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20 Mar 08. The GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team has successfully completed a high-altitude afterburner testing program at the US Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee, including common exhaust hardware for the F-35 Lightning II aircraft. The F136 engine is a 40,000+ lb. thrust, combat engine that will be available to power all variants of the F-35 for the US military and eight partner nations. All test objectives were reached as planned using an engine configured with Conventional Takeoff and Landing (CTOL) and Short Takeoff Vertical Landing (STOVL) common exhaust systems. The engine configuration included a production-size fan and functional augmentor allowing several run periods to full afterburner operation.
Mar 08. The test firing of BrahMos, the supersonic cruise missile, from underwater is targeted for 2008-end and from air by 2009-end, according to A. Sivathanu Pillai, BrahMos Aerospace CEO and Managing Director. Talking to newspersons on the sidelines of the third Nanotechnology Conclave 2008 on Wednesday, he said they had test fired BrahMos from ship to ship, ship to land, land to ship and land to land. They are currently discussing with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Russia and the Indian Navy to identify the platform for test firing the missile from underwater. (Source: Google)
26 Mar 08. A shortage of notebook computer batteries is slowing growth in the emerging market segment for ultra low-cost notebook computers and ultra-mobile personal computers, industry sources and analysts said on Wednesday. Following a fire at a plant of LG Chemical, the South Korean battery cell maker, supplies are expected to fall short of demand from battery pack makers, notebook assemblers and notebook vendors at least until June and probably well into the third quarter of this year, said Chris Wei, an analyst at the Market Intelligence Center, an industry think-tank in Taipei. “To cope with the shortage, computer companies are going to assign the capacity they can get to higher-priced products in order to minimise the impact on their revenue and margins,” said Mr Wei. Asustek, the Taiwanese computer company, is already feeling the pinch. The company received a boost to its own-brand sales following the launch last year of the EeePC, the first ultra low-cost notebook sold through commercial channels worldwide. But it now expects to miss its shipment target of 1m EeePCs for the first quarter by more than 300,000 units, a source close to the company said. Low-cost and ultra-mobile products to be launched by other PC vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest vendor by shipments, and Acer, which ranks number three, could also be hit, said Alvin Kwock, an analyst at JP Morgan in Hong Kong. (Source: FT.com)
25 Mar 08. The Boeing Company and the U.S. Army have demonstrated for the first time that the software-defined Joint Tactical Radio System Ground Mobile Radios (JTRS GMR) can receive data from unattended ground sensors and pass the data to nearby vehicles equipped with the Future Combat Systems (FCS) network integration system. During an FCS training exercise conducted in January at Fort Bliss, Texas, the Army demonstrated that information from Tactical-Unmanned Ground Sensors (T-UGS) can be channeled through a gateway and then received by the JTRS GMR radios installed in FCS vehicles. The JTRS radios are integrated in the FCS vehicles as part of the “B-kits” that include various network integration components. The kits comprise the Integrated Computer System, the Battle Command System software, the System of Systems Common Operating Environment (SOSCOE) software and the JTRS GMR. The B-kits are being installed on Bradley fighting vehicles, Abrams battle tanks and High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles as part of the first “spin out” of FCS capabilities to the current force. (Source: