Marine Corps taps Cubic Applications for training support services
San Diego (UPI) Oct 30, 2014 -
Support services for functional and technical training are to be provided to the U.S. Marine Corps by Cubic Applications Inc. under a $46.5 million contract.
The award was issued by the U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command in support the USMC Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Systems Support effort.
The Marine Training System Support program provides the training necessary for U ...
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CPI Aero wins multi-year award for outer wing panel kits
Edgewood, N.Y. (UPI) Nov 4, 2014 -
Outer wing panel kits for use on U.S. Navy aircraft are being produced by CPI Aerostructures through a multi-year contract from Northrop Grumman.
The award by Northrop Grumman is worth about $86.1 million. The amount includes about $63.6 million in new funded backlog and about $22.5 million in requirements that were released to CPI Aero in 2013.
The kits are for use in the manufa ...
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4 Tunisian soldiers killed in bus shooting
Tunis (AFP) Nov 05, 2014 -
Four Tunisian soldiers were killed on Wednesday when suspected militants opened fire on a minibus carrying troops, the defence ministry said.
Describing the attack in northwestern Tunisia as a "terrorist operation," ministry spokesman Belhassen Oueslati said the suspects had escaped but were being hunted down.
"Two armed men approached the bus that was carrying soldiers and opened fire," ...
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Indian navy worker killed in ship accident: reports
New Delhi (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
A naval ship sank Thursday off the southeastern coast of India leaving one worker dead and four others missing, reports said, in the latest of a string of deadly mishaps to hit the navy.
Rescue operations were underway after the vessel flooded during a naval exercise late Thursday off the southeast coastal city of Visakhapatnam.
"The vessel was on a routine mission to recover torpedoes f ...
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US-led Syria strikes hit Qaeda, Islamist rebels
Beirut (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
US-led air strikes in Syria hit Al-Qaeda-linked militants and an Islamist rebel brigade in a rare expansion of weeks-long raids targeting the Islamic State group, a monitor said Thursday.
American media reported that 24-year-old French bomb-maker David Drugeon, a Muslim convert who joined an Al-Qaeda offshoot, the Khorasan group, was killed in the overnight strikes.
"We think we got him, ...
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Anger in Hong Kong as protesters compared to slaves
Hong Kong (AFP) Nov 01, 2014 -
A prominent businesswoman has sparked outrage in Hong Kong by comparing the city's pro-democracy protesters to African-American slaves, suggesting they might need to "wait for a while" to win the freedoms they are seeking.
"American slaves were liberated in 1861 but did not get voting rights until 107 years later, so why can't Hong Kong wait for a while?" Laura Cha, an HSBC board member, was ...
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Indonesian Navy to receive Airbus helicopters
Jakarta (UPI) Nov 6, 2014 -
The Indonesian Navy has ordered nearly a dozen Airbus AS565 MBe Panther helicopters in an anti-submarine warfare configuration.
The 11 Panthers, which are the naval variant of the Dauphin twin-engine multi-role aircraft, will be delivered within the next three years to PT Dirgantara Indonesia, an Airbus Helicopters' partner who will be outfitting the aircraft in-country with mission equ ...
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Korea cancels BAE Systems contract for F-16 upgrade
Washington (UPI) Nov 6, 2014 -
A $139 million contract for the upgrade by BAE Systems of South Korean F-16 fighters has been canceled at the request of the Korean government.
The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency in making the announcement said it has notified BAE Systems Technology Solutions & Service of the action and will work with the company to close out the contract, which was made last May.
No re ...
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Power struggle plunges Georgia in turmoil
Tbilisi (AFP) Nov 05, 2014 -
Georgia on Wednesday plunged into political crisis after its youthful prime minister sacked his hugely popular defence minister and the foreign minister resigned in protest.
In the ensuing political turmoil in the pro-Western Caucasus nation, Irakli Alasania - who was fired in a surprise move on Tuesday - said his Free Democrats party was leaving the ruling coalition, robbing Prime Ministe ...
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Former Navy SEAL comes forward as bin Laden shooter
Washington (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
A former US Navy SEAL who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and once rescued a ship captain from Somali pirates revealed himself Thursday as the man who killed Osama bin Laden.
Robert O'Neill, 38, told The Washington Post that he fired the fatal shot that hit the Al-Qaeda leader in the forehead at his hideout in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad in May 2011.
The former commando told ...
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Air strikes 'killed' French bombmaker in Syria: US
Washington (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
US air raids in Syria overnight targeted and likely killed a French bombmaker who was a leader of an Al-Qaeda offshoot accused of plotting attacks on the West, a defense official said Thursday.
David Drugeon was a Muslim convert suspected of working with Al-Qaeda veterans in what Washington calls the Khorasan group, which American officials say is a dangerous militant outfit planning to att ...
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Islamic State ready to expand beyond the Middle East
Washington (UPI) Nov 6, 2014 -
Today's hydra serpent of world terrorism is no longer al-Qaida or Taliban but the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, aka ISIS, ISIL or Daish in Arabic.
Daish is now out to destroy civilized humanity. It is not only recognized by powerful Islamist terror groups the world over, but the major ones have pledged allegiance to its goal and have accepted its present leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ...
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Turkey walks tightrope over Kobane after peshmerga deployment
Istanbul (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
Turkey is pursuing a delicate but dangerous strategy after allowing peshmerga fighters to transit its soil to the besieged Syrian town of Kobane, fearing Kurdish domination of northern Syria but also risking the collapse of the peace process with Turkish Kurds.
While the United States and the West see the Islamic State jihadists battling Kurds for Kobane as enemy number one, Turkey is equall ...
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Conditions not met for warships delivery to Russia: French PM
Belgrade (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Thursday that conditions have not yet been met for France to deliver two Mistral-class warships to Russia.
"Today the conditions have not been met for their (warships) delivery to Russia," Valls told reporters in the Serbian capital. Paris has been facing mounting pressure to scrap the 1.2 billion euro ($1.5 billion) deal with Moscow over Russia's r ...
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Russia snubs US on nuclear summit
Moscow (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
Russia has confirmed it will not attend the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, a gathering championed by President Barack Obama, accusing Washington of seeking to play first fiddle on matters of nuclear safety.
In another sign of the growing chill between the former Cold War rivals, Moscow claimed the organisers wanted to accord special rights to the United States along with South Korea and the N ...
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Obama has written to Iran supreme leader: report
Washington (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
US President Barack Obama has secretly written to Iran's supreme leader to discuss possible cooperation in the fight against Islamic militants providing there is a nuclear deal, a US daily reported Thursday.
Obama sent the letter last month to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and described what he called a "shared fight" against the Sunni militant Islamic State group, the Wall Street Journal said, cit ...
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New Paveway IV capability for upgraded Typhoon fighters
London (UPI) Nov 6, 2014 -
An upgraded Royal Air Force Typhoon jet fighter has demonstrated the ability to simultaneously drop multiple Paveway IV-equipped precision-guided bombs.
Raytheon UK said the simultaneous release of two Paveway IV bombs at multiple targets by the fighter during a series of flight trials was a first for a Typhoon aircraft.
The Phase 1 Enhancements package, or P1Eb, implements full ...
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Fearing US raids, Syria seeks Russian S-300s: Muallem
Beirut (AFP) Nov 06, 2014 -
Syria has asked Russia to speed up delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, concerned about a possible US attack, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in an interview published Thursday.
Speaking to Lebanon's Al-Akhbar newspaper, Muallem said Washington had pledged that US-led air strikes against the Islamic State group would not hit the Syrian army.
"Do we trust this commitment? ...
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Britain, France award joint contracts for UAV program
London (UPI) Nov 6, 2014 -
Three aerospace industry groups have received contracts by the British and French procurement agencies for the joint Unmanned Combat Air System.
The UCAS, also known as the Future Air Combat System, is envisioned as a system that would provide sustained surveillance, mark targets, gather intelligence, deter adversaries and carry out strikes in hostile territory.
"The development ...
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Boeing demos use of anti-jamming system with existing satellite
El Segundo, Calif. (UPI) Nov 6, 2014 -
Boeing reports that its anti-jamming communications, using a protected tactical waveform, can be used with existing satellites and ground terminals.
The capability was demonstrated recently done in a test conducted under a U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center contract that was supervised by the U.S. government.
The anti-jam technology proved it could shield transmitted ...
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Plasma: Casimir and Yukawa mesons
Canberra, Australia (SPX) Nov 04, 2014 -
A new theoretical work establishes a long-sought-after connection between nuclear particles and electromagnetic theories. Its findings suggest that there is an equivalence between generalised Casimir forces and those that are referred to as weak nuclear interactions between protons and neutrons.
The Casimir forces are due to the quantisation of electromagnetic fluctuations in vacuum, while ...
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Raising cryptography's standards
Boston MA (SPX) Nov 04, 2014 -
Most modern cryptographic schemes rely on computational complexity for their security. In principle, they can be cracked, but that would take a prohibitively long time, even with enormous computational resources.
There is, however, another notion of security - information-theoretic security - which means that even an adversary with unbounded computational power could extract no useful info ...
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NMSU chemistry research could contribute to multiple applications
Las Cruces NM (SPX) Nov 05, 2014 -
New Mexico State University's Gary A. Eiceman has received funding of $399,000 from the National Science Foundation for research to be conducted on "Chemical Orthogonality in Tandem Differential Mobility Spectrometry at Ambient Pressure." The project is an extension of research that has spanned more than 33 years at NMSU and has included hundreds of students and contributors from New Mexico and ...
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New way to make batteries safer
Boston MA (SPX) Nov 04, 2014 -
Every year, nearly 4,000 children go to emergency rooms after swallowing button batteries - the flat, round batteries that power toys, hearing aids, calculators, and many other devices. Ingesting these batteries has severe consequences, including burns that permanently damage the esophagus, tears in the digestive tract, and in some cases, even death.
To help prevent such injuries, research ...
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Outsmarting Thermodynamics in Self-assembly of Nanostructures
Berkeley CA (SPX) Nov 05, 2014 -
If you can uniformly break the symmetry of nanorod pairs in a colloidal solution, you're a step ahead of the game toward achieving new and exciting metamaterial properties. But traditional thermodynamic -driven colloidal assembly of these metamaterials, which are materials defined by their non-naturally-occurring properties, often result in structures with high degree of symmetries in the bulk m ...
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