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28 Jun 12. The French Army is due June 29 to stage an exercise, dubbed demonstration of cooperative combat, to show how a future mechanized infantry unit would work under the Scorpion program, a procurement office spokesman said. The exercise, to be held at the urban warfare training center at the Sissonne Army base, will be presented to officials from the Defense Ministry, including the Direction Générale de l’Armement procurement office. The French Army is anxious to maintain the Scorpion modernization program as the government gets ready to cut spending to balance the budget over the coming years. Scorpion has been estimated at 10bn euros ($12.4bn) over a decade. Some 250 soldiers in a combined unit in the blue force will go up against a 70-strong red force, with some 60 armored vehicles deployed including VBCI infantry fighting vehicle, AMX10 light tank, Leclerc heavy tank, VBL scout car and PVP small vehicle. The exercise is intended to show how technology to be developed under Scorpion can improve acquisition and the updating of information and communications among soldiers plugged into a tactical network. Firing beyond the line of sight and a VBCI with extensive onboard electronics are among the concepts and demonstrators in the exercise. Much of the technology has come from Nexter, Sagem and Thales. (Source: Defense News)
06 Jul 12. The US Army has demonstrated the capabilities of its newly developed ground-based sense and avoid (GBSAA) system, designed for the safe operation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in national air space (NAS) from May 2014, at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, US. During the two week testing, conducted recently, the GBSAA system underwent a total of seven training vignettes using both live and synthetic MQ-1C Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft system (UAS) and synthetic intruders, to allow for a detailed evaluation of its design and functionality. US Army’s unmanned systems airspace integration product director Viva Austin said that the test flights had exceeded the army’s expectations in both the cases. The five locations that have been identified by the army for Gray Eagle basing and training include Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Riley in Kansas, Fort Stewart in Georgia, Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and Fort Bragg in North Carolina. According to the army officials, the GBSAA is a radar and warning system is designed to operate the UAS in NAS in compliance with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations, which require a pilot be able to ‘see and avoid’ other aircraft flying in the same airspace. The system is also capable of monitoring the location and altitude of the UAS and other aircraft; it can also detect possible collisions and provide the operators with solutions to avoid those collisions. (Source: armytechnology.com)
09 Jul 12. The SELEX Galileo Raven ES-05 AESA radar flies into Farnborough in the Gripen NG. Delivered to Linkoping on Tuesday 12 June, the SELEX Galileo Raven ES-05 Active Electronically Scanned Array fire control radar, was installed on Saturday 16 June with no difficulty and immediately began integration testing in preparation for its Farnborough debut. This event, achieved in close collaboration with Saab, marks a major milestone for both the Radar and the aircraft programmes, and is the culmination of an intense period of development by both SELEX Galileo and Saab. The radar will displayed on aircraft at Farnborough and, on its return to Linkoping, will continue integration testing and then begin flight testing.
22 Jun 12. QinetiQ combat ID system makes debut. A new ultra lightweight active infrared (IR) beacon to meet the ground-ground and air-ground combat identification (CID) requirements of dismounted soldiers was presented for the first time at the Eurosatory 2012, on the stand of UK research company QinetiQ. An evolution of an