US military looking for better video game training technology

The U.S. Army and Navy are looking for new gaming technology to engage soldiers with virtual training programs, and plans to award "major contracts" this year for PC-based technology, reports National Defense Magazine.

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According game technology developer Havok's vice president of sales and marketing Brian Waddle, the military still occasionally uses outdated simulation software. Proposal requests for training technology are often "designed for older technology to win," and soldiers don't take these games serious because "they don't look as good as what they're playing in their living rooms."
The Army is currently holding a competition to find a replacement for Bohemia Interactive's Virtual Battlespace 2 in its Games for Training program. It will award $44.5 million over five years for the creation of a first-person shooter with updated graphics, the ability to move a group of players across larger landmasses (such as in an MMO) and the ability to play across mobile and PC. Proposals were submitted in October, and the winner will be picked in March or April.
This month, the Navy will award three $100 million contracts for virtual training programs in naval courseware, providing more than 4,500 training hours in ship maintenance and 2,250 hours in anti-submarine, surface and mine warfare.

U.S. Army Awards General Dynamics $395 Million to Begin Engineering Development for Abrams Modernization

The Army plans to begin production of tanks with ECP1 upgrades in 2017.

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. – The U.S. Army TACOM Contracting Command has awarded General Dynamics Land Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), an eight-year, $395 million contract for research, development and testing in preparation for the Abrams main battle tank Engineering Change Proposal 1 (ECP1) production. The contract has an initial value of $80 million over 12 months. There is no tank production work associated with this award.

The Abrams ECP1 program is an engineering-development effort focused on integrating a group of system improvements into a single upgrade program for the M1A2SEPv2 baseline tank. The objective of this research-and-development effort is to prepare the Abrams tank to accept additional Army-directed requirements in the future without impacting current vehicle performance. The Army plans to begin low rate initial production of tanks with ECP1 upgrades in 2017.

 “This award shows the Army’s long-term commitment to improving the Abrams tank’s capabilities for the Warfighter, while ensuring that platforms are able to integrate planned and future upgrades,” said Donald Kotchman, vice president for Heavy Brigade Combat Teams at General Dynamics Land Systems. “This effort will maintain Abrams’ position as the leading main battle tank in the world.”

US Army Awards New Beretta M9 Pistol Contract

The US Army announced Sept. 19 that Beretta USA has been awarded a contract for up to 100,000 M9, 9mm caliber, pistols. An initial order for over 4,600 pistols has already been released to the company. All of the pistols will be manufactured at the Beretta USA facility in Maryland, where an American work force of nearly 300 employees has been making M9 pistols since 1987. To date, over 600,000 Beretta 9mm pistols have been delivered to the U.S. military.

"This order reconfirms the US Armed Forces' interest and support of the M9 pistol. The Beretta M9 remains the standard sidearm of the US Army", commented Cav. Ugo Gussalli Beretta, President of Beretta Holding, "These pistols will support American troops in the field for years to come."

"We are very proud to continue supplying the M9 pistols to the U.S. Army" said Gabriele de Plano, Beretta U.S.A.'s Vice President of Military Marketing & Sales, "and we look forward to the opportunity of working with the Army to improve the current M9 design with many of the existing solutions available to us in the new Model 92A1 and 96A1 pistol families."

Internal Army Poll: Only 26% of Officers Say Army Headed in Right Direction--'Political Correctness' Cited

Is the U.S. Army headed in the right direction?

An internal Army survey that was conducted in 2011 and published this year discovered that only 26 percent of active-duty Army officers say yes--and that one of the two main themes cited by those who say no is that the Army is now adversely impacted by "political correctness" imposed by both outside policymakers and senior Army leaders.
The 26 percent who said the Army was headed in the right direction in 2011 was the lowest percentage who gave that response since the Army began conducting this survey in 2005. It was also significant drop from the 33 percent who had said the Army was heading in the right direction in 2010.
In the 2011 survey, in contrast to the 26 percent who said the Army was heading in the right direction, 38 percent said it was headed in the wrong direction and another 36 percent remained neutral on the topic, neither agreeing nor disagreeing that the army is heading in the right direction.
The report said that 24 percent of those who believed the Army was not headed in the right direction provided additional comments on why they believed that was the case. "Two themes stood out in these comments," said the report. The first was concern over the downsizing of the Army and the impact it might have on national security.

Root Cause Analyses of Nunn-McCurdy Breaches

Excalibur Artillery Projectile and the Navy Enterprise Resource Planning Program, with an Approach to Analyzing Complexity and Risk

 Congressional concern with cost overruns, or breaches, in several major U.S. defense acquisition programs led the authors, in a partnership with the Performance Assessments and Root Cause Analysis Office in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, to investigate root causes by examining program reviews, analyzing data, participating in contractor briefings, and holding meetings with diverse stakeholders.

In a companion study, the authors investigated cost overruns in four programs. The current study analyzes cost overruns in the Navy Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) program and Excalibur (a 155mm extended-range guided artillery projectile). In addition, it develops some exploratory concepts of program risk and complexity as factors in the management of program acquisition. In spite of the cost growth associated with the ERP program, it can be considered a qualified success. The program was re-baselined in 2006 and, since then, costs have stabilized and production delays have been limited. The authors determined that the primary driver of cost increases in the Excalibur program was the change in procurement quantities, specifically, a 79 percent reduction in rounds ordered. Inaccurate cost estimates, changes in concepts and technology, and urgent operational needs also contributed to the overruns.

KEY FINDINGS

Although the Navy Enterprise Resource Planning program suffered from cost growth and significant schedule slippage, the program can be considered a qualified success.

• The use of pilot projects contributed to the program's success.
• Cost-plus contracting also had a positive effect.
• Also contributing to program success was a willingness to rely on the managerial and technical expertise of civilian cadres.

The Army Has Issued Anti-Suicide Nasal Spray To Keep Troops From Taking The 'Easy Out'

The military suicide rate doubled in July. That's one of our troops, almost every day.
To come up with an answer, the Army recently gave 3 million dollars to a university of Indiana research center, and those researchers came back with this: Anti-Suicide Nasal Spray.
Katie Drummond of The Daily reports researchers found a naturally occuring neurochemical called thyrotropin-releasing hormone, or TRH, that has euphoric, calming, anti-depressant effects. News of the nasal spray comes as a relief to some, who had to endure spinal taps for injections of the medicine.
The Pentagon, which tracks military suicides, reported that troops have committed the act at an 18 percent increase over the same period last year. Now, more troops die by their own hands that by the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Lockheed Martin receives a contract to produce THAAD missile system for United States Army.

Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has been awarded a $150 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to produce Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Weapon System launchers and fire control and communications equipment for the United States Army. 

 The contract includes 12 launchers, two fire control and communications units, and associated support equipment. This contract will provide six launchers for THAAD Battery 5 and an additional three launchers each to Batteries 1 and 2. These deliveries will bring all Batteries to the standard six launcher configuration. Ground hardware from this award will be delivered to Fort Bliss, Texas. A production contract for the first two Batteries was awarded to Lockheed Martin in late 2006. Contracts for Batteries 3 and 4 were awarded in 2011.

“THAAD brings advanced hit-to-kill technology to the warfighter combined with ease of operation designed into the system,” said Mat Joyce, Lockheed Martin’s vice president and program manager for the THAAD Weapon System. “Our focus remains squarely on program execution so we can meet the delivery needs of our U.S. Army customer.”

Missile Defense Staff Warned To Stop Surfing Porn Sites

The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency warned its employees and contractors last week to stop using their government computers to surf the Internet for pornographic sites, according to the agency's executive director.

In a one-page memo, Executive Director John James Jr. wrote that in recent months government employees and contractors were detected “engaging in inappropriate use of the MDA network.”

“Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images,” James wrote in the July 27 memo obtained by Bloomberg News.

“These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code,” he wrote.

Individuals identified as violating the rules face referral for “appropriate” disciplinary action, he wrote. They put “their security clearances in jeopardy, and are subject to suspension and removal from federal service or MDA sponsored contracts.”

U.S. Says Afghans Abandoned Police Bases

Inspectors from a U.S. government watchdog agency discovered that several American-funded border police bases in Afghanistan have been largely abandoned or left unoccupied, raising questions about the coming hand-over of security duties to local forces.

Among other findings, inspectors found that one base, Lal Por 2, wasn't being used by Afghan border forces because it had no water supply, a report due out Monday states. A second, Nazyan, "may soon be uninhabitable" because of shoddy construction that caused sewage overflow.

All told, the new report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found most of the facilities on three of the four bases that it inspected—each built to house 93 border police personnel—"were either unoccupied or weren't used for the intended purposes."

US Military Bases Growing Worldwide

A few online outposts have started to comment on Americas enormous collection of international military bases.
The United States maintains the largest collection of foreign military bases in world history. Officially, at the beginning of 2011, there were 1,429,367 American troops stationed in 150 countries worldwide. This number does not include contractors who outnumber troops in Iraq and Afghanistan or the operations of the CIA or other secretive units.
Anthropologist David Vine spent three years researching the changing structure of America’s military bases worldwide. His research found a network of more than 1000 American bases, located on every continent except Antarctica.
“While the collection of Cold War–era giant bases such as those in Germany are shrinking, the global infrastructure of bases overseas has exploded in size and scope”

Raytheon to Upgrade US Army Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System

Raytheon Company has received an $81 million contract from the U.S. Army to develop and produce a new version of the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS). It will provide general and fires command and control capabilities to ground forces, from mission planning to execution.

The contract extends over a 24-month period, with an $18 million, 12-month option.

AFATDS is designed to integrate and use information from a variety of sources to create a common operational picture. The system utilizes the information and common operational picture to plan, coordinate and control battlefield elements, including mortars, close air support, naval gunfire, attack helicopters, offensive electronic warfare, field artillery cannons, rockets and guided missiles.

"Our system brings the network to the battlefield and to front-line personnel, providing them with complete and accurate information about their environment," said Kim Kerry, vice president of C4I Systems for

M32 Multi-Shot Grenade Launcher (MSGL)

The M32 Multi-Shot Grenade Launcher (MSGL) is a hand-held 6-shot grenade launcher which is in service with SOCOM and the US Marine Corps.

Kendall: Afghan Drawdown Logistics to be 'Huge' Undertaking

The man who oversaw the logistics of the military withdrawal from Iraq sees a greater challenge coming in the Afghan drawdown, describing it as ‘huge”.

Frank Kendall, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters logistics is a much bigger part of his job than he thought it would be.

“The aphorism that amateurs worry about tactics and professionals worry about logistics is very true,” Kendall said.

“We have a huge logistics challenge getting out of Afghanistan.” That challenge, he said is different than the one involved in the withdrawal from Iraq.

Kendall oversaw the Iraq effort as the principle deputy undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics. “That was a piece of cake compared to what we have to do in Afghanistan. This is a much more difficult job.”

Afghanistan is a land-locked country and the United States, NATO countries and coalition partners have sent mountains of equipment and supplies there since operations began in 2001. Now the coalition effort is drawing down as Afghan forces increasingly take over security. By the end of the summer, 23,000 additional American service members will leave, as well as those from many coalition nations. Combat operations are to wind down next year, and all coalition combat operations are set to conclude at the end of 2014.

U.S. military satellites ground stations satellite dishes

Sex abuse scandal rocks US Air Base

A US air force investigation has identified 31 female cadets who were sexually assaulted by their trainers at a Texas military camp. The scandal has raised concerns that the US armed forces are not doing enough to protect women in the military.
An internal probe is currently looking at 12 male military instructors that were serving at Lackland Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas. Six of them face charges of misconduct, including allegations of rape and adultery.
The majority of those under investigation were from the 331st training squadron, whose commander was dismissed from duty last week. He was not charged with sex crimes but was relieved because of the unacceptable level of misconduct in his unit.
“We are taking a comprehensive look, not only at the cases we know, but in trying to assess whether there are other cases out there,” said General Edward Rice during a Pentagon briefing. He added that to his knowledge, all 31 women who reported to have been victims of abuse were still in the military.
As well as the investigation, Rice has ordered an independent probe into the Air Force’s reaction to the scandal to assess whether more action is needed. Moreover, Air Force command is currently looking at the possibility of female cadets being trained by only female instructors.
Currently, only eleven percent of the US Air Force’s training instructors are women, while 22 percent of recruits are female.
The probe at Lackland base began a year ago after three instructors came forward with reports of sexual abuse among the training staff. In an unprecedented turn in the investigation, the Air Force shut the entire base down for a day this March to interview the 5,900 recruits.
Staff Sgt Luis Walker was the first trainer to be charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault. He faces court martial next month.
“The fact that these assaults were widespread and took place over many months flies in the face of the ‘zero tolerance’ policy touted by our military leaders,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, also honorary chair of Protect Our Defenders, an organizations that fights against sexual abuse in the US military.
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The silent treatment

Although General Rice described the Lakeland scandal as a “localized” event, statistics suggest that sexual abuse is widespread in the US military.
The Pentagon estimates that anywhere between 80 and 90 per cent of sexual assault cases go unreported. Victims of abuse are more likely to stay silent in the face of ridicule and possible demotion.
In 2011 around 3,200 cases of sexual assault were reported in the American armed forces, a mere fraction of the 19,000 incidents that the Department of Defense estimated took place.
US Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta introduced measures in April to combat the problem, encouraging victims to come forward and ensuring that all complaints related to sexual assault will be investigated.

U.S. soldiers refused to wear Chinese-made boots war that concerns whether patriotic

U.S. Master Sergeant Steve – Ada Qi said. do not want to wear troops sent to his Chinese-made boots for their own national battle.
U.S. media said Ada Qi said: “the number of U.S. workers because of the uniforms in foreign production and unemployment?” A Daqi an army reservists to be deployed to Afghanistan as a consultant before his departure, The troops sent to him a pair of green boots, this is the standard equipment of the Air Force. To his surprise, the boots are made in China, he went to the base of supplies warehouse asked why the issue of Chinese-made boots, but the administrator told him that, boots made in China cheaper than American-made. But Ada Qi ton of bricks, he argued that he felt wearing the boots of Chinese-made war miserable. Finally, he succeeded in changing to the American-made boots. But things are not over yet the Ada Qi arrived in Afghanistan received the brown boots are still made in China. He made a series of e-mail asking how to replace the boots manufactured in the United States, the answer is: “Good luck.”
U.S. media said the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency, said Ada Qi boots do not come from the Defense Logistics Agency In fact, Ada Qi boots subordinate units purchased by the contractor, the contractor said that Chinese-made boots than U.S. boots are light and cheap, so that soldiers can carry more equipment to save the physical.
U.S. media said Ada Qi claimed that once he changed to the American-made boots, will bring it as a first victory, because it is related to whether patriotic.

US Army testing 'lightning gun'

The United States Army has begun testing a new weapon that would enable its users to virtually hurl lightning bolts at their enemies, RT.com reported.

The weapon, called the Laser-Induced Plasma Channel (LIPC) cannon, was being tested at Picatinny Arsenal, a key U.S. Army research complex.

The cannon works by emitting a laser pulse that charges the air, forming a hugely destructive bolt of lightning.

"If a laser puts out a pulse with modest energy, but the time is incredibly tiny, the power can be huge," George Fischer, who heads the research team, was quoted as saying. "During the duration of the laser pulse, it can be putting out more power than a large city needs, but the pulse only lasts for two-trillionths of a second."

The laser acted both as the weapon's energy source and its aiming mechanism, the report said. A bolt of lightning would travel on a path of least resistance, and the laser created such a medium for the electric current to travel.

In theory, the weapon was powerful enough to take out a specific target in its entirety, like an enemy SUV or a plane, without having to damage anything around it.

The LIPC cannon was most powerful when it was used against a high conductivity metal object – like a tank – sitting on a lower conductivity surface, such as land, the report said.

The U.S. Army has not yet placed any orders for the device as engineers were trying to turn the working prototype into a mobile cannon that could be mounted on aircraft and tanks.

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