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Anti-immigration robot secures Britain's borders
Tens of thousands risk their lives to cross into Britain each year by clinging underneath trucks transported on ferries. The border agency has a robot dubbed "Hero" that is capable of ferreting out these stowaways using a combination of cameras and sensors. Tens of thousands risk their lives to cross into Britain each year by clinging underneath trucks transported on ferries. The border ag... more
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Next generation robot warplanes
UK-headquartered arms globocorp BAE Systems has shown off a raft of new robotic concepts this week at the Farnborough Air Show. But the newest and biggest kid on the BAE droidplane block is the Mantis, a large and powerful twin-engined technology demonstrator project whose wraps came off on Monday for the ceremonial inking of an MoD contract.
In essence, it's a fairly normal unmanned aerial vehicle of the same general type as the well-known American Predator and Predator-B/Reaper. The exact capabilities and subsystems are being decided, but Mantis will have visible and infrared imaging, a ground-scanning radar, and in all probability a laser-dot pointer for precision guided munitions. The model here at Farnborough was shown with mockup smartbombs and "Brimstone" missiles attached, too (Brimstone is the Europeanised version of the successful Hellfire tankbuster, already employed on attack helicopters and Predators).
The Mantis has some special sauce not usually seen on current Predators and such - it will use onboard processing, allowing much less bandwidth to be used in downloading radar data. This potentially spares the British forces' pay-as-you-go PFI satcomms budget, and could be a popular feature. Likewise, the Mantis is intended to fly autonomously as much as possible, avoiding the severe pilot-manpower burdens associated with most of the present-day Predator fleet.
“As a company, we have not got drawn into the ‘me too’ group of unmanned air vehicles,” said BAE robocraft chief Mark Kane in a statement earlier this week. “We have skipped a generation and whereas most current UAVs are remotely piloted or have some automatic functions, ours are fully autonomous.”
This would seem about all the autonomy you actually want in current wars like Afghanistan or Iraq. Super-UAVs which can fly an entire mission without any communications back to a ground station might have some advantages in big wars against sophisticated enemies, but wouldn't need - and wouldn't be allowed to use - full autonomy above today's battlefields. In any case, by Wright's description, the Mantis in particular - unlike BAE's other MoD demonstrator, Taranis - isn't intended to be independent. Primarily a surveillance and recce platform, Mantis would lose most of its point if it never told anybody what it could see.
Asked what Mantis would bring to the party that wouldn't be available from other companies sooner and almost certainly cheaper, Wright said that a big advantage for Mantis would be "sovereignty", in that the machine's support and parts base would be British rather than under foreign control. But he was reluctant to say hand on heart that Mantis wouldn't incorporate any overseas kit or need any overseas backup, and understandably so - that would make it a very exceptional aircraft indeed. Just one of the candidate subsystems (the Selex Galileo PicoSAR radar being considered for Mantis) is at least partly Italian.
All in all, the Mantis does indeed look a bit like a "me too" system. BAE have seen the explosion in UAV use - especially by the military, but more and more in the civil sector - and they are determined to catch up with the leaders, ideally at the taxpayers' expense. Mantis has actually been under development for some time, and it seems plain that BAE would need to do it whether or not they had any seed money from the UK MoD. Even if that weren't the case, it's hard to see why the MoD would care - it is already flying Reapers, and would buy more right now if it had the money.
The MoD having recently stated that it can buy brand new Reapers for £10m a pop, it seems reasonable to suppose that actually the Mantis pricetag is being withheld so that people won't ask why we don't just buy X number of Reapers or Sky Warriors instead - or even, perhaps, Y number of desperately-necessary Chinook transport choppers, armoured vehicles or whatever. After all, there's a whole other government department in charge of business subsidies. UK-headquartered arms globocorp BAE Systems has shown off a raft of new robotic concepts this week at the Farnborough Air Show. But th... more -
American Airlines testing anti-missile technology
The first passenger plane equipped with a system to repel shoulder-fired missiles successfully completed its flight, a British defense and aerospace company announced.
The JetEye infrared missile-defense system was tested on an American Airlines flight that took off July 11, according to a statement from BAE Systems. The plane flew from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport in California, the company said.
The JetEye system works by detecting the heat-seeking missiles and then firing a laser, which diverts the missile. American Airlines refused to make the system mandatory on all trips but agreed to cooperate with the tests.
The flight represents the final phase of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Counter-Man-Portable Air Defense System program, designed to test the suitability of missile-protection equipment for commercial aircraft.
Previously, the technology was successfully evaluated on an American Airlines test aircraft and an ABX Air Inc. cargo aircraft.
The missile-protection equipment will be installed on two more American Airlines 767-200 aircraft for daily cross-country flights through March. Engineers will evaluate the system's maintainability and reliability, as well as its suitability for the airline industry. No missiles will be fired at these flights.
"BAE Systems worked closely with DHS and the airline industry to develop an effective response to potential terrorist threats," said Burt Keirstead, JetEye program director for BAE Systems in Nashua, New Hampshire.
Homeland Security officials said in January that there is no specific threat of these weapons being fired at planes.
However, Taliban forces successfully used shoulder-fired missiles against Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan. Terrorists tried in 2002 to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet in Kenya with them.
Insurgents hit a cargo plane in Baghdad the following year, but the plane landed safely.
Experts say that about 500,000 to 700,000 shoulder-fired missile weapons have been produced worldwide, and some have been purchased in Middle Eastern and Central Asian arms markets for as little as $5,000.
Since 2003, Congress has pressured Homeland Security to adapt military anti-MANPADS technology to commercial aviation.
BAE Systems, based in Farnborough, England, works with American Airlines Maintenance and Engineering Services, which provided the test aircraft and engineering services for the development of JetEye.
DHS awarded BAE Systems a $29 million contract in January for this final evaluation phase of the program, which calls for the planes to log about 7,000 flight hours.
Northrop Grumman, a defense company with its own system to protect planes from portable missiles, urged the Defense Department in March to install its system on commercial flights that take soldiers and equipment to war zones.
Jack Pledger, a Northrop Grumman executive, said in March that 27 terrorist groups are believed to possess shoulder-fired weapons, that aircraft are vulnerable to the missiles within 25 miles of airports and that one missile incident could have catastrophic effects on the U.S. economy.
In March, the Northrop system concluded a 14-month test during which anti-missile systems were installed on 11 FedEx cargo planes that flew 4,500 flights. The first passenger plane equipped with a system to repel shoulder-fired missiles successfully completed its flight, a British defense... more -
BAE bosses held at US airport
Two executives of defence company BAE Systems were briefly detained when they landed at Houston airport on business. It all leads back to the Saudi arms deals which have been floating around the UK news system for months, with no-one really any the wiser as to what has happened.
The original allegation is that BAE paid millions of pounds in bribes to Saudi Arabia to secure a multi-billion-pound arms deal which was signed in the 1980's but continues through to today. The serious fraud office was investigating the allegations but dropped the case in December 2006 out of fears that it would cause "serious damage" to UK-Saudi relations.
The stakes are very high in this case, and journalists have speculated that involvement flowed right to the very top of the UK government. The BBC have put together a Q and A on the case to make things all the more clear...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6729489.stm Two executives of defence company BAE Systems were briefly detained when they landed at Houston airport on business. It all leads back... more -
The army is getting 'spy-ders' to scare the crap out of you
Those guys at BAE just seem to constantly come up with the goods, and according to The Sun they're now developing spy-ders which the army can use en masse in battlegrounds. The little demon robots can spy on targets and even carry explosives inside buildings.
Steve Scalera, programme manager for the £19million project, said: “We’re trying to harness nature’s designs. Evolution has done a fabulous job of producing extremely efficient and capable systems. We are providing an enhanced awareness for soldiers, basically an extension to their eyes and ears. They could have them within six months.”
Not only could they have them in just six months time, but when production is in full swing they could cost as little as £100 each. Sounds to me like BAE have got Christmas 2008 locked down, we can only hope that a pre-order form to surface soon Those guys at BAE just seem to constantly come up with the goods, and according to The Sun they're now developing spy-ders which ... more -
Fraud office acted 'unlawfully' over BAE inquiry
The UK's high court has ruled today that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and Blair's government acted unlawfully in dropping an investigation into alleged bribery in an arms deal between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia. Threats about intelligence sharing and trade that amounted to diplomatic blackmail were made by Saudi Arabia in order to stifle the investigation. According to an SFO document, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia warned that 'British lives on British streets', were at risk if the fraud investigation continued. The memo added: 'If this caused another 7/7, how could we say our investigation is more important?'
The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and anti-corruption campaigners Corner House had sought a review of the decision made in December 2006 by the SFO director, Robert Wardle, to drop the investigation into allegations of bribery and corruption over the £43bn Al-Yamamah arms deal, agreed by the Thatcher government in 1985.
'No one, whether in this country or outside, is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice', the two judges ruled. They were scathing about the SFO's inability to tell Saudi Arabia its threats would be ignored. It is likely that the SFO will have to reconsider its decision. The UK's high court has ruled today that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and Blair's government acted unlawfully in dropping ... more
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