration and data sharing needed to ensure safe operations in space

    Революція у військовій справі та розвиток військового лексикона сучасної англійської мови

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    Статья посвящена проблеме изучения англоязычных военных неологизмов в социолингвистическом аспекте. В статье устанавливаются корреляции между революционными изменениями, происходящими в военной сфере, и обогащением словарного состава военного подъязыка.Стаття присвячена проблемі дослідження англомовних військових неологізмів у соціолінгвістичному аспекті. У статті встановлюються кореляції між революційними змінами, що відбуваються у військовій сфері, та збагаченням словникового складу військової підмови.The article deals with the sociolinguistic study of new war words in English. The correlation between RMA and enrichment of war lexicon is analysed in the article

    High-Energy Laser Weapons: Overpromising Readiness

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    Crossbow Volume 1

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    Student Integrated ProjectIncludes supplementary materialDistributing naval combat power into many small ships and unmanned air vehicles that capitalize on emerging technology offers a transformational way to think about naval combat in the littorals in the 2020 time frame. Project CROSSBOW is an engineered systems of systems that proposes to use such distributed forces to provide forward presence to gain and maiantain access, to provide sea control, and to project combat power in the littoral regions of the world. Project CROSSBOW is the result of a yearlong, campus-wide, integrated research systems engineering effort involving 40 student researchers and 15 supervising faculty members. This report (Volume I) summarizes the CROSSBOW project. It catalogs the major features of each of the components, and includes by reference a separate volume for each of the major systems (ships, aircraft, and logistics). It also prresents the results of the mission and campaign analysis that informed the trade-offs between these components. It describes certain functions of CROSSBOW in detail through specialized supporting studies. The student work presented here is technologically feasible, integrated and imaginative. The student project cannot by itself provide definitive designs or analyses covering such a broad topic. It does strongly suggest that the underlying concepts have merit and deserve further serious study by the Navy as it transforms itself
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