“The GPS navigation is the weakest point,” the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran’s “electronic ambush” of the highly classified US drone. “By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain.”

The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.

Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer – CSMonitor.com.

Exclusive: Iran hijacked US drone, says Iranian engineer – CSMonitor.com.

Follow Your Heart: Darpa’s Quest to Find You by Your Heartbeat | Danger Room | Wired.com.

the U.S. can’t track or fully account for 5,900 pounds of “weapons usable” nuclear material that it once shipped overseas. Instead, U.S. officials have to rely on foreign governments’ assurances that the potentially cataclysmic stuff is safe. And when those officials occasionally visit the sites holding the nuclear material, nearly half the places “did not meet International Atomic Energy Agency security guidelines,” according to the GAO, Congress’ investigative arm

via U.S. Can’t Track Tons of Weapons-Grade Uranium, Plutonium | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Developed by BAE Systems, the Adaptiv technology allows vehicles to mimic the temperature of their surroundings.

It can also make a tank look like other objects, such as a cow or car, when seen through heat-sensitive ‘scopes.

Researchers are looking at ways to make it work with other wavelengths of light to confer true invisibility.

via BBC News – Tanks test infra-red invisibility cloak.

The graphs in the link below show how much each aircraft type costs to operate per hour over the last 10 years.

EXCLUSIVE: US Air Force combat fleet’s true operational costs revealed – The DEW Line.

The Air Force’s fleet of F-22 super-jets has been grounded for more than two months now, but service officials had no details Friday about when the F-22s may fly again or even when engineers could finish the investigation into the fighters’ onboard oxygen systems.

via DoD Buzz AF: No word when F-22s could fly again.

After the F-15 fleet grounding the USAF fleet is looking more and more ramshackle!

On May 12, the Visegrad Group (Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary) announced the formation of a “battlegroup” under the command of Poland. The battlegroup would be in place by 2016 as an independent force and would not be part of NATO command. In addition, starting in 2013, the four countries would begin military exercises together under the auspices of the NATO Response Force.

This is interesting as it expresses the views held in these  countries that the European Rapid Reaction Force, NATO and the US are not interested enough in them to defend them. It expresses a fragmentation of European foreign security policy.

via Visegrad: A New European Military Force | STRATFOR.

How do you steal 15 tonnes of aircraft engines from an Israeli military base?!

‘Stolen’ F100 engine caper at Israeli base – The DEW Line.

The collections contained within the Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library are largely composed of digital versions of paper documents from the Combined Arms Research Library collections and student papers produced at the US Army Command and General Staff College. We have recently partnered with several Army educational and historical organizations whose collections appear here also. The collections of digitized materials are uploaded in the CONTENTdm® Digital Collection Management System which allows for greater search and retrieval of the individual documents.

Combined Arms Research Library CARL Digital Library.

Defensie vult toekomst verder in | Ministerie van Defensie.

More than 200 military pilots escaped to another country for freedom ….or gold!During the period of the Cold War more than 200 military pilots decided to make an instant change in the course of their lives by defecting with their aircraft to another country.

These pages are a research effort to tell the history of the many freedom seekers, heroes and …traitors of the Cold War and thereafter.About the MiG’s and other military aircraft they flew, the reasons for an escape, the dangers of an unexpected landing at a foreign airbase, the Cold War psywar operations bribes! and the examination and testing of defected fighters by the intelligence community.

via index.

Following the publication of new acquisition data it turns out that modifications have eaten up fuel capacity meaning it’s estimated that the current combat radius will be around 584 nm, which is 1/7th less than the original 690 nm estimate and 6 nm less than the 590 nm requirement.

BREAKING: Short legs on F-35A – The DEW Line.

The US Air Force has stopped flying all Lockheed Martin F-22s for an indefinite period over concerns about a possible glitch in the onboard oxygen generation system.The stand-down order issued on 3 May by Air Combat Command ACC chief Gen Will Fraser comes about six weeks after the F-22s were restricted to flying below 25,000ft due to the same problem.The order is in effect until “further notice”, the ACC says.

via Oxygen system concerns prompt F-22 stand-down.

This is an excellent current military affairs resource with a forum, blog and articles written by serving military officers.

Small Wars Journal.

Pictures from the 2nd flight show ground crew to give a sense of scale

China’s Stealth Jet Makes Second Flight | Defense Tech.

Attempt two, will this one work?

is.gd – a URL shortener. Mmmm, tasty URLs!.

As every time someone clicks a bit.ly link that money goes into the coffers of Ghaddafhi, I’ve changed to tinyurl. No statistics on my clicks any more, but hey, I never used them anyway

TinyURL.com – shorten that long URL into a tiny URL.

This timeline shows all wars, seiges, battles ever with their location on a google maps api. You scroll through periods of time and see where they were fighting, doing what. You can choose a war and find a small precis on what the war was about, why they were fighting.

Conflict History | 1582-1586.

With a 6.5-inch wing span, the remote-controlled bird weighs less than a AA battery and can fly at speeds of up to 11 mph, propelled only by the flapping of its two wings. A tiny video camera sits in its belly.

The bird can climb and descend vertically, fly sideways, forward and backward. It can rotate clockwise and counterclockwise.

Most of all, it can hover and perch on a window ledge while it gathers intelligence, unbeknownst to the enemy.

“We were almost laughing out of being scared because we had signed up to do this,” said Matt Keennon, senior project engineer of California’s AeroVironment, which built the hummingbird.

via Tiny Spy Planes Mimic Birds, Insects.

The XO of the Enterprise used to hold movie nights featuring funny, sexually tinted skits. One or two people got upset, it got out and now the USN top is going nuts in a frantic attempt to show how humorless they are.

Enterprise Skipper Condemned, Defended.

They’ll share carriers as well as R&D, set up a joint military force comprising 5000 personell from each country to start off with, jointly fund UAV MALE acquisition and train together for the A400M programme. These agreements should last for 50 years.

UK–France Summit 2010 Declaration on Defence and Security Co-operation

Joint carrier operations, UAV developments in UK/France defence pact.

The silo missileers couldn’t communicate and so control the 50 nukes. Apparently this has happened before, but only with up to around 8 missiles at a time…

USAF Has Nuke Issues, Again. Really, Really?! | Defense Tech.

The navy loses a carrier and a helicopter landing ship immediately (no words on the planned acquisition of the next 2 carriers) and four frigates. The army loses a brigade as well as artillery (35%) and tanks (40%). The air force loses Harrier immediately and will lose C-130 10 years earlier than planned as well as losing VC-10 and three Tristar variants from 2013 and Sentinel after Afghanistan (whenever that may be).

Big cuts!

However, support for Afghanistan is unequivical and repeated. They’re going to stick that out and try to support the in country structure as much as possible.

Ministry of Defence | Defence News | Defence Policy and Business | Strategic Defence and Security Review published.

Lockheed Martin’s objective is to deliver 15 field-testable and hardened prototype systems by October 2011 that provides the capability to profile downrange crosswind and range to target in near real time, at longer ranges, and improved probability of a first round hit.

The system’s integrated spotter scope ISS should measure crosswinds, maximum effective range of the weapon, temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, cant and pointing angles, and GPS coordinates, as well as allow direct day and night observation of targets with continuous updates of the aim point offset corrections, with no alignment verification of the laser/crosswind optics to the spotting scope necessary.

The rifle scope also should communicate the aim point offset and expected crosswind variability to the rifle scope using a wired or wireless data link

via Lockheed Martin to continue One Shot program electro-optics work to help snipers hit targets in crosswinds – Military & Aerospace Electronics.