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India's indigenous Embraer AEW&C On Indian Soil

DRDO Statement: The first fully modified aircraft for India's indigenous Airborne Early Warning and Control System landed on Indian soil at CABS (Centre for Airborne Systems, Bangalore, a DRDO laboratory) at 22:10 hours at HAL airport, Wednesdat night. The aircraft and the flight crew was received by Dr Christopher Program Director and Dr K Tamil Mani, Chief Executive, CEMILAC. The acceptance of the Aircraft was completed over a period of 15 days at Embraer Facilities in Brazil, by a team from CABS, its work centres, CEMILAC, DGAQA & IAF. The Aircraft was flagged off from M/s Embraer, Brazil on 17 Aug 2012 at 1125 hours by Shri G Elangovan, Chief Controller R&D, Dr S Christopher, Programme Director, Mr K Tamil Mani, Chief Executive, CEMILAC and team members and was flown across multiple continents to arrive in India today.

The Aircraft ferried with several mission system external components of DRDO including the Active Electronically scanned Array Antenna with passive electronics fitted on the Aircraft. The arrival of this Aircraft marks the beginning of another phase of journey leading to the next major milestone of integration of the DRDO developed mission system, which will be followed by development flight trials in India beginning of 2013. It may be noted that this is the first Aircraft delivered by M/s Embraer for which the contract was signed in 2008. The next Aircraft is expected to arrive in December 2012.

India's New AW101 VVIP Merlin Lift Off

Iron Dome: A Missile Shield That Works

Military gear-heads like to boast about how this or that latest technology that they’re fond of – or that their company, or country, is pushing – is a “game-changer.”

The major-combat debut of Israel‘s Iron Dome missile-defense shield over the past several days may be one of the few that can legitimately make that claim.

It is destroying about 90% of the rockets and missiles that Hamas, the Palestinian political party governing Gaza, is firing into southern Israel, Israeli officials say.

One battery of Iron Dome anti-missile missiles downed 100% during a salvo, a senior Israeli official tells.

“We’ve got about a 90% success rate,” he says, proudly giddy. “This is unprecedented in history.” It’s also impossible to confirm, but the lack of Israeli casualties suggests Iron Dome is the most-effective, most-tested missile shield the world has ever seen.

“We keep tweaking it,” says the senior official, who declined to be identified. “In one of the recent exchanges, one of the batteries was 100% [successful]. That means, to me, that Iron Dome is capable of 100% [across the board] — I don’t think it was entirely a fluke.” He said he didn’t know how many missiles and interceptors were involved in the salvo; an Iron Dome battery typically consists of a radar unit and three launchers, each outfitted with 20 Tamir interceptor missiles.

The bottom line: the more rockets Hamas fires, it seems, the better at stopping them Iron Dome becomes.

They’re playing a game of aerial attrition: who will run out of missiles first?

The missile shield’s success came as Israel broadened its attacks on Hamas-related sites in Gaza over the weekend, launching air strikes against political sites – including the headquarters of the Hamas prime minister – as well as military targets.

“There’s no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” President Obama said Sunday in Thailand, his first destination on a three-stop, three-day tour of southeast Asia. “So we are fully supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself from missiles landing on people’s homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians.”

Iron Dome impressed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in August during a tour of a battery while he was in Israel. “Iron Dome has had a better than 80% success rate at hitting rockets fired from Gaza into Israeli population centers, and it has successfully intercepted more than 100 rockets,” he said shortly after he returned. “We can be proud of this system’s record of saving lives and preventing wider conflict in that region.”

As of Sunday, Hamas had fired close to 1,000 missiles and rockets into Israel. Iron Dome decided — by tracing their trajectory and likely impact points within seconds of launch — that about two-thirds didn’t pose a threat and let them fall harmlessly to Earth. It destroyed about 90% of the remaining 300 or so that threatened to land in populated areas, Israeli officials said.

The senior Israeli official says the system’s battle management software is sensitive enough to monitor the trajectory of incoming missiles. “It distinguishes whether it is going to hit downtown or an open field,” he says. “If it’s going to hit an open field we don’t shoot at it.”

That’s important because the interceptors cost up to $100,000 each. That’s pocket change – heck, pocket lint – to the U.S. military, but relatively costly to the Israeli government, especially compared to the incoming rockets, which “are basically free” to Hamas, the official says (they can cost less than $1,000).

Iron Dome “is actually a money-saver,” he adds. “Think if these rockets actually hit a neighborhood, in terms of the human costs, the wounded, the destruction of infrastructure would be much greater. So $100,000 is not that much to pay for a house that’s full of kids.”

Iron Dome was developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., and is expected to cost close to $1 billion by the time up to 15 batteries are bought (five are now deployed in southern Israel). The U.S. has pledged about $300 million to help fund the effort. Israel decided to build the system after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, when 4,000 Hezbollah rockets rained down on northern Israel, killing 44.

Iron Dome is designed to counter short-range missiles with a range of 70 kilometers or less – about 45 miles. Its prey includes crude Katyusha and Qassam rockets and Soviet-designed but built-in-Gaza Grads, with a range of up to 25 miles. The mobile system saw its first real-world test in April 2011, when it downed a Gaza-fired Grad in April 2011. Hamas said it had launched an Iranian-made Fajr-5 missile, with a range of up to 45 miles, toward Tel Aviv this past weekend, but Israel said they shot it down, too.

As of Sunday, 57 Palestinians had died in the Israeli counter-attacks, including 24 civilians, and more than 400 civilians have been wounded, according to Palestinian officials.

“We have had casualties,” the senior Israeli official concedes. “But the casualties we have had – the three killed – was not because of Iron Dome, but because the people didn’t listen to the siren – they thought they were out of range.”

The hype continues. But in this case, for a change, it might be warranted.

Sunita Williams, 2 astronauts return to Earth from ISS

Record-setting Indian- American Sunita Williams along with two fellow astronauts safely returned to Earth on Monday from the International Space Station, touching down on the steppes of central Kazakhstan, after spending four months in orbit.

It was a perfect landing for Williams and two astronauts, Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Aki Hoshide, as they touched down in the dark, chilly expanses of central Kazakhstan on board a Russian Soyuz capsule.

The three astronauts landed at 0726 IST in the town of Arkalyk.

Helicopters rushed with the search-and-recovery crew to assist them, as their capsule parachuted down some 35 kilometres from the planned touchdown site due to a procedural delay.

Another three astronauts remain on board the International Space Station (ISS) and will return next year.

Earlier, the trio bid farewell to their fellow astronauts at the ISS, Flight Engineers Kevin Ford, Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy.

The trio undocked from the Rassvet module of the ISS on Sunday.

The return of Williams, Hoshide and Malenchenko has wrapped up a 127-day space journey for them, since their launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on July 15, this year, including 125 days spent aboard the ISS.

Williams, 47, now has spent a total of 322 days in space during her two long-duration missions. She previously served aboard the ISS as an Expedition 14/15 flight engineer from December 9, 2006, to June 22, 2007.

Williams now also holds the record for spacewalking time for female astronauts.

Williams has a total of 50 hours and 40 minutes of spacewalking time over seven spacewalks, including the three she conducted during Expeditions 32 and 33.

This was the second trip into space for Hoshide of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, who visited the station as an STS-124 mission specialist aboard space shuttle Discovery in 2008.

Russian Soyuz Commander Malenchenko wrapped up his fifth spaceflight for a total of 642 days in space, placing him seventh on the all-time endurance list.

NASA TV will air its post-landing video file, including interviews with the crew, later.

The undocking signals the end of Expedition 33 and the start of Expedition 34 under the command of Ford, who will remain on the station with Novitskiy and Tarelkin until March.

Williams transferred the helm of the orbiting laboratory to Ford during a change of command ceremony on Saturday.

Three additional Expedition 34 flight engineers -- NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield, and Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Roman Romanenko -- are scheduled to launch from Baikonur on December 19 and dock to the station two days later for a five-month stay.

Hadfield will become the first Canadian to command the station when Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin depart, marking the start of Expedition 35.

The Soyuz remains the only means for international astronauts to reach the orbiting laboratory since the decommissioning of the US shuttle fleet in 2011.

INS Tarkash Joins Indian Navy

Navy Statement: INS Tarkash, the second of the three stealth Frigates constructed at Yantar Shipyard, Kaliningrad Russia, has been commissioned and inducted into the Indian Navy by Vice Admiral Shekhar Kumar Sinha, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command on 09 November 2012 at Kaliningrad, Russia. The array of weapons and sensors onboard the ship include the supersonic Brahmos missile system, advanced Surface to Air missile system, upgraded 100mm medium range gun, optically controlled 30 mm Close-in Weapon System, Torpedoes, Rocket Launchers and advanced Electronic Warfare/Communication suite. The ship is commanded by Captain Antony George, an ‘Anti Submarine Warfare’ specialist. The ship will join the Western Fleet of the Indian Navy by December end, this year.

CAPTURED RQ-170 STEALTH DRONE

Iran's declarations that it will reverse engineer the US drone that it grounded makes perfect sense as Washington has had its aircraft duplicated before, writes Peter Grier.

“It's been done before, by a country that at the time the United States considered technologically inferior,” Peter Grier wrote in the Christian Science Monitor on Thursday.

Grier says in August 1947, the USSR paraded a Tu-4 Bull aircraft, a replica of an American B-29 heavy bomber, which the Soviet government had impounded in 1944 after the aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing at a base in the Soviet Union.

Tehran has announced that it intends to carry out reverse engineering on a US RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft which the Iranian Army's electronic warfare unit successfully brought down with minimal damage on Sunday, December 4, 2011.

The aircraft was flying over the northeastern Iranian city of Kashmar, some 225 kilometers (140 miles) away from the Afghan border.

“Iran isn't going to give it (the spy drone) back … no matter how nicely President Obama asks,” Grier added.

On Monday, US President Barack Obama broke days of silence on the downing of the sophisticated spy aircraft by Iran and made a request to Tehran asking for the return of the drone.

“We've asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama said.

Following the US plea, Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi made it clear on Tuesday the US spy drone would remain in the country's possession as part of its national assets.

Also on Monday, former US Vice President Dick Cheney criticized the US president for failing to destroy the spy drone, saying Barack Obama should have ordered an airstrike to quickly destroy the downed high-tech unmanned aerial aircraft to prevent the Islamic Republic from subjecting it to examination.

On December 6, two US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed to CNN that the drone had been part of a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reconnaissance mission, involving the US intelligence community stationed in Afghanistan.

They said the reconnaissance capability of the drone enabled it to gather information from inside Iran by flying along Afghanistan's border with the Islamic Republic.

The RQ-170, which is similar in design to a US Air Force B-2 stealth bomber, is designed and developed by the US Lockheed Martin Company.

Tehran says the US spy mission was a “hostile act,” adding it would lodge a complaint with the United Nations over the violation of its air sovereignty by the intelligence-gathering aircraft. It has urged the world body to condemn such contravention and adopt necessary measures to end the 'dangerous and illegal' acts.

Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel at a glance

RQ-170 Sentinel

Artist's rendering
Role	Unmanned aerial vehicle
Manufacturer	Lockheed Martin
Introduction	2007
Primary user	United States Air Force

Operators

United States

United States Air Force
- Air Combat Command
  - 432d Air Expeditionary Wing – Creech Air Force Base, Nevada
    - 30th Reconnaissance Squadron – Tonopah Test Range Airport, Nevada

[edit]Specifications (RQ-170)

Data from ^[37]

General characteristics

Crew: 0
Length: 14 ft 9 in (4.5 m)
Wingspan: 85 ft (26 m) estimated
Height: 6 ft (1.8 m) estimated
Powerplant: 1 × Garrett TFE731 or General Electric TF34^[10] turbofan

Performance

Service ceiling: 50,000 ft (15,240 m) (estimated)

Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS)

Disc-Rotor Compound Helicopter

Falcon HTV-2

Phoenix

Transformer

Vulture

LANdroids (Local Area Network droids)

ChemBots

DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, funds some of the world's most far out, forward-thinking research into new military technology.

Something like Q Branch in the James Bond movies, DARPA is constantly working on what it describes as "radical innovations." But where James Bond has the character Q to build his exploding pens, DARPA often funds private companies and external organizations to develop its high-tech hardware.

It is currently funding research into, among other things, a robot ostrich, a flying car and a plane that could stay airborne for five years at a time.

While some of the technologies it is supporting might seem more suitable for science fiction than the battlefield, the fact that DARPA is willing to fund them is a sign they are at least possible -- if not always plausible. Don't forget, DARPA's Arpanet program is widely credited as being the precursor to today's internet.

So here are some of DARPA's most incredible research programs, which could change the future of warfare, and might one day have applications that extend far beyond the military.

Disc-Rotor Compound Helicopter

The Disc-Rotor is a collaboration between DARPA and Boeing. Hoping to marry the best features of a helicopter and an airplane, the Disc-Rotor program aims to develop a new type of aircraft capable of a seamlessly transitioning from hovering like a helicopter to flying like a plane.

The design is propelled by rotor blades that extend from a central disc, letting it take off and land like a helicopter. But those blades can also retract into the disc, minimizing drag and letting the Disc-Rotor fly like a plane, powered by engines beneath each wing.

Vulture

DARPA's Vulture program is developing the technology to enable an "airborne payload" to remain in the sky for more than five years at a time, performing intelligence, surveillance and communication missions. In practice, that means developing unmanned aircraft that act like satellites.

Boeing is again working on the project, researching its "SolarEagle," a solar-powered, unmanned craft with a 120-meter wing span. It is designed to operate at altitudes above 18,000 meters. Boeing hopes it will make its first demonstration flight in 2014.

ChemBots

Tech company iRobot worked with DARPA on its "ChemBots" program. The aim was to build soft, flexible robots that could deform their bodies to move through openings smaller than themselves (e.g. under doors) to carry out covert tasks.

IRobot used a transitional -- or "jamming" -- material, with properties of both a solid and a liquid, to create a flexible robot that can crawl on six floppy legs. While DARPA's funding has now expired, iRobot is still researching soft robotics and "jamming" technology.

LANdroids (Local Area Network droids)

DARPA also funded iRobot to research its LANdroids program.

The aim was to give soldiers reliable communications in urban areas by creating pocket-sized robots they could scatter as they moved through an area. The robots would each act as a node in a wireless communications network. As the soldiers move, the robots would autonomously move with them, filling gaps in the network.

According to iRobot, the LANdroid it created weighed around one pound, was highly mobile and used a flipper mechanism for self righting and obstacle climbing.

Following the DARPA research, iRobot has developed a throwable robot for soldiers that will be available from 2012. It says the robot could be used to investigate hard-to-access places such as tunnels and ditches.

Falcon HTV-2

The ultimate goal of the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) program is to create a vehicle that can fly anywhere in the world in less than an hour -- while enduring temperatures in excess of 1,925 C (3,500 F).

DARPA has already produced and flown a test HTV-2 -- an unmanned, rocket-launched aircraft that travels at Mach 20 (about 13,000 miles per hour). At that speed a flight between New York City and Los Angeles would take less than 12 minutes.

HTV-2 made its maiden flight in April 2010, but crashed into the Pacific after just nine minutes. A second flight, in August 2011, lasted a similar time before meeting the same end.

Following the second flight HTV-2 program manager Major Chris Schulz said: "We do not yet know how to achieve the desired control during the aerodynamic phase of flight. It's vexing; I'm confident there is a solution. We have to find it."

Phoenix

Communication satellites orbit more than 20,000 miles above the Earth. When they break they usually have to be replaced by launching a new satellite, even though many of these broken satellites still have usable parts, such as antennae and solar arrays.

The Phoenix program is trying to find a way to remove and re-use valuable components from broken or "retired" satellites -- in essence, recycling space junk.

DARPA envisions small "satlets" or "nano satellites" being carried to a broken communication satellite by a "tender" satellite, and then robotically attaching to the broken satellite's antenna.

But before it can become reality they must develop new robotics and remote imaging systems, and design grappling tools to grip, cut, and modify satellite parts.

Transformer

The Transformer program aims to build a flying car for the battlefield. And the car will need to fly itself.

The aim is to create a vertical take-off-and-landing vehicle that can carry four people more than 250 miles on one tank of fuel.

Six contractors are working on the project, including Lockheed Martin, AAI Corp. and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).

Sanjiv Singh, a CMU research professor of robotics, said: "In practical terms ... the vehicle will need to be able to fly itself, or to fly with only minimal input from the operator. And this means that the vehicle has to be continuously aware of its environment and be able to automatically react in response to what it perceives."

Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS)

The Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System program is developing binoculars that can identify threats from a long distance and then inform a soldier of the danger.

It will use wide-angle optics and digital imaging, but the really clever bit is its use of "cognitive visual processing algorithms" and "operator neural signature detection processing." That means monitoring the subconscious patterns in a soldier's brain to detect a threat the soldier has perceived before they are even consciously aware of it.