14 août 2018 | International, Aérospatial
Airbus's Zephyr solar-powered drone flew for 25 days straight during a test-flight over Yuma, Arizona beginning on July 11, 2018. The flight represented a record for aircraft endurance, breaking the previous 14-day record also set by a Zephyr back in 2015.
The long flight has big implications for military surveillance. Drones like Zephyr could loiter over a low-intensity battlefield far longer than current drones can do. The latest high-endurance Reaper drone maxes out at 40 hours in the air.
The propeller-driven Zephyr belongs to a class of aircraft known as “high-altitude pseudo-satellites,” or HAPs. Flying as high as 70,000 feet for weeks or even months at a time, HAPs perform many of the same missions that low-orbiting satellites do.
“The main HAP applications are in telecommunications and remote sensing, both civilian and military,” Flavio Araripe d'Oliveira, Francisco Cristovão Lourenço de Melo and Tessaleno Campos Devezas wrote in a 2016 paper.
Compared to comms satellites, HAPs have the advantages of lower latency and the ability to land for maintenance or reconfiguration, d'Oliveira, de Melo and Devezas explained. For surveillance missions, HAPs unlike satellites can linger over a particular area and could produce images with better resolution, since they fly lower than satellites do.
HAPs could be more vulnerable to enemy defenses, however. Where satellites orbit many hundreds of miles over Earth, beyond the reach of most conventional weaponry, Zephyr — so far the only HAP undergoing realistic testing — attained a maximum altitude of 70,000 feet, well under the ceiling for modern air-defense missile systems such as the Russian S-300.
Also, the drone is slow, with a cruising speed of just 20 miles per hour.
Zephyr and similar pseudo-satellite drones could be best-suited for operations over lightly-defended territory. In 2016, the U.K. ministry of defense bought three Zephyrs for around $6 million apiece in order to evaluate them for potential use by the military and other government agencies.
“Zephyr is a cutting edge, record-breaking piece of kit that will be capable of gathering constant, reliable information over vast geographical areas at a much greater level of detail than ever before,” then-defense secretary Michael Fallon said in a statement.
Airbus is still refining Zephyr, in particular its power-consumption. During daytime, the lightly-built solar-powered drone — which features an 82-foot wingspan and yet weighs just 165 pounds — can fly as high as 70,000 feet while also charging its batteries.
After the sun goes down, Zephyr runs on batteries ... and slowly loses altitude. During the record-setting Yuma flight, the drone dipped as low as 50,000 feet at night.
The challenge for Airbus is to balance weight and power-consumption to produce the optimal flight profile for a particular task. “You have to find the right equation between flying altitude plus battery life, maintaining this or that power,” said Alain Dupiech, an Airbus spokesperson.
It's unclear just how long Zephyr could stay aloft under the right conditions. The drone's lithium-ion battery eventually dies, forcing it to land for maintenance. But battery technology is advancing rapidly, driven in part by consumer demand for electric cars, d'Oliveira, de Melo and Devezas wrote.
In the short term, a maximum endurance of several months is not inconceivable. But longer flights might not be particularly useful for surveillance and comms missions, Dupiech said. “At this stage, most of those missions are not calling for a year and half up there.”
Airbus has scheduled Zephyr's next test flight for October in western Australia.
http://warisboring.com/new-spy-drone-flies-non-stop-for-a-month/
13 décembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
The Minister of National Defence, the Honourable Bill Blair, has appointed Michelle Douglas as the Canadian Armed Forces’ first Honorary Colonel for Chief, Professional Conduct and Culture.
26 mars 2019 | International, Terrestre
For years, the Portuguese Army has built their infantry corps around the Gewehr 3 (G3) battle rifle, jointly developed by a team of engineers from Heckler & Koch and the Spanish CETME state-owned research group in the 1950s. Built under license in Portugal as the Espingarda m/961, this rifle has seen action in conflicts from the Portuguese Colonial War to deployments in Kosovo, East Timor and Afghanistan. According to both NATO and the country's Ministry of National Defence, it's now time for a drastic change and overhaul that will see the Portuguese Army jump feet first into the 21st century with a large revamp and overhaul of its small arms arsenal and individual soldier systems and kit. When the country's state-owned arms producer shut down just over a decade ago, it left Portugal without the means to manufacture firearms domestically, and brought about the need to source new weapons from foreign vendors. NATO's Support and Procurement Agency was thus commissioned to find and buy new weaponry for the Portuguese military by the country's defense apparatus. After a relatively short and streamlined testing and evaluation period, the NSPA awarded Belgian arms giant Fabrique National (FN) Herstal an expansive USD $50.3 million contract to be fulfilled by 2022. Full article: https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/gearscout/irons/2019/03/20/the-portuguese-army-is-ditching-the-g3-and-getting-a-us-spec-ops-inspired-rifle
28 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Tony Osborne Jen DiMascio May 28, 2020 The decision by the U.S. government to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty signed two decades ago is creating ripples of discontent within the U.S. and in Europe. Washington announced on May 22 that it would end its obligations to the arms control treaty in six months, saying that it was “no longer in the United States' best interest to remain a party to this Treaty when Russia does not uphold its commitments,” in a statement put out by the Defense Department. The Open Skies Treaty permits its 34 signatories to conduct observation flights over each other's territory. Aircraft with four types of sensors—-optical panoramic and framing cameras, real-time video cameras, infrared line-scanners and sideways-looking synthetic aperture radar—may make observations anywhere over a country's national territory. Treaty rules say that the flight may only be restricted for reasons of flight safety, not for reasons of national security. NATO and European nations may share U.S. concerns about inconsistent flight restrictions imposed by Moscow but see a U.S. departure from the agreement, in place since 1992, as regrettable. According to the U.S. and NATO, Russia has imposed restrictions on the treaty, in particular those flying near Kaliningrad, Russia's enclave on the Baltic Sea, and near the country's border with Georgia. The Pentagon also says Moscow blocked the overflight of a major military exercise in September 2019, “preventing the exact transparency the treaty is meant to provide.” In an op-ed in The New York Times, Tim Morrison, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former member of this administration's National Security Council, added that Russia has been using its overflights to collect “military relevant intelligence on the other parties, like the means to target critical infrastructure.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, during the May 22 meeting of alliance members, called on the Russian government to return to compliance as soon as possible, noting that the U.S. could reconsider its position if Russia complied. European Open Skies Treaty member states—including Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden—said they would continue to implement the treaty, saying it has a “clear added value” for conventional arms control architecture and cooperative security. Russia rejects the claims of flight restrictions and contends that the U.S. had limited Russia's own Open Skies flights over Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands. Senior Russian officials, including Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, denounced Washington's decision. Medvedev said the U.S. had taken another step down the “path of dismantling the international security architecture that took decades to lay down.” Moscow believes Washington's decision could also affect other arms control treaties, with negotiations on the next New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty potentially at risk. In Washington, the leaders of the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees (both Democrats) have written a letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo contending that withdrawal from the treaty is illegal. They say it violates the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which requires Esper and Pompeo to notify Congress 120 days before the intent to withdrawal is presented. “This notification must be based on your joint conclusion that withdrawal is in the best interests of the United States and that other states parties to the treaty have been consulted. To date, this requirement has not been fulfilled,” wrote Reps. Adam Smith (Wash.), the Armed Services chairman, and Eliot Engel (N.Y.), the Foreign Affairs chairman. President Donald Trump and his administration have support from Repub-licans who lead the Senate for their decision to exit the treaty. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, asserts that the U.S. should withdraw if Russia is not complying with the agreement. “It will be critical for the Trump administration to continue working with our allies and partners, especially those in Eastern Europe, to ensure they have access to the intelligence they need to protect their security. That includes facilitating access to high-quality imagery.” The U.S. had planned to upgrade the two Boeing OC-135 aircraft delivered to the Air Force in 1996. Late last year, the U.S. issued a request for information saying it was considering awarding two contracts—one for the purchase of two commercial aircraft and another to modify the airframe and provide logistics support. But the Pentagon did not include funding for OC-135 upgrades in its fiscal 2020 budget request. And in March, Esper told Congress he was not prepared to authorize funding for those upgrades until a path forward is clear. Several signatories to the treaty have dedicated aircraft for the mission; others share or lease platforms from other nations for the task. Germany is the latest country to dedicate an aircraft for the mission, using an Airbus A319 converted by Lufthansa Technik. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/how-us-open-skies-exit-could-undermine-arms-control