Monday, January 7, 2013

DTN News - STEALTH TECHNOLOGY NEWS: Korea's Neighbors Catch Up With U.S. Stealth Technology

Defense News: DTN News - STEALTH TECHNOLOGY NEWS: Korea's Neighbors Catch Up With U.S. Stealth Technology
*DTN News has enhanced and further elaborated on the subject of the relevant topic respectively for the benefit of the readers with due respect to the author of this article.
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources The Chosunilbo
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 7, 2013: China's Navy deployed a new high-speed stealth vessel called DaoDanTing Type 022 during its military drill last month. The vessel is capable of carrying eight missiles with a maximum range of 200 km and traveling at 36 knots per hour while avoiding radar and infrared detection. China has 80 of the ships. 

China's Type 022 stealth vessel
The Type 022 (NATO designation: Houbei class) missile boat is a ship class in the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy. The first boat was launched in April 2004 by the Qiuxin Shipbuilding Factory at Shanghai. The boats incorporate stealth features and are based off an Australian-designed wave-piercing catamaran hulls that are more stable than other fast missile craft in high sea conditions. Approximately 83 of these missile boats are currently in service with three flotillas having been produced over a span of seven years. 


The Houbei class fast attack craft are China's entry into a growing list of missile-armed attack craft which include Finland's Hamina class missile boat, and Norway's Skjold class patrol boat. The Australian AMD cataraman design may mean as much as a 50% reduction in vessel speed penalty in high sea conditions (in which monohulls may only perform at half or less of their maximum capability). Further, seasickness and disorientation is significantly reduced, improving the combat readiness/situational awareness of the small-craft operators during such conditions.

In addition to the stealthy polygonal-designed superstructure with its stealthy gun mount, the Houbei has an advanced C4 datalink[6] that may represent some kind of capability to allow AWACS planes or other ships to vector the Type 22's missiles. (The US Navy is as well exploring a battery ship concept.)

Russia's Sukhoi T-50 Stealth fighter jet


In January this year, Russia held its first test flight of the Sukhoi T-50 stealth fighter jet in the far eastern region of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Last month, the second test flight was completed. Moscow plans to deploy the T-50 in active units from 2015 to counter the U.S. military's state-of-the-art F-22 stealth fighter jet.


The Sukhoi PAK FA  is a twin-engine jet fighter being developed by Sukhoi for the Russian Air Force. The Sukhoi T-50 is the prototype for PAK FA. The PAK FA is one of only a handful of stealth jet programs globally.

The PAK FA, a fifth generation jet fighter, is intended to be the successor to the MiG-29 and Su-27 in the Russian inventory and serve as the basis of the Sukhoi/HAL FGFA being developed with India. The T-50 prototype performed its first flight 29 January 2010. By 31 August 2010, it had made 17 flights and by mid-November, 40 in total. The second T-50 was to start its flight test by the end of 2010, but this was delayed until March 2011.

The Russian Defence Ministry will purchase the first 10 evaluation example aircraft after 2012 and then 60 production standard aircraft after 2016. The first batch of fighters will be delivered with current technology engines. The PAK-FA is expected to have a service life of about 30–35 years.

U.S. dominance over stealth technology has ended, and major powers neighboring Korea already have considerable stealth technology. Japan's Maritime Self Defense Force has a large number of Hayabusa high-speed patrol boats with stealth capabilities, although not as advanced as the Type 022. Japan is also seeking to purchase F-35 stealth fighters from the U.S., and Mitsubishi is in the process of developing a stealth fighter called ATD-X. 

Japan's ATD-X stealth fighter


The Mitsubishi ATD-X Shinshin is a prototype fifth-generation jet fighter that uses advanced stealth technology. It is being developed by the Japanese Ministry of Defense Technical Research and Development Institute (TRDI) for research purposes. The main contractor of the project is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Many consider this aircraft to be Japan's first domestically made stealth fighter. ATD-X is an acronym meaning "Advanced Technology Demonstrator – X". The aircraft's Japanese name is Shinshin (心神?, literally "mind"). The aircraft's first flight is scheduled for 2014.

The ATD-X will be used as a technology demonstrator and research prototype to determine whether domestic advanced technologies for a fifth generation fighter aircraft are viable, and is a 1/3 size model of a possible full-production aircraft.  The aircraft also features 3D thrust vectoring capability. Thrust is controlled in the ATD-X by the use of 3 paddles on each engine nozzle similar to the system used on the Rockwell X-31, while an axis-symmetric thrust vectoring engine is also being developed for the full scale production model. The nozzles on the prototype appear to be uncovered and might have a slight adverse effect on the aircraft's stealth characteristics.

Among the features the ATD-X is to have is a fly-by-optics flight control system, which by substituting optical fibers for wires, allows data to be transferred faster and with immunity to electromagnetic disturbance.

Its radar will be an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar called the 'Multifunction RF Sensor', which is intended to have broad spectrum agility, capabilities for electronic countermeasures (ECM), electronic support measures (ESM), communications functions, and possibly even microwave weapon functions.


Wayne Ulman, head of the U.S. National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) told the Senate in May that China's next-generation stealth fighter J-XX will be deployed around 2018. 


Some military analysts claim China already has stealth bombers. Since witnessing the formidable power of U.S. stealth fighters in the first Gulf War in 1991, Beijing has gone all out to acquire the technology. The airframe design for the B-2 stealth bomber was apparently leaked to China in 2005. The Wall Street Journal said Chinese hackers obtained classified documents related to the F-35 when they attacked the Pentagon server in April last year.

Russia has the most advanced stealth submarine in the world. Developed in 2007, it has been evaluated as having the best underwater navigation and sonar-avoiding capabilities, in addition to the "Typhoon" developed in Soviet times. China's submarine technology is not as advanced but developing rapidly. In 2006, China's Song class diesel submarine approached within 9 km of the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk without being detected by the submarines and battleships that had been escorting it, shocking American military officials. That range is within the kill zone of a torpedo. 

China and Russia have been developing the technology to counter U.S. stealth fighters. A RAND Corporation study showed that U.S. air power in the Pacific would be inadequate to thwart an attack in a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan in 2020, with American stealth fighters being unable to evade China's CETC Y-27 radars. The state-of-the-art radar system, developed with Russian technology, uses VHF mode, and computer simulations showed a high chance of U.S. stealth fighters failing to attack Chinese military bases, while American air craft carriers and the airbase in Okinawa could be destroyed.

Why are China, Russia and Japan trying so hard to keep up with the U.S. stealth technology? The answer is that it is impossible to fight an invisible enemy. In 2006, the U.S. military held a mock battle in Alaska between the F-22 Raptor and the F-15, F-16 and F-18 conventional fighter jets. The result was 108 conventional fighters lost, but not a single F-22.

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*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources The Chosunilbo
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
©COPYRIGHT (C) DTN NEWS DEFENSE-TECHNOLOGY NEWS

DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: The Booming Business of Drones

Defense News: DTN News - DEFENSE NEWS: The Booming Business of Drones
*Drones are everywhere.
Source: DTN News - - This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Mitch Joel - Harvard Business Review
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada - January 6, 2013: Less than a decade ago, the Pentagon had about fifty unmanned combat air vehicles (known as drones or UAV — unmanned aerial vehicles). It is estimated that they currently have about seven thousand of them (and Congress asked for about $5 billion worth of more drones in 2012). There's a scene in Showtime's hit television series, Homeland, where Nicholas Brody (the former prisoner of war and current United States congressman) is told by David Estes (the director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center) that the use of drones in the war on terrorism has moved from forty unmanned combat air vehicles to nearly four thousand in no time at all. 

While that was a fictitious scene, it was the type of statement that would make anybody raise an eyebrow. What makes it all that more interesting, is that those fictional numbers aren't even close to the staggering reality of how many drones are in operation. And, that's just the work being done by the United States. The International Institute for Strategic Studies has identified fifty six different types of drones being used in over ten countries (and this data does not include places like China, Turkey and Russia).

Now, drones are moving from the battlefield to your neighborhood, and it's about to create a brand new industry right along with it.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the use of commercial drones in United States airspace could become official starting in 2015. As the New York Times wrote in a December 25 editorial: "The drone go-ahead, signed in February by President Obama in the F.A.A. reauthorization law, envisions a $5 billion-plus industry of camera drones being used for all sorts of purposes from real estate advertising to crop dusting to environmental monitoring and police work." But this is just the beginning — industry analysts predict the market to double in less than a decade.
The business and civilian adoption of military technology is nothing new; we had mass adoption of the wristwatch after World War I when soldiers began attaching their pocket watches to their wrists for more practical purposes. A lot of the work and innovation coming out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is created for military usage, but then becomes commercialized for business application (this includes computer networking and the first hypertext system, which was an early form of the graphical user interface). With so many products that begin as something specialized for the military and then turned over to us every day citizens, it's becoming apparent that drones are on the verge of something big.

So what could a drone-based business look like?

Chris Anderson is the former editor-in-chief at Wired along with being a three-time bestselling business book author (The Long Tail, Free and Makers). He recently left his post at Wired to work on his own passion project-(DIY Drones)-turned-startup (3D Robotics), which recently raised five million dollars in venture funding. He was thinking about drones being used commercially roughly half a decade before the FAA woke up to it. In a 2009 blog post, you can feel the nascent thinking about just how powerful a drone-based network could be for businesses in the not-too-distant future. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, then wanted drone usage in his business as quickly as possible. From the post: 

"Unmanned cargo freighters have lots of advantages for FedEx: safer, cheaper, and much larger capacity. The ideal form is the 'blended wing.' That design doesn't make a clear a distinction between wings and body, so almost all the interior of both can be used for cargo. The result is that the price premium for air over sea would fall from 10x to 2X (with all the speed advantages of air)."

The post goes on: "the key thing is having NO people on board, not even as backup. A single person in the craft requires a completely different design, along with radically different economics and logistics. The efficiencies come with 100% robotic operation."

Today, years later, Anderson still doesn't think we're there, just yet. He's currently selling a $500 drone that is a small and light aircraft that is only usable in non-urbanized zones and must follow specific laws to not interfere with FAA authority (which includes carrying payloads and other uses that are currently illegal).

Will the rise of commercial drones — yet more automation — resultant loss of jobs? It's too early to tell, but it's important to remember that we will require a significant labor force to design, program, maintain and organize this type of business. Drone usage at the domestic work level is going to create a significant number of jobs where both the talent and title doesn't even exist today. Imagine the hybrid of aviation, logistics, technology, supply chain management and more that will be required to be an effective employee in the near-future for the drone industry. Will that amount of new labor be able to fully offset those who currently have jobs that can be replaced by drones? It depends on several unknown factors at this moment in time, but change is coming. Increasingly, the stuff we see in science fiction and comic books, becomes a business reality. Fast.

This isn't just about building a better FedEx. The fact remains, that with all of the privacy, legal, and FAA hurdles that will have to be overcome, this is the dawn of a new industry. As Anderson has already stated on countless occasions: the advanced technology that encapsulates a smartphone (GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes and simple-to-use software and interfaces mixed with sophisticated and light hardware) means that cheap solutions to unmanned air vehicles are a certainty.

Once drones are being used in domestic settings beyond a few niche sectors and wealthy hobbyists — and citizens feel like their privacy is not being breached — it's not hard to imagine businesses and marketers coming up with new and inventive ways to use drones to better commercialize their businesses.

Currently, Geologists like Jan Grygar are using drones to take high-definition photographs, while Simon Jardine and his business, Eye In The Sky, are using drones to sell aerial photography. Interestingly, both Grygar and Jardine have also started companies to manufacture and sell drones to other businesses. "The analogy is closer to the PC coming after the mainframe," Anderson concedes. "Which is to say, that these are not the most powerful drones in the world, but they will be the cheapest and they will be the ones available to regular people. Fundamentally, those people are going to find new applications for the platform that the traditional industries never thought of."

Now, we're beginning to see uses for drones in agriculture, 3D modeling, security (like saving rhinos in South Africa), environmental analysis, news reporting, filming, human rights monitoring and more. Just imagine what will be as more venture capital, entrepreneurs, inventors and every day people start exploring the new business opportunities that drones will create.

I, for one, welcome our new drone overlords.

Copyright © 2013 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing is an affiliate of Harvard Business School.


*Link for This article compiled by Roger Smith from reliable sources By Mitch Joel - Harvard Business Review
*Speaking Image - Creation of DTN News ~ Defense Technology News 
*This article is being posted from Toronto, Canada By DTN News ~ Defense-Technology News Contact:dtnnews@ymail.com 
©COPYRIGHT (C) DTN NEWS DEFENSE-TECHNOLOGY NEWS