DSIAC collects and publishes articles related to our technical focus areas on the web to share with the DoD community.
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Moving through water can be a drag, but the use of supercavitation bubbles can reduce that drag and increase the speed of underwater vehicles. Sometimes these bubbles produce a bumpy ride, but now a team of engineers from Penn State Applied Research Laboratory have an approach that could smooth out the
The Army is now expanding a new, high-speed, vehicle-mounted force tracking technology to include a wider range of combat platforms such as Stryker vehicles, Bradley and Abrams tanks, service officials said. The system, now on Army jeeps or HMMWVs, allows soldiers in combat to instantly know their location in relation to fellow soldiers, enemy locations
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — Armor offers reliable protection against external forces, but what if the enemy is so small that it can take aircraft down from the inside? Sand and dust can significantly damage helicopter engines, which is why scientists and engineers at the Army Research Laboratory are experimenting with coatings in high-temperature environments
The U.S. Navy has approved the use of buoyancy gliders by all of its destroyers. These unmanned underwater vehicles use wave energy to propel themselves at sea. The Navy probably will use them to locate enemy submarines. Buoyancy gliders were originally developed by the scientific community to provide low-cost, autonomous drones capable of spending long
Boosting the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles by “harvesting” the energy generated by their shock absorbers and feeding it back into batteries or electrical systems such as air conditioning has become a major goal in automotive engineering. Now, a University of Huddersfield researcher has made a breakthrough by designing a new system and constructing a
Researchers have built and demonstrated a novel configurable computing device that uses a thousand times less electrical power – and can be built up to a hundred times smaller – than comparable digital floating-gate configurable devices currently in use. The new device, called the Field-Programmable Analog Array (FPAA) System-On-Chip (SoC), uses analog technology supported by
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – Developing directed energy to be used as laser weapons on a variety of platforms has been a huge priority for the Defense Department. It”s fortunate therefore that technology has reached a point where lasers aren’t just a cool, futuristic concept but will be vital in future military operations and war. Military officials,
Russia will arm its sixth-generation combat drones with microwave weapons. These weapons, which disable an aircraft’s electronic equipment, already exist today “and can hit targets within a radius of tens of kilometers,” said Vladimir Mikheev, a director of state-owned Russian electronics firm KRET, in an interview with TASS. However, Mikheev suggested that microwave weapons can
The Army wants to gradually bring more autonomy, artificial intelligence and common control of unmanned systems into soldier formations over the course of 25 years, moving from having to keep constant vigilance over robotic systems to relationships where the unmanned move alongside a warfighter on a mission, much like a hunter and his bird dog.
Blazing a trail for safely integrating drones into the national airspace, a team from NASA’s Ames Research Center on Oct. 19 flew four uncrewed aircraft–commonly called drones—at Reno-Stead Airport in Reno, Nevada. The “out of sight” tests, led by NASA in coordination with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and several partners, were the latest waypoint
The Army is fast-tracking an emerging technology for Abrams tanks designed to give combat vehicles an opportunity identify, track and destroy approaching enemy rocket-propelled grenades in a matter of milliseconds, service officials said. Called Active Protection Systems, or APS, the technology uses sensors and radar, computer processing, fire control technology and interceptors to find, target
U.S. Marine special operations forces recently chose the Glock 19 as their official sidearm, but this isn”t the first time elite units have invested in the Austrian pistol maker. The U.S. Army”s 75th Ranger Regiment decided to pure-fleet its battalions with the Glock 19 in September 2015, according to an Army source familiar with the