Israeli spy blimp crashes near Gaza May 6, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in airships, Military Aviation.Tags: Afghanistan, Air Force, airship, Blimp, Blue Devil, Gaza Strip, Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, Northrop Grumman
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An Israel Defence Forces observation airship crashed on May. 4, on the Israeli side of the Gaza border.
The spy blimp was performing a routine surveillance deployment in the Gaza sector when a civilian crop duster flying by hit its cable. As a consequence of the incident, the balloon crashed whereas the crop duster landed safely.
Even if the extent of damage is not known, the airship can be fixed: a technical team was immediately dispatched to the crash site to try to retrieve the zeppelin and ensure it can be repaired as soon as possible.
71-meter in length spy blimps floating at about 400 meters of altitute and carrying a wide array of sensors are routinely involved in the Gaza strip.
Although much demanded in Afghanistan too, to perform vital ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) missions, it’s still unclear whether the two giant blimps built in the U.S. lately will ever be deployed in combat zone, as reported by Wired’s Danger Room, lately.
One is the Air Force’s Blue Devil Block 2 a large 1.4 cubic feet fat at 370 feet long manned airship that was expected to fly at 20,000 feet and carry cameras and eavesdropping gear to track insurgents on a surface of at least four square kilometers. The other massive (hybrid) airship is called Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) and it’s being built by Northrop Grumman for the U.S. Army. It will feature more than three weeks endurance with 2,750 lbs ISR payload, payload volume more than 2,700 cubic feet and a service ceiling greater than 22,000 ft MSL.
Both were expected to start flight testing in 2012. However, the Blue Devil could soon be canceled because of the ever growing program costs along with the Air Force’s reluctant approach to the slow-moving platform (even if there’s a plan to equip the giant Air Force blimp with missiles and use it for homeland security purposes as a flying lethal “Big Brother”), whereas the LEMV’s acceptance long endurance flight and Army Joint Military Utility Assessment in Afghanistan were delayed as a consequence of some technical setbacks.
An Israel Air Force observation blimp in the Negev Desert. Credit: Carmel Horowitz/Israel Air Force Flickr photostream
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U.S. drones to be nuclear powered? April 11, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Drones.Tags: Aviation, drones, Military Aviation, Northrop Grumman, Nuclear Power, Sandia National Laboratories, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
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It has emerged that Sandia National Laboratories, the U.S. government’s principle nuclear research and development agency, and defense contractor Northrop Grumman are working on powering the next generation of drones with nuclear power.
With nuclear powered drones, endurance could stop being measured in hours and would be measured in months with excess power used to power better communications and surveillance equipment.
Sandia and Northrop started the project to try and resolve three problems associated with drones with what they call “ultra-persistence technologies”: insufficient “hang time” over a potential target, lack of power for running sophisticated surveillance and weapons systems, and a lack of communications capacity.
The Sandia-Northrop project team looked at power supplies for large to medium sized UAVs before finally settling on nuclear power: not surprising, since Northrop Grumman patented a Helium Powered nuclear reactor as long ago as 1986 and its widely known designs for nuclear powered aircraft date back as far as the ’50s.
The project team found that nuclear power provided far more time on target and intel per mission than any other power source by quite a margin. It was also the most cost effective power source in that it eliminated the need for expensive support infrastructure near hostile territory.
And it would enable drones to carry more weapons or reconnaissance sensors.
Sandia went out of its way to say that the project is now complete and that no equipment was built or tested and this project was nothing more than a feasibility study, perhaps showing how sensitive this technology is.
There are worries that public opinion would not accept the idea of such a potentially dangerous technology, hence Sandia’s rather over the top statement.
Fears of this technology are understandable after the amount of drones that have been lost, both during combat operations and training. The risk is turning the drone into a sort of dirty bomb or the sensitive technology falling into the wrong hands of terrorists or enemy forces.
Therefore there will be no nuclear powered drones. For the moment….
Richard Clements for TheAviationist.com
Image credit: Reuters
B-2 stealth bomber to get 2 billion dollar upgrades. Including a new email system. April 4, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Military Aviation.Tags: Air Force, B-2, BAe Systems, Military Aviation, Northrop Grumman, Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit, Pentagon, United States Air Force, US Air Force, whiteman afb missouri, Whiteman Air Force Base
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It was announced recently that the U.S. Air Force is to move forward with a ten year +2 billion USD upgrade to the fleet of 21 B-2s; an upgrade of the communications systems.
The B-2 started rolling off Northrop Grumman’s production line during the ’80s and some of the systems are now getting rather long in the tooth with parts becoming rather hard to come by.
In an Air Force Times article Col. Rob Spalding of the 509th Bomb Wing based at Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, said “It’s the biggest and most complex update of the B-2 in its history.”
Spalding himself said that parts are becoming scarcely available and that technicians at Whiteman have come up with their own upgrades and goes on to describe a system called AP2 which allows ground based commanders the ability to send email to the crew. The older system relied on a laptop perched on a swivelling stand between the pilots; the new system, which holds the screens at the pilots shoulder, is upgradable as new technologies come along.
In another sign of the need to upgrade the B-2 Northrop Grumman announced it has awarded a contract to BAE Systems to replace all of the analogue systems with digital systems, although the size of the contract and what is actually being upgraded was understandably withheld.
The surprising statistic is that the oldest air frame has only 5,000 flight hours, not bad when the fact that the B-2 has been involved in every conflict since the NATO bombing of Serbia in the 1999 Kosovo war.
It is a sign of the high regard the B-2 enjoys within the higher ranks of the Air Force and the Pentagon, that in these times of budget cuts and other force reductions, this rather unique weapons system is being upgraded.
Or a sign that the Spirit must get a new email system prior to be involved in a war against Iran.
Richard Clements for TheAviationist.com
Image credit: U.S. Air Force
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- USAF to get upgraded Bunker Buster (while developing new tactics to reach buried nuke sites) (theaviationist.com)
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Hand Signals: the next step to controlling UAVs on aircraft carriers April 4, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Aircraft Carriers, Drones.Tags: aircraft carrier, drones, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Northrop Grumman, Office of Naval Research, UAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Unmanned Air Vehicle, USS Dwight D Eisenhower, X-47B
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The environment you find on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier is constantly monitored. The organized chaos of launches, recoveries and taxi takes place in a totally unforgiving environment for an unmanned aircraft (and for manned planes too…).
According to an interesting article published by Navy Times, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) took a very close look at the problem of moving UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) about the deck whilst not endangering crew or interfering to the normal operations and they came up with an ingenious camera and computer that recognises the hand signals the sailors use to guide aircraft about an aircraft carrier deck.
It may be a step that finally makes UAV use on a aircraft carrier possible. “It would be really nice if we had an unmanned vehicle that can understand human gestures” said Yale Song a Ph.D candidate at MIT who developed the system.
“Gesturing is an instinctive skill we all have, so it requires little or no thought, leaving the focus itself, as it should be, not the interaction modality” said Song.
Song’s project which began in January 2009, and was funded by the Office of Naval Research, took him to Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida, where he learned the hand signals used by the sailors on the flight deck that he used to “train” 20 students 24 signals. The students wore a Yellow Turtleneck and a cranial to replicate the clothing used onboard carriers.
The students performed all of the signals whilst being filmed by Song’s camera/computer combination, which in turn translated their hand movements to stick figures. With this data, Song was able to develop an algorithm that is able to learn how to identify and recognize the signals from people it hadn’t met before therefore hadn’t learned their individual slight variables.
Song said “Based on that training data, we trained our model so that when new data comes in, it has our algorithm to classify the sequence of gestures.”
Song admitted that his system gets the gestures correct around 75 percent of the time, so obviously a lot of more research is needed before this system could be introduced onto an unmanned air system.
According to the Navy Times article, while Song and MIT look into recognizing hand signals, Northrop Grumman has developed a special remote control for moving the X-47B on flight decks by means of a device which attaches to the wrist, waist and one hand. The “yellow shirt” operating the device will have access to a display and will be able to control the aircraft’s throttle, tailhook, brakes and perform several other functions associated with maneuvring an aircraft on deck.
Image credit: U.S. Naval Air Systems Command
Anyway, drone operations automation has already reached aircraft carriers, at least for testing purposes.
An automated landing system, which allowed the X-47’s controllers to take control of an F-18, fly the approach and land the plane onto the flight deck of USS Dwight D Eisenhower whilst the Hornet’s crew makes no input into the plane’s flight, has already been tested. Seen from the outside, the landing looks totally normal. The LSOs still has the power to wave off the landing should they feel that the landing is unsafe or does not meet any other criteria required for a trap landing.
Richard Clements for TheAviationist.com
Ryan Aeronautical photo archive traces development of combat drones from the factory floor to deployment in southeast Asia March 19, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones.Tags: drones, Northrop Grumman, Ryan Aeronautical, Ryan Firebee, San Diego Air & Space Museum, Teledyne, UAV, UCAV, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Unmanned combat air vehicle
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Founded by T. Claude Ryan in 1934, part of Teledyne from 1969 and purchased by Northrop Grumman in 1999, Ryan Aeronautical company has designed, developed and built some of the most innovative and successful unmanned aerial vehicles, the most famous of those is the Ryan BQM-34 Firebee.
Ryan was a pioneer in aircraft, missiles and unmanned targets, and a photo gallery made available on Flickr by the San Diego Air & Space Museum archive provide a detailed account of the development of the early UCAVs (Umanned Combat Aerial Vehicles) from the desing phase, to the deploymnet in southeast Asia including some rare images of the early sketches, experimental types and testing activities with A-6, F-18 and F-4.
Below you can find a very small selection of images edited by Scott Mahew (thanks for the heads-up!).
The remaining +3,200 images (covering also the Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh, the ST, PT and Brougham series of aircraft) can be found here.
All images: Ryan Aeronautical via San Diego Air & Space Museum archive
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Exclusive Infographic: all Cyber Attacks on Military Aviation and Aerospace Industry February 21, 2012
Posted by Paolo Passeri in Information Security.Tags: Boeing 787 Dreamliner, China, Creech Air Force Base, Cyber Attacks Timeline, Cyberwar, Cyberwarfare, drone, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, F-35 Lightning II, Hacking, Information Security, Iran, Jaxa, Joint Strike Fighter, JSF, L-3, L-3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, Malware, McAfee, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Northrop Grumman, Pentagon, RQ-170, RSA, SecurID, Sophos, Trend Micro, Virus
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2011 has been an annus horribilis for information security, and aviation has not been an exception to this rule: not only in 2011 the corporate networks of several aviation and aerospace industries have been targeted by digital storms (not a surprise in the so-called hackmageddon) but, above all, last year will be probably remembered for the unwelcome record of two alleged hacking events targeting drones (“alleged” because in the RQ-170 Sentinel downed in Iran episode, several doubts surround the theory according to which GPS hacking could have been the real cause of the crash landing).
But, if Information Security professionals are quite familiar with the idea that military contractors are primary and preferred targets of the current Cyberwar as the following infographic shows, realizing that malware can be used to target a drone is still considered an isolated episode, and even worse, the idea of a malware targeting the multirole Joint Strike Fighter is still something hard to accept.
However, things are about change dramatically. And quickly.
The reason is simple: the latest military and civil airplanes are literally full of electronics, which play a primary role in managing avionics, onboard systems, flight surfaces, communcation equipment and armament.
For instance an F-22 Raptor owns about 1.7 millions od line of codes , an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter about 5.7 millions and a Boeing 787 Dreamliner about 6.5 millions. Everything with some built in code may be exploited, therefore, with plenty of code and much current and future vulnerabilities, one may not rule out a priori that these systems will be targeted with specific tailored or generic malware for Cyberwar, Cybercrime, or even hacktivism purposes.
Unfortunately it looks like the latter hypothesis is closer to reality since too often these systems are managed by standard Windows operating systems, and as a matter of fact a generic malware has proven to be capable to infect the most important U.S. robots flying in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Indian Ocean: Predator and Reaper Drones.
As a consequence, it should not be surprising, nor it is a coincidence, that McAfee, Sophos and Trend Micro, three leading players for Endpoint Security, consider the embedded systems as one of the main security concerns for 2012.
Making networks more secure (and personnel more educated) to prevent the leak of mission critical documents and costly project plans (as happened in at least a couple of circumstances) will not be aviation and aerospace industry’s information security challenge; the real challenge will be to embrace the security-by-design paradigm and make secure and malware-proof products ab initio.
While you wait to see if an endpoint security solution becomes available for an F-35, scroll down the image below and enjoy the list of aviation and aerospace related cyber attacks occurred since the very first hack targeting the F-35 Lightning II in 2009.
Of course aviation and aerospace industries are not the only targets for hackers and cybercriminals. So, if you want to have an idea of how fragile our data are inside the cyberspace, have a look at the timelines of the main Cyber Attacks in 2011 and 2012 (regularly updated) at hackmageddon.com. And follow @pausparrows on Twitter for the latest updates.
Future Drone’s World capital? Sigonella, Italy February 9, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in Drones.Tags: Broad Area Maritime Surveillance, drones, Global Hawk, Libya, Northrop Grumman, Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, United States Air Force, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
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On Feb. 3, 2012, NATO has finally agreed to implement the AGS (Alliance Ground Surveillance) a project that is based on high-altitude long range UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), a main operating base and several command and control stations.
The cooperative defense project involves 13 nations: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the United States.
Wondering which drone will provide the alliance the capability to monitor “what’s happening on the ground, at long range, over periods of time, around the clock, in any weather” by year 2015?
Obviously, the Northrop Grumman RQ-4B Global Hawk, the same type of unarmed reconnaissance drone that the U.S. Air Force has recently decided to scrap in favor of the old U-2 spy planes, Cold War veteran that will be kept in service well into the 2020s.
According to NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance will acquire five RQ-4Bs that will be based at the MOB of Sigonella, in Italy.
Located in southeast Sicily, “Saigon” (as the U.S. aircrews dubbed it) has already been used during the Air War in Libya to host the Air Force’s Global Hawk and Reapers involved in ISR (Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance) and SCAR (Strike Coordination and Reconnaissance) missions in North Africa.
For instance, the U.S. RQ-4Bs belonging to the 9th Operations Group/Detachment 4th of the U.S. Air Force deployed to Sigonella, were the first to fly over Libya to perform high altitude Battle Damage Assessment sorties on targets located in regions with a residual SAM (Surface-to-Air Missiles) and MANPADS threat. Since Apr. 21, 2011, they were joined by armed MQ-1 Predators that flew their first strike sorties in the areas of Misurata and Tripoli and launched 145 air strikes firing hundred AGM-114 Hellfire missiles before taking part in the operation that led to the capture and killing of Gaddafi in Sirte, when an MQ-1 teamed up with a mixed flight of a Mirage F1CR and a Mirage 2000D and attacked the convoy used by the Libyan dictator in his attempt to flee the city.
Strategically located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Sigonella is the ideal base to conduct surveillance of North Africa, East Europe and Middle East. The base will not only host the (remaining) Air Force Global Hawks and AGS RQ-4s: the U.S. Navy MQ-4C BAMS-D (Broad Area Maritime Surveillance) drone, the “maritime” version of the Global Hawk, is expected to be based in five locations around the world, including “Saigon”, where some other platforms, as the French Herons and the (manned) RAF Sentinels could be deployed as well.
Rendering Sigonella, the Drone’s World capital.
Image: U.S. Air Force
Global Hawk: Northrop Grumman launches campaign to save program. On Twitter. January 29, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Drones, Military Aviation.Tags: Aviation, Global Hawk, Military avaition news, Northrop Grumman, Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, Pentagon, Rq-4
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The Aviationist wrote a post the other day relating to the fact that industry insiders had leaked that the Pentagon was planning on cancelling the whole Global Hawk program not only not buying any further aircraft but to retire the fleet they already have.
This would actually appear to be true going by some of the unusual tweets posted by Northrop Grumman itself. In one, the company announced that they had been loaning parts for the U-2 program surveillance sensors to keep those aircraft in the air. They have also tweeted a link to a website urging visitors to lobby their member of congress, even having a box for the visitor to fill in their zip code so they could work out who that person is. If you would like to take a look at this website please look here.
All very unusual actvities, suggesting that this isn’t the last we have heard of this.
Northrop Grumman did release the following media statement on the Jan.26:
“The Pentagon announced today that it is planning to cancel the Global Hawk Block 30 program and plans to perform this mission with the U-2 aircraft. Northrop Grumman is disappointed with the Pentagon’s decision, and plans to work with the Pentagon to assess alternatives to program termination.
“The Global Hawk program has demonstrated its utility in U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as its utility in humanitarian operations in Japan and Haiti. Just a few months ago, the Pentagon published an acquisition decision memorandum regarding Global Hawk Block 30 that stated: ‘The continuation of the program is essential to the national security… there are no alternatives to the program which will provide acceptable capability to meet the joint military requirement at less cost.’
“Global Hawk is the modern solution to providing surveillance. It provides long duration persistent surveillance, and collects information using multiple sensors on the platform. In contrast, the aging U-2 program, first introduced in the 1950s, places pilots in danger, has limited flight duration, and provides limited sensor capacity. Extending the U-2′s service life also represents additional investment requirements for that program.
“Northrop Grumman is committed to working with our customers to provide the best solutions for our country and our allies. We are pleased with the continuing support for the Global Hawk Block 40 system, as well as for the Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance system and our other unmanned systems.”
It’s looking like North Grumman is going to fight this tooth and nail to try and reverse this decision.
Richard Clements for TheAviationist.com
RQ-4 Global Hawk in shock cancellation news: old planes better than new? January 27, 2012
Posted by Richard Clements in Drones, Military Aviation.Tags: Airbus, Airbus 380, Aviation, Dragon Lady, drone, Global Hawk, Military Aviation, Northrop Grumman, Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk, Pentagon, U-2, United States Air Force, US Air Force
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Is new better than old?
It would seem not. Industry insiders have leaked that the Pentagon is to cancel the RQ-4 Global Hawk program not just stopping buying new aircraft but to retire the Air Force active fleet, in favor of keeping the U-2 flying into 2020.
Air force times writer Dave Majumdar wrote: “The Air Force had been planning to buy 42 Block 30 aircraft. According to 2011 budget documents, the cost of each aircraft was around $215 million. It was not immediately clear how many Global Hawks the Air Force has.”
The aircraft is being killed off due to its high cost to buy and to maintain; also the program hasn’t lived up to its early promise. A knowledgeable industry insider confirmed the project cancellation and said “Yes, this is accurate — been a lot of discussion on the possibility of this a long while,” said the source, who was not authorized to speak to the media. “There is a high probability it will come to pass now unless Congress takes a major exception.”
The industry source also said “I don’t think that’s likely in the economic environment of this year’s DoD budget, and there are no real ‘hawks’ in Congress from California,” he said. The aircraft is both built and based in the Golden State.
Majumdar said that Northrop Grumman declined to comment whilst Air Force officials would neither deny nor confirm the reports.
Oddly the US Navy is going to keep its version of the aircraft therefore keeping the option open that it could, if needed, be used by the air force.
Surely, Global Hawk has not enjoyed the best of safety records with three prototypes lost and a failure rate much higher than many manned planes facing lethal threats in combat.
However, the U.S. RQ-4Bs belonging to the 9th Operations Group/Detachment 4th of the U.S. Air Force, based at NAS Sigonella, in Sicily, the base of the NATO AGS (Air Ground Surveillance) Global Hawk program were the first drones to operate in the Libyan airspace where they performed high altitude Battle Damage Assessment sorties.
Anyway, all of this is good news for the U-2, a 50 year old program that has ironed out all its techncal issues many years ago.
Affectionately known as “Dragon Lady”, the U-2 entered service in 1957. Since then, it has undergone many upgrades and has become a relatively cheap viable platform during these harsh economic times. In what would normally be the types twilight years, a breath of fresh air has been breathed over the majestic old ‘Lady’ which will see the type in service for more years to come.
Actually, it has been a bad week for other new or recent aircraft types too.
Another rather embarrasing news (this time for Airbus) is that further cracks have been found in the wings of its much lauded A380 “Superjumbo”, after the famous uncontained engine failure of Nov. 4, 2010. Airbus did tweet “For those following reports on A380 wing rib findings we confirm inspection & repair process underway and aircraft are safe to fly”: a damage limitation message by the company’s PR rather than a reassuring statement.
The apparent win of obsolete technology on newer, supposed to replace it, does pose the usual question: are modern aircraft too complex?
One thing is sure: you can’t compare new planes with older types. Even if there can be programs free from major problems during their whole lifetime and much troubled ones, facing myriad issues since their birth, generally speaking, those that have survived for 3, 4 or 5 decades and are still flying today, were probably properly designed, maintained, fixed and upgraded during their career. So they are today much more reliable than those integrating cutting edge experimental technologies.
Written with The Aviationist’s Editor David Cenciotti
Above image: U.S. Air Force
