New Weapons Report 4 November 2014

When Jules Verne wrote the story “From the Earth to the Moon”, it was basically about defense verses offense. A munitions expert and an armor expert are always improving their products and defeating each other before they join forces. This kind of thing is still going on today with missiles and shells verses defensive missiles, lasers and other devices. The Iron Dome in Israel was a missile defense system which while not 100% effective did shoot down many missiles headed for that country. In that vein Raytheon has introduced the JLENS system. JLENS stands for Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor. It was designed to protect against not only cruise missiles, which are hard to detect, but to plug holes in our radar system. What I find ironic is the use of blimps with radar capability which remind me of the barrage balloons of World War II which were found over England.

A story appeared about the F-22 in the Daily Beast. It talks about how we are dependent on the F-22 Raptor, but how the plane is really a flying museum since it uses 1990 technology. The plane was just introduced late this year (2014) but the hardware seems not to have been updated since its inception on paper. In the 1990s the hardware was cutting edge, but as all of us know technology is moving fast and what is state of the art technology today is rubbish tomorrow. The article goes on to say even though the Air Force is updating components, the technology itself pales in comparison to what is now in consumer products. The plane is a great example of the slow process used to get a weapon from the drawing board into the active military and shows how this can be detrimental to having the most advanced weapons. The article rightfully states this is costing the U.S. taxpayer billions of wasted dollars since by the time the weapon is ready it often has to be updated at great cost. The same thing has happened with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program which already costs almost $400 billion.

Boeing has just been awarded a contract to build the Phantom Swift X-Plane. The government is pulling out all the stops on trying to develop better helicopters. The Phantom Swift X-Plane reminds one of a miniature Osprey swing wing transport plane which can also fly like a helicopter. The difference between the Osprey and the Phantom Swift is the Swift also has two rotors in the body of the plane, besides the rotors on the front wing tips which swivel from straight ahead like a normal plane to up and down allowing it to operate like a helicopter. The machine only took 3 days to design and ten days to build the large model. DARPA wants something which can fly at 400 knots far beyond the speed of an ordinary helicopter and carry at least 10,000 to 12,000 pounds.

As I write this article stock prices for Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman are at record highs. This is good for the companies and stock holders, but is it good for the country? Every time we launch a bombing mission we blow up tens of millions of dollars’ worth of munitions which have to be replaced. The making of an enemy out of Russia also helps the military industrial complex as the demand for new weapons grows. These things seem to be well scripted as are the automatic payment for the usual cost overruns which take place throughout the industry. Is it any wonder they are doing so well? Just the price of one of these gigantic weapons systems could probably feed the hungry in this country for at least a few years. Maybe we should think about doing away with all the systems which DON’T work since they are useless anyway and not paying for them. This would also send a much needed message to these companies.

One of the newest type of weapons we are building are self-healing “transformer” drones. Here is what BAE Systems foresees, a drone which would include a 3D printer which could create mini-drones during a mission and use transformer technology and they think it can be done before 2040. One of the things BAE is considering is using a lightweight adhesive fluid to repair drones in flight and thus heal themselves in a few minutes. This was not all. They displayed a transformer drone which could split into a number of smaller military jets in mid-air. After a mission the tiny jets could then rejoin back together forming a large vehicle again.
A prototype of the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit or TALOS has become ready. It is believed the complete version should be ready between 2016 and 2018. The idea is to give the troops access to better armor, better protection and better communication. The suit has been nicknamed the Iron Man Suit after the suit worn by the superhero Iron Man who is Tony Stark. “The suit is being developed by engineers at MIT, the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) and several other companies and academic institutions…”

The U.S. Navy is going to have sea trials for a gun which can fire a low-cost 23 pound projectile at seven times the speed of sound. It is going to use magnetic energy and is known as a rail gun. The gun has been tested extensively on land, but in 2016 will be mounted on the USNS Millinocket, a high-speed ship, for the sea trials. The projectile will cost about 1/100th the cost of current systems. It will cost about $25,000 versus $500,000-$1,500,000 each for conventional munitions. The weapon is scheduled to also be used in defense against all sorts of missiles. I do wonder about one thing. While the $25,000 per projectile sounds cheap, what is it for really? Are we just shooting a chunk of formed metal and if so it seems it should be much cheaper. The projectile can fire over 100 miles eliminating the cost for missiles in some instances. Since a ship carrying these projectiles has nothing explosive in its magazine it is far harder to blow up.

It is now being said the $23 billion we spent to build a Littoral combat ship for the US Navy was a big mistake, because the ship has less survivability than an ordinary ship. The navy ran a simulation and it was decided the ship was not up to the survival standards of an ordinary combat ship the same size. Shouldn’t we have figured this out before the ship was built or was this known already, but everyone involved remained silent? There should be an investigation on how this could have happened. Well guess what, we are still going to buy more of these ships. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in February he is going to limit the purchase to 32 of these ships instead of the proposed 52. Big deal, shouldn’t the entire project be cancelled? I think this is a disgrace and a disservice to the American public. Why would anyone want to build inferior ships and what reason could there possibly be except to line the pockets of the military industrial complex? No wonder these companies are having banner years, even their inferior products sell.