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02 Jan 13. Russia to put new Voronezh-DM radar on combat duty in early 2013. Russia is set to deploy a new Voronezh-DM class anti-missile radar system on combat duty near Armavir in the southern Krasnodar region in early 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced. Putin was quoted by RIA Novosti when addressing a meeting in the Kremlin. Representing one of four new-generation Voronezh-class radars manufactured by Moscow in recent years, the new Armavir radar is set to replace the Gabala station, which was leased from Azerbaijan for ten years, as part of an agreement signed in 2002. The leasing agreement expired on 24 December 2012, and is not scheduled to be renewed by the Russian Army contrary to previous reports, which claimed that the lease could be prolonged until 2025. The Gabala radar enabled Moscow to monitor missile launches of Iran, Turkey, China, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Australia, as well as Africa and parts of Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Russia has already activated two Voronezh-M radars in Lekhtusi near St Petersburg and Usolye-Sibirskoe in Irkutsk, Serbia. A third Voronezh-DM class radar was deployed on combat duty in the westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad in November 2011, and is widely considered to be Moscow’s response to the proposed deployment of US-led Nato anti-missile defence (AMD) shield in Europe. (Source: army-technology.com)
04 Jan 13. DARPA recently selected Southwest Research Institute to provide the flight low-rate crosslink wireless communications platform for the System F6 Program. The System F6 Program, which is envisioned to culminate in an on-orbit demonstration in 2015-2016, is designed to validate a new space mission concept in which a cluster of smaller, wirelessly connected spacecraft replaces the typical single spacecraft carrying numerous instruments and payloads. This “fractionated” architecture enhances survivability, responsiveness and adaptability compared to the traditional monolithic spacecraft. The SwRI K-band radio is a core element of the open source F6 Developers Kit (FDK), which allows any spacecraft to participate in an F6-enabled cluster. SwRI’s K-band wireless crosslink radio incorporates a continuously active communications channel with guaranteed availability and latency via a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) protocol to provide a reliable, robust and flexible solution for a variety of mission communications needs. Unique to SwRI’s K-band radio is a core architecture that accommodates a continuous data link among the cluster members and also supports inclusion of third-party, point-to-point, high-rate data links. The SwRI-developed F6 Wireless Inter-Module Communications System (F6WICS) protocol incorporates a data link layer ready for integration with higher level network protocols to allow distributed computing with unique mechanisms for maximizing bandwidth allocations. (Source: BUSINESS WIRE)
03 Jan 13. QinetiQ GRC naval architects in combination with their Paramarine software are working with QED Naval Ltd in the development of a marine platform (Subhub) that can transport, install, anchor and maintain wave and tidal turbines through life. This will bring major cost and time advantages to tidal turbine field installations on the sea bed. QED Naval Ltd was founded in April 2008 with the intent of developing products for the wave and tidal renewable energy industry. Subhub is the first of these products. The primary benefits of the Subhub will be to provide an easy method of retrieving wave & tidal turbines to the surface for maintenance and to significantly increase the speed of deployment from months to days allowing an array of tidal turbines to be installed in minutes. Tidal energy exploits the natural ebb and flow of coastal tidal waters caused principally by the interaction of the gravitational fields of the ea