Tern, a joint program between DARPA and the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR), seeks to enable forward-deployed small ships to serve as mobile launch and recovery sites for medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial systems (UAS). In an important step toward that goal, DARPA has awarded prime contracts for Phase 2 of Tern to two companies: AeroVironment, Inc. and Northrop Grumman Corp.
Next Big Future: USA Revamping military to re-establish superiority gap over China and Russia with a lot of drones and missiles
The US effort to pull away from military peers is what Secretary of Defence Hagel calls the “third offset strategy”, because it is the third time since the second world war that America has sought technological breakthroughs to offset the advantages of potential foes and reassure its friends.
1. In the early 1950s, when the Soviet Union was fielding far larger conventional forces in Europe than America and its allies could hope to repel. The answer was to extend America’s lead in nuclear weapons to counter the Soviet numerical advantage—a strategy known as the “New Look”.
2. In the mid-1970s. American military planners, reeling from the psychological defeat of the Vietnam war, recognised that the Soviet Union had managed to build an equally terrifying nuclear arsenal. They had to find another way to restore credible deterrence in Europe. Daringly, America responded by investing in a family of untried technologies aimed at destroying enemy forces well behind the front line. Precision-guided missiles, the networked battlefield, reconnaissance satellites, the Global Positioning System (GPS) and radar-beating “stealth” aircraft were among the fruits of that research.
3. Colossal computational power, rapid data processing, sophisticated sensors and bandwidth—some of the components of the second offset—are all now widely available. China and Russia are using a lot of cheap missiles.
WNU Editor: The Russians are doing the same thing .... Russia develops heavy drone, promises S500 missile system by 2017 (RT) .... as well as the Chinese .... China's drone blasts off missile in SCO anti-terror drill (Xinhuanet).
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