#equipment capability

Sikorsky's Raider project "will produce two prototype assault/attack aircraft with six-passenger cabins and the ability to carry armament," says Sikorsky R&D veep Mark Miller. “In addition to the superior speed and manoeuvrability of X2 technology, these aircraft are designed to be capable of 10,000-foot hover out of ground effect on a 95-degree day. The future awaits this technology."

Such hot-and-high performance would be very attractive to US and allied forces serving now in the baking highlands of Afghanistan. Whether they'll actually get it is another matter. 

UK Defence secretary Liam Fox has pledged to crack down hard on poorly performing defence procurement projects, by "naming and shaming" them on a quarterly published list.

Announcing the commencement of operations by the new Major Projects Review Board, which he will chair, Dr Fox said:

"I want to send a clear message across Defence: reckless spending stops here. Too often there has been too much reliance on industry's self-reporting of time delays and capability deficits ...

The cash-strapped UK Ministry of Defence is to ally with national boffinry authorities to create a camouflage uniform for soldiers which will generate electricity, so perhaps removing the crippling load of batteries currently carried by troops in combat.

the new uniform fabric will harvest power from the sun's rays during daylight using solar photovoltaic technology. At night it will switch to an alternative thermo-electric method which will draw power from "difference in temperature between the outside and the inside of a soldier’s battle dress" – essentially running on the wearer's body heat.

"Infantry need electricity for weapons, radios, global positioning systems and many other vital pieces of equipment," says Professor Duncan Gregory of Glasgow uni, one of the institutions participating in the project. "We aim to produce a prototype system within two years.”

...Working against Windows login passwords, a password of “fjR8n” can be broken on the Central Processing Unit (CPU) in 24 seconds, at a rate of 9.8 million password guesses per second. On the Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), it takes less than a second at a rate of 3.3 billion passwords per second.

Now, I cannot imagine anyone managing to mandate a nine-character, mixed-case, random-character password on an organisation. But if you did, and you weren’t hanging from a tree by the end of the first working day, the CPU would take 43 years versus 48 days for the GPU...

BAE Systems has celebrated the completion of the 100th Typhoon aircraft which was built in the UK’s final assembly facility at Warton in Lancashire. Typhoon is the world’s most advanced multi-role combat aircraft and it plays a vital role in sustaining key manufacturing skills in the United Kingdom.

Saab is to recruit a small team of engineers to staff a new design centre for its Sea Gripen concept in the UK, in an effort that could eventually lead to the construction of a flight demonstrator. The Swedish company announced its plan following a 24 May meeting with Ministry of Defence officials in London, where it is also to open a new headquarters to accommodate the project team. The move comes as Saab chief executive Håkan Buskhe has revealed a strategy to significantly expand the company's presence in the UK by pursuing fresh business opportunities. "The MoD is looking for competition," he said.