6 février 2024 | International, Terrestre
Netherlands considers creating tank battalion, but needs funding
Furthermore, such a decision would be up to the next government.
17 juillet 2018 | International, Aérospatial
The military is building a space plane. Now it looks to have an engine up to the task
By SAMANTHA MASUNAGA
A decade after the U.S. Air Force commissioned the next generation of GPS satellites, the first of these spacecraft is finally set to launch into orbit later this year.
As with other national security missions, a roughly 200-foot-tall rocket will blast the massive satellite to space, fulfilling a contract worth more than $80 million.
But as nations develop technology to disable or shoot down satellites — as China did to one of its own satellites with a ground-based ballistic missile in 2007 — the U.S. military has started to look at options for rapidly and cheaply launching smaller crafts into space.
An experimental program spearheaded by a Pentagon research agency could eventually be part of that solution.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, along with aerospace giant Boeing Co., is developing a reusable spaceplane expected to launch small satellites 10 times in 10 days.
The vehicle's first test flight is set for 2021, which hints at the Defense Department's growing interest in reusable rocket technology, particularly its potential to drive down launch costs and speed up turnaround time.
In recent weeks, the spaceplane's rocket engine, known as the AR-22, completed 10 test fires in 240 hours without need for refurbishments or major repairs, said Jeff Haynes, program manager at Aerojet Rocketdyne. The test firing took place at NASA Stennis Space Center in Mississippi from June 26 to July 6.
The engine test is “really good progress,” said Claire Leon, director of Loyola Marymount University's graduate program in systems engineering and former director of the launch enterprise directorate at the U.S. Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center.
“SpaceX has had its success,” she said. “I think this engine test also demonstrates that other companies are doing the technology development and having success that will enable reusability.”
The title of first reusable system belongs to NASA's Space Shuttle, though more recently, several commercial space firms, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's Stratolaunch and British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit, have developed systems that would reuse aircraft to launch satellites from the belly of a plane.
Sur le même sujet
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8 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
Belgique: Deux officiers à la retraite défendent le choix du chasseur F-35 américain
Deux officiers à la retraite, proches du MR, ont défendu la décision du gouvernement de sélectionner l'avion de combat américain F-35 pour succéder aux F-16 vieillissants, en assurant dans une carte blanche qu'il s'agissait d'une "excellente nouvelle pour la défense européenne". "C'est au terme d'une sélection transparente présentée au Parlement, procédure unique au plan européen pour ce type d'investissements sensibles, que l'avion américain a remporté le marché en l'emportant dans l'intégralité des 7 critères majeurs retenus. Pour couronner le tout, le F-35 affiche le prix le plus bas", affirment l'ancien colonel aviateur Luc Gennart, désormais échevin MR à Namur, et le général de brigade Raymond Dory, ex-conseiller militaire du ministre des Affaires étrangères Didier Reynders. "Les retours sociétal et industriel vont pouvoir être maintenant négociés très concrètement entre l'avionneur et les acteurs institutionnels et industriels belges. Ils s'annoncent d'ores et déjà prometteurs", ajoutent les deux anciens officiers, dans une carte blanche adressée à plusieurs quotidiens. Ils rappellent que le choix du F-35 du groupe américain Lockheed Martin a provoqué des "réactions courroucées", principalement à Paris, qui avait proposé - mais en dehors de la procédure officielle - son avion de combat Rafale, alors que le Royaume-Uni promouvait l'Eurofighter Typhoon. Selon MM. Gennart et Dory, le reproche est fait à la Belgique d'affaiblir la défense européenne est "proprement inacceptable". "Le Danemark, l'Italie, le Royaume-Uni et les Pays-Bas (sans parler de la Norvège, hors UE) ont fait le choix du F-35, les accuse-t-on de torpiller la défense européenne? ", s'interrogent-ils. https://www.rtl.be/info/belgique/societe/deux-officiers-a-la-retraite-defendent-le-choix-du-chasseur-f-35-americain-1075326.aspx
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22 mai 2020 | International, Sécurité, Autre défense
Announcement of an SBIR/STTR Opportunity
Announcement of an SBIR/STTR Opportunity Under Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) HR001120S0019 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) May 13, 2020 The DARPA Small Business Programs Office (SBPO) has pre-released the following SBIR/STTR Opportunities (SBOs): "Compact Modular Detector for Water and Food Contaminants", Announcement Number HR001120S0019-07, published at https://beta.sam.gov/search?keywords=HR001120S0019-07 "Near-Term Forecasting of Nonstationary Dynamic Processes", Announcement Number HR001120S0019-08, published at https://beta.sam.gov/search?keywords=HR001120S0019-08 "Organizational Modeling", Announcement Number HR001120S0019-09, published at https://beta.sam.gov/search?keywords=HR001120S0019-09 “Flexible Manufacturing of Fine Chemical Reagents", Announcement Number HR001120S0019-10, published at https://beta.sam.gov/search?keywords=HR001120S0019-10 These SBOs will open for proposals on May 28, 2020 and close on June 29, 2020 at 2:00pm ET