Recent Posts

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  DARPA Expands Anti-Ship LRASM to Surface Launches

  Posted by Graham Warwick 12:41 PM on Mar 20, 2013

  DARPA's Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) program to develop a stealthy next-generation weapon for the US Navy is gaining heft. The agency has added two surface-launched tests a... Read More >>

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  Cargo UAVs -- Next Step, Pick and Place

  Posted by Graham Warwick 8:51 AM on Mar 19, 2013

  Two Lockheed Martin/Kaman K-Max unmanned cargo helicopters now in Afghanistan are to stay there indefinitely, says a Reuters story confirmed by the US Navy. The aircraft have been ... Read More >>

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  Half Tank, Half Chimp -- All Robot

  Posted by Graham Warwick 11:02 AM on Mar 12, 2013

  It moves like a tank over rough terrain, but has four limbs with which to stand and use human tools. It is CHIMP, Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) simian-inspired entry in the DA... Read More >>

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  DARPA's New TERN, a Predator on a Frigate

  Posted by Graham Warwick 5:36 PM on Mar 03, 2013

  The US Navy has operated unmanned aircraft from warships since Gyrodyne QH-50 drones carried anti-submarine torpedoes off the flightdecks of destroyers in the 1960s. But they have ... Read More >>

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  High-Speed VTOL -- DARPA Tries ... Again

  Posted by Graham Warwick 1:09 PM on Feb 27, 2013

  DARPA does not want bidders for its new VTOL X-Plane program to "just revisit old concepts" for vertical take-off and landing that combine the high-speed performance of fixed-wing ... Read More >>

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  DARPA's Phoenix Would Harvest Dead Satellites

  Posted by Graham Warwick 2:17 PM on Feb 01, 2013

  NASA launches its TDRS-K tracking and data-relay satellite successfully on a Atlas V booster on Jan. 30. Then, on Feb. 1, launch of the Intelsat-27 commercial communications satell... Read More >>

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  Navy to Test-Fire DARPA's Hellads Laser

  Posted by Graham Warwick 10:22 AM on Jan 24, 2013

  DARPA plans to buy a second Hellads high-energy laser system from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI), to provide to the Office of Naval Research (ONR) for the demonstrat... Read More >>

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  Kraken Wakes - DARPA's Deep-Sea Sleepers

  Posted by Graham Warwick 4:22 PM on Jan 11, 2013

  Arguing it is costly and complex to send large numbers of warships to forward operating areas - and that the energy and logistics needed to deploy lower-cost unmanned systems over ... Read More >>

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  DARPA Picks Rescue Robot Competitors

  Posted by Graham Warwick 5:59 PM on Oct 24, 2012

  Aftershocks from the earthquake still shaking the broken ground, the robot grabs a monkey wrench from a wounded plumber, jumps into his Ford F150 truck, and drives over the smoking... Read More >>

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  Airship Programs - Not So Buoyant, Says GAO

  Posted by Graham Warwick 6:26 AM on Oct 24, 2012

  (Bad) timing is everything in aerospace. At the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, airships looked to be the answer to demands for persistent, "staring-eye" surveillance. ... Read More >>

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