“… By calling attention to a well-regulated militia for the security of the Nation, and the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms, our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fear of governmental tyranny, which gave rise to the 2nd amendment, will ever be a major danger to our Nation, the amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic military-civilian relationship, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason I believe the 2nd Amendment will always be important.”
What the heck, it’s Sunday, a great time to watch videos. This one of the Textron optionally-manned M5 Ripsaw electric tank shows you what it can do thanks to robotic controls. Yep, that’s a UGV coming out of the front of the Ripsaw. It’s a robot that births robots.
It’s not hard to say that anyone who wanted to be in the military Special Forces when they were a kid, has watched the movie Gung Ho! So, in honor of Evan F Carlson’s Birthday on the 26th, here is the movie Gung HO! About Carlson’s Raiders. He really was one of the best leaders in the history of the military and help build the foundation that is todays Special Forces. He spends over two years in China with the guerrilla learning special tactics that he would bring to the US to help fight the Japanese in WW2. We need more leads like this in the world. Here is an article about him if you have not heard of him or just want to brush up.
Hill People Gear is expanding its HPG Mobility lineup of overland and off road products with the Universal Seat Back. Although there are a few other seat backs on the market, HPG Mobility’s offering is unique in a couple of ways.
Thanks to its manufacturing partnership with First Spear, Hill People Gear has access to First Spear’s proprietary 6/12 fabric. The 6/12 fabric allows for the entirety of the seat back to accept both MOLLE and Velcro backed pouches for maximum user configurability.
Not all car seat backs are completely flat from bottom to top – most of them curve inwards to allow for more passenger legroom. The HPG Mobility seat back contains an aluminum stay that can be bent to your car’s specific seatback curve. This tucks whatever is mounted on the Universal Seat Back into that inwards curve, reclaiming valuable passenger legroom.
There are a variety of tabs bar tacked into the perimeter of the Universal Seatback that are sized to accommodate a variety of pack components from the Hill People Gear lineup such as the capture flap and pack bucket.
The HPG Mobility Universal Seat Back will attach to just about any seat. There are two bottom straps designed to be girth hitched around any hard point that can be found underneath the seat and the generously sized top strap clips around the headrest area. Removing the seat back is as easy as unclipping three side release buckles. There is also an extra car kit available for folks who want to easily switch a single seat back between multiple vehicles. The extra car kit consists of a spare pair of bottom straps as girth hitching them underneath the seat is the difficult and time consuming part of mounting the Universal Seat Back. Once the bottom straps are installed, switching cars is as easy as unclipping from one car and clipping into the next one.
Rohde & Schwarz has been named as the German industrial representative for the ESSOR project and is participating in the development of a European wideband waveform for tactical interoperability in multinational operations.
In mid-December 2019, the Budget and Defense Committee of the German parliament agreed to join the European Secure Software Defined Radio (ESSOR) project – the trans-European interoperability initiative for armed forces at the tactical level. Approval of the participation proposal also initiated national implementation of the current OC1 (operational capability) phase of the ESSOR wideband waveform, which is part of the large-scale project “Digitalization of Land Based Operations” (D-LBO). Rohde & Schwarz has been named as the national champion and joins the group of member-state companies that have been working on the implementation of ESSOR since 2008.
ESSOR is a long-term program, managed by OCCAR , in which the national champions from Italy, Spain, France, Finland, Poland and now also Germany are leading the joint enterprise a4ESSOR S.A.S. as prime contractor. The overarching objective is further development of capabilities in the area of secure communications technology to improve the interoperability of the armed forces. In concrete terms, ESSOR OC1 defines the joint development and updating of an interoperable, trustworthy, robust and wideband radio waveform for connected armed forces.
“Rohde & Schwarz is proud to take its place in the ESSOR community. With our experience in software defined radio and associated waveforms from many years of development of our own products as well as SOVERON D (known from the SVFuA development project) for the German armed forces, which is ramping up for series production in 2020, we are very well prepared for this. This is complemented by our expertise as an architect of secure communications networks and approval for encryption up to the highest classification levels in Germany, the EU and NATO,” comments Hartmut Jäschke, Executive Vice President of the Secure Communications Division and member of Corporate Management of Rohde & Schwarz.
The partner companies are Thales (France), Leonardo (Italy), Indra (Spain), Radmor (Poland) and Bittium (Finland), which have been developing the OC1 phase since 2017.
The high data rate waveform (HDRWF) developed for ESSOR OC1 is designed for operational and tactical unit command and IP connectivity at the brigade, battalion and lower levels. It features flexible configuration and adaptability to demanding scenarios, and it offers soldiers versatile and robust MANET networks on their national radio systems for combined missions and in the framework of territorial and collective defense.
With support from the European Defense Fund, ESSOR will be augmented with additional waveforms, for example for specific use cases or for air based operations. “The collaboration of European industry and provision of the most advanced commercially available SDR in the form of SOVERON D will give major projects of the German armed forces, such as D-LBO, an enormous boost in the connected, secure and jam-proof transmission of voice and data,” concludes Mr. Jäschke.
Posted in Comms, International, Press Release | Comments Off on Germany Joins ESSOR – Rohde & Schwarz commissioned for national implementation
We received this note from the deAsis family last night.
Benchmade friends and family –
I have some very sad news to share with you. My father, Les, passed away today following a stroke he suffered earlier this week.
No words can properly express the sadness of our loss. Our family has lost our beloved husband, father, and grandfather. Benchmade has lost our founder, friend and visionary who built one of the greatest knife brands in the world.
My father loved all customers, employees, suppliers, friends, and the storied list of knife makers who influenced him and the world of knives since his humble beginnings in the 70’s. He was especially passionate and proud of the knife and shooting sports industries and always hoped they would thrive well beyond his years.
His commitment to enriching education, growing local communities, and creating a better future for knife owners around the country is unparalleled.
The values, culture, and essence of our brand are all thanks to his lifelong pursuit of making great knives even better, and providing users with products they can depend on every day, no matter the circumstance.
His personality and character extended far beyond business, creating fun friendships and relationships that brought him tremendous joy day after day. He always cherished interactions with people from all walks of life; from folks in law enforcement and military, to those who love hunting and fishing, and also those who simply like to “smoke cigars, bullshit and eat good food” – in his own words!
We will host a celebration of Les’ life and accomplishments and will share details when they are available.
Please help honor my father by continuing your dedication to the company that he loved and cared for so much.
ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. — Army scientists are on the brink of a pioneering additive-manufacturing technology to help Soldiers quickly swap out broken plastic components with durable 3D printed replacements, says a top Army researcher.
In the past, troops have either lugged replacement parts around or ordered them from warehouses thousands of miles away, only to wait weeks for them to arrive.
But with dual-polymer 3D printed parts — developed by scientists at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory, or ARL — Soldiers could be a few clicks away from swapping out broken pieces and heading back to the fight within hours.
“We’re crossing a threshold where low-cost, easy-to-operate and maintain printers will be proliferated on the battlefield — and able to produce engineering parts of very good quality with short turn-around times,” said Dr. Eric Wetzel, ARL’s research arealeader for Soldier materials.
“In order to do that, we need printing technologies that can print parts that are accurate geometrically and have mechanical properties that are sufficiently robust to survive conditions in battle,” he added.
The printing technology comes on the heels of Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy pushing an advanced manufacturing policy last October, intended to enhance supply chains in the field.
Until this point, 3D printing technologies that produce mechanically robust parts have required printers and print technologies that are not suitable for austere environments, while the printers suitable for austere environments produced poor-quality parts, Wetzel said.
That’s where the ARL scientists come in. For the last few years, they have delved into this issue, Wetzel said. For the first time, ARL scientists have developed a cutting-edge filament capable of being used in off-the-shelf, low-cost 3D printers to produce mechanically strong, battlefield-ready parts.
“By summer, we hope to have samples of the filament distributed to Army transition partners,” Wetzel added. Based on their feedback, ARL could ramp up production — with help from industry partners — and have it in the hands of Soldiers within the calendar year.
THE DUAL-POLYMER TECHNOLOGY
“Conventional polymer filaments for 3D printing are made up of a single polymer,” Wetzel said. “Our innovation is that we’ve combined two different polymers into a single filament, providing a unique combination of characteristics useful for printing and building strength.”
The dual-polymer filament combines acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, or ABS, with polycarbonate, or PC. A critical design feature of the filament is that the ABS and PC phases are not simply mixed together, a common approach for creating blended polymers. Instead, a special die-less thermal drawing process developed by ARL is used to create an ABS filament with a star-shaped PC core. Once coupled, the filament is used as feedstock in a desktop fused-filament fabrication, or FFF, printer to create 3D prints with a heavy-duty ABS/PC meso?structure.
FFF printers work with a heated nozzle that emits thin layers of melted plastic, similar to molten glass. The filament is deposited onto a print bed, one layer on top of another until it forms the 3D printed part. In order to fabricate a unique part, the nozzle, print bed, or both move while the hot plastic streams down.
The two polymers found in the new filament technology have distinct melting temperatures, Wetzel said.
After the solid bodies are initially printed, they are put in an oven to build strength. During this annealing process, the deposited material layers fuse together while maintaining their geometry and form. This stability is caused by the higher temperature resistance of the built-in framework.
“The second polymer holds the shape like a skeleton while the rest of it is melting and bonding together,” Wetzel said. “Through a series of filament design trials, we were able to identify that the star-shaped PC core provided a superior combination of part toughness and stability compared to other arrangements of ABS and PC in the filament.”
Current filaments — traditionally consisting of a single thermoplastic — produce parts that are brittle and weak, and would deform excessively during the annealing process, he said.
“We focused in on what can we do to improve those mechanical properties,” he added. “We wrote a series of papers getting very fundamentally down to the details of exactly why conventional single-polymer parts are not sufficient, what’s happening in the physics of the polymer — really at a molecular level — that prevents conventional printed polymer parts from meeting these requirements.”
The legacy thermoplastic deposits like a hot glue gun, he said. As the layers build, they don’t stick very well to the previous layer because by the time the second layer adds, the first one is cooled off.
“So, you’re not melting the layers together, you’re just solidifying material on top of one another, and they never really bond between layers,” Wetzel said. “Our technology is an approach that allows us to use these conventional desktop printers, but then apply post-processing to dramatically improve the toughness and strength between layers.”
“Manufacturing at the point-of-need provides some exciting possibilities,” Wetzel said. “In the future we can imagine Soldiers deployed overseas collaborating with engineers in the United States, allowing new hardware concepts to be designed and then sent as digital files to be coverted into physical prototypes that the Soldiers can use the same day. This paradigm shift could allow us to innovate at a much higher speed, and be keenly responsive to the ever-changing battlefield.”
Patria, a global market leader in the production of armoured wheeled vehicles, have been selected with their 6×6 platform to be part of a joint programme to develop sustained mobility enhancement for the Finnish and Latvian Armies. Alcon Components Ltd, world-class specialists in brake and clutch systems, is the principal supplier of braking components for Patria’s heavy armoured vehicle range, and specifically the Patria 6×6.
Alcon has worked closely with Patria to determine the specific requirements aligned to vehicle specification, usage profiles and operating environment; developing a bespoke braking system to match the needs of high-performance defence vehicles. With the exceptional performance of Patria’s wheeled vehicle range creating conditions close to that of a rally car in terms of disc and pad temperature cycling, Alcon were able to draw on their pedigree of providing braking solutions for the top echelons of motorsport to develop exclusive calliper and disc mounting concepts for Patria; a fusion of those seen on heavy commercial vehicles and high-performance motorsport.
The Patria 6×6 is acknowledged as being unrivalled in performance and mobility, setting new standards for all future armoured wheeled vehicles. Reliability is underlined by the multitude of commercial components used in the vehicle. Commercial components, long life-span and easy maintenance make the vehicle extremely cost-efficient; ideally matching the Finnish-Latvian programme’s aim to develop a common armoured wheeled vehicle system with enhanced mobility, cost-efficiency, interoperability and security of supply.
Alcon braking solutions have been sought out by some of the world’s finest defence industry vehicle OEMs. Amongst 18 defence and security equipment OEMs currently using or assessing Alcon systems, as well as Patria, Supacat, the designers of the Jackal, BAe, Ricardo and Jankel have turned to Alcon to deliver bespoke braking systems that fully meet the demanding requirements of the challenging, high-performance, modern-day battlefield.
Mr. Janne Räkköläinen, Vice President Vehicles, at Patria Land said: “Our 6×6 vehicle is designed to be operated in all conditions and it needs to deliver the solid performance throughout the various missions and operations. In addition to the performance, braking systems are safety critical elements of the vehicle so the complete reliability and fulfilment of requirements are top priority for us. We know we can rely on Alcon’s support and performance”.
Jonathan Edwards, Group Sales Director at Alcon said: “Alcon’s previous selection by Patria is an unqualified confirmation of Alcon’s status as a company that provides the finest bespoke braking systems to the global defence markets. We’re delighted that the Patria 6×6 has been selected for this programme and we look forward to a continued strong relationship with Patria as the programme evolves.” He added: “It is a key strategic company aim for Alcon to become the first-choice braking system supplier to defence vehicle companies across the globe. This recent announcement underlines our ability to deliver and become exactly that.”
Posted in International, Mobility, Press Release | Comments Off on Alcon Braking Systems to be Part of Patria’s Breakthrough into Widening Military Markets
