NEW TECHNOLOGIES

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18 Dec 06. Interactive Supercomputing Inc.’s (ISC) Star-P software will help the U.S. Army and vehicle designers to evaluate the performance and reliability of next-generation military vehicles using supercomputers to dramatically accelerate simulation of the vehicles’ operations. ISC received a subcontract from the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC) to transform its internally developed ground vehicle performance and reliability software to run on parallel computers. TARDEC is the nation’s laboratory for advanced military ground systems and automotive technology. The first phase of the project is to predict the reliability of the HMMWV M-1097, the Army’s biggest “Humvee”-class vehicle designed to provide safe transport of troops, equipment and cargo in rugged, hostile environments. If successful, the research could contribute to future development in robotic, plug-in electric and other advanced vehicle combat systems. Until now, running full simulations of vehicle computer models in serial mode has taken too long to be fully utilized in the acquisition process, even when running on state-of-the-art serial hardware. TARDEC hopes to cut the time to perform computionationally intensive simulations by orders of magnitude with Star-P. (Source: ASD Network)

Dec 06. Artemis, the European Space Agency Advanced Relay and Technology Mission Satellite, successfully relayed optical laser links from an aircraft in early December. These airborne laser links, established over a distance of 40 000 km during two flights at altitudes of 6000 and 10 000 metres, represent a world first. The relay was set up through six two-way optical links between a Mystere 20 equipped with the airborne laser optical link LOLA (Liaison Optique Laser Aeroportee) and the SILEX laser link payload on board ARTEMIS in its geostationary orbital position at 36 000 kilometres altitude: a feat equivalent to targeting a golf ball over the distance between Paris and Brussels. These tests were made by Astrium SAS (France), the prime constructor for both LOLA and SILEX, as part of the airborne laser optical link programme conducted by the DGA (French MoD procurement agency) from its Flight Test Centre at Istres, in the south of France. (Source: ASD Network)

06 Dec 06. EADS seeks a sense of terra cognita for A400M with trials of low-level autopilot. EADS Military Air Systems is planning to start customer evaluations of a terrain-masking low-level flight (TMLLF) feature, under development for the Airbus Military A400M transport aircraft, later in 2007, programme officials have told Jane’s. (Source: Jane’s International Defence Review)

02 Jan 07. ITT Corporation (NYSE: ITT) announced that as part of an Air Force-sponsored program, ITT has developed and delivered an advanced imagery management and dissemination solution for the Air Force that provides high-resolution, large-file imagery at high speed over low bandwidth to combat forces. The new system incorporates the Advanced Geospatial Imagery Library Enterprise (AGILE) technology developed by ITT. Adhering to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) NITF/JPEG2000 imagery standards, the system receives processed and unexploited imagery from various Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) sources, while providing the framework necessary for managing hundreds of images collected daily . This allows combat forces to quickly locate and access current imagery. Based on original image sensor metadata, the solution incorporates a Web-based Search and Discovery feature to facilitate a user’s ability to rapidly find and retrieve desired images. A key feature of the system is its ability to disseminate imagery in near real time to users in the field at low bandwidths – even below 10Kbps. This is accomplished through dynamic access of the full frame image, This dynamic access mak