Navy’s Next Missile Launcher Spins Like a Revolver Barrel

Wired - The Navy may have a new line of defense against a changing threat environment after the successful missile firing from a new multi-role launcher in development.

In a recent round of tests announced Tuesday, Chemring Countermeasures and Raytheon Missile Systems say they have successfully fired a Raytheon-Lockheed Martin Javelin missile from a prototype multi-role Centurion launcher during testing at the Defence Training Estate on Salisbury Plain in England, where it was able to hit a static target.

“We’re bringing an entirely new dimension to ship self-defense by providing a sea-based, inside-the-horizon platform protection,” said Rick Nelson, vice president of Raytheon Missile Systems’ Naval and Area Mission Defense line, in a statement. “Chemring’s Centurion launcher, when coupled with Raytheon’s combat-proven missiles, offers an evolutionary capability to defeat surface threats with this One System-Multiple Missions technology.”   Read More

The Most Technologically Advanced Warship Ever Built

When the Navy needs to surprise and overwhelm an inland enemy, it can send in its new Zumwalt-class destroyer. 

The Zumwalt-Class Destroyer Nick Kaloterakis

 

 

PopSci - When the USS Zumwalt rolls out of dry dock at Bath Iron Works in Maine next year, the Navy’s newest warship will be 100 feet longer than the destroyers currently serving around the globe—and nearly twice as massive—yet it will have a radar signature 50 times smaller and will carry half the crew. Packed bow to stern with state-of-the-art radar, stealth, weapons, and propulsion systems, the USS Zumwalt, which will be operational in mid-2016, will be the most technologically sophisticated warship ever to hit the water.

A complement to Arleigh Burke–class destroyers that currently protect the Navy’s prized aircraft carriers from aerial attacks, the Zumwalt-class destroyer is for laying waste to land. It can evade enemy detection; slip into the shallows along foreign coastlines; and deliver devastatingly accurate firepower hundreds of miles inland, supporting special operations ashore, clearing the way for amphibious troop landings, or knocking out air defenses. It’s a seaborne battering ram—a specialized piece of equipment for smashing in the enemy’s front door.

In the 1990s, the U.S. military carried out successful amphibious assaults in Somalia and elsewhere. But as coastal defenses around the world grew more advanced—not least those of Iraq, which would have been a serious threat to U.S. troops had they invaded Kuwait by sea during Operation Desert Storm—the Navy decided to build the Zumwalt.

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Exclusive Pictures: Inside the Navy’s Newest Spy Sub

Discovery News - UNDERWAY ON THE U.S.S. MISSISSIPPI — The Navy’s newest fast-attack submarine is speeding down the Florida coast, on its way to its commissioning ceremony in its namesake state, at 15 knots. And it’s getting outraced by dolphins.

Hours before the U.S.S. Mississippi dives several hundred feet beneath the Atlantic, its sail juts proudly into the warm, whipping southern air. Submariners allow me to see the highest point on the sub for myself — provided I can keep my balance up three steep levels’ worth of ladder and hoist myself out onto a platform the size of a fancy refrigerator. A harness hooked to an iron bolt on the sail keeps me from falling to my death. There’s no land in sight, just blue water turned white around the sub’s wake, a tall BPS-16 military radar spinning in front of us, and a family of dolphins jumping out of the surf in front of the 377-foot boat.

Apparently it’s typical. Where subs travel in the southern Atlantic, dolphins tend to tag along, eager to say hi to their large, silent playmate. “Dolphins like to sing,” notes Petty Officer Joshua Bardelon, a 32-year old from Pascagoula, the site of the Mississippi’s destination, who supervises the boat’s sonar systems.

Those systems are part of why Navy Secretary Ray Mabus is eager to take possession of his newest Virginia-class submarine when it formally joins the fleet on June 2. As much time as it spends listening to dolphin symphonies, the Mississippi is everything from a weapon to destroy other ships to an electronic-attack system to a stealthy transport for Navy commandos.    

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Navy’s Newest Robot Is A Mechanized Fireman

Danger Room - Add another eerily life-like robot to the military’s rapidly expanding android army. This one is, of all things, a mechanical firefighter. And not only can it climb ladders like its flesh-and-blood counterparts, it’s designed to interact with human handlers in a kind of human/robot bucket brigade.

Developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, the Shipboard Autonomous Firefighting Robot — or “SAFFiR”; get it? — will help extinguish fires onboard ships and subs. Those watercraft are particularly at risk from fires, because their cramped quarters can make flames tough to extinguish without posing significant human risk.

SAFFiR, expected to be field tested in 18 months, might mitigate that danger. And it shows off some of the the latest and most impressive breakthroughs in Pentagon-funded robotics technology.

For one thing, SAFFiR is designed to use its mechanized legs and arms like a human would, thanks to sophisticated sensors that provide ongoing environmental feedback and titanium springs that act as “joints” to enable fluid movements. Until recently, most military robots designed for cramped spaces like the quarters of warships or submarines needed to be small. Wheels and treads enabled movement, not pseudo-limbs. (Well, mostly.)

Now, much like a person, SAFFiR will scurry through cramped hallways and climb up and down the endless maze of ladders aboard a ship. The robot will have enough hand coordination to tote fire hoses and throw extinguisher grenades. That kind of precise coordination is also a relatively new accomplishment for military ‘bots. Just last week, Darpa-funded researchers unveiled the first ‘bot capable of performing complex tasks, like unlocking a door, with its own “two hands.”           More

Whoosh! U.S. Navy F-35C gets electromagnetic launch

The Navy's F-35C is propelled by its EMALS program in 

a test earlier this month. (Credit: U.S. Navy)

CNET - The U.S. Navy said today it has demonstrated the successful integration of two of its key next-generation sea-based strike programs–the carrier version of the Joint Strike Fighter, and the all-new electromagnetic aircraft launch system.

Both the F-35C fighter and the EMALS launch technology are expected to see service eventually aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford, the Navy’s next-generation aircraft carrier, as well as other Ford-class carriers.            More

With test launch, U.S. Navy goes electromagnetic (photos)

Building the world’s most advanced aircraft carrier (photos)

Naval Aircraft - Video: X-47B Flies with Gear Up

DefenseTech - This is turning out to be quite the day for cool pictures of Navy aircraft. The image above shows the Navy’s X-47 unmanned combat aerial vehicle demonstrator flying with its landing gear up for the first time on Sept. 30.

The stealthy drone is being used by the Navy to test out the concepts for flying a fighter-sized UAVs off aircraft carriers — something the sea service plans to do by the end of the decade with its UCLASS drones.

The X-47B has been making test flights at Edwards Air Force Base, Ca., since February. The plane is slated to conduct sea trials off an aircraft carrier in 2013, using this technology.

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