Pentagon worried about mergers, especially among hypersonic weapons suppliers

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  18 août 2024 | International, Aérospatial

  Group backed by Bloomberg, NASA launches its first methane-hunting satellite

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  30 juillet 2019 | International, C4ISR

  Battelle Embarks on DARPA ECHO Program

  COLUMBUS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Battelle has won an Associated Contractor Agreement for a new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Epigenetic Characterization and Observation (ECHO) program. The aim is to build a field-deployable platform technology that quickly reads someone's epigenome and identifies signatures that indicate whether that person has ever—in his or her lifetime—been exposed to materials that could be associated with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Battelle will examine blood samples from people known to have handled materials associated with biological, chemical, explosive, pesticide or herbicide contaminants and compare those results to control subjects who have not handled these materials to identify unique epigenome signatures. The epigenome is biology's record keeper. Though DNA does not change over a single lifetime, a person's environment may leave marks on the DNA that modify how that individual's genes are expressed. This is one way that people can adapt and survive in changing conditions, and the epigenome is the combination of all these modifications. Though modifications can register within seconds to minutes, they imprint the epigenome for decades, leaving a time-stamped biography of an individual's exposures. Whereas current forensic and diagnostic screening technologies only detect the immediate presence of contaminants, the envisioned ECHO technology would read someone's epigenome from a biological sample even when other physical evidence has been erased. “We'll be developing methods to identify these signatures and how to interpret them for attribution—what did the person handle, when and for how long,” said Battelle Biologist and Principal Research Scientist Rachel Spurbeck, PhD, who is leading the effort. “This will even allow for diagnosing illnesses in individuals as a result of their exposure.” About Battelle Every day, the people of Battelle apply science and technology to solving what matters most. At major technology centers and national laboratories around the world, Battelle conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio since its founding in 1929, Battelle makes the world better by commercializing technology, giving back to our communities, and supporting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. For more information, visit www.battelle.org. Media Contacts For more information contact Katy Delaney at (614) 424-7208 or at delaneyk@battelle.org or contact T.R. Massey at (614) 424-5544 or at masseytr@battelle.org. Contacts Katy Delaney (614) 424-7208 delaneyk@battelle.org T.R. Massey (614) 424-5544 masseytr@battelle.org https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190729005374/en

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  7 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval

  The US Navy’s unmanned dream: A common control system

  By: David B. Larter NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Navy's growing and increasingly diverse portfolio of unmanned systems is creating a jumble of control systems, creating problems for a force that hopes robot ships, aircraft and submarines will help it regain a significant advantage over rivals China and Russia. One significant issue is having to train sailors on a number of different systems, which can prove time-consuming, inefficient and expensive. “From a manned-machine teaming and sailor-integration perspective, we need a portfolio of systems to do a wide variety of things,” said Capt. Pete Small, the head of unmanned maritime systems at Naval Sea Systems Command. “We can't bring a different interface for each platform to our sailors — from a training perspective but also from an integration perspective. “We might have a destroyer that needs to operate an [unmanned surface vessel] and an [unmanned underwater vehicle] and they all need to be linked back to a shore command center. So we've got to have common communications protocols to make that all happen, and we want to reduce the burden on sailors to go do that.” That's driving the Navy toward a goal of having one control system to run all the unmanned platforms in the service's portfolio: a goal that is a good ways away, Small said. “The end state is — future state nirvana — would be one set of software that you could do it all on,” he said. “I think that's a faraway vision. And the challenges are every unmanned system is a little bit different and has its own requirements. And each of the integration points — a destroyer, a shore base or a submarine — has slightly different integration requirements as well. “But the vision is that we can enjoy commonality as much as possible and share pieces of software wherever possible.” The effort mirrors a similar endeavor in the surface Navy to develop a single combat system that controls every ship's systems. The goal here is that if a sailor who is trained on a big-deck amphibious ship transfers to a destroyer, no extra training will be necessary to run the equipment on the destroyer. “That's an imperative going forward — we have to get to one, integrated combat system,” Rear Adm. Ron Boxall, the chief of naval operations' director of surface warfare, said in a December interview at the Pentagon with Defense News. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/navy-league/2019/05/06/the-us-navys-unmanned-dream-a-common-control-system