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Concept courtesy of Lockheed Martin.

Size matters. (Well, at least in the surveillance world.)

And three projects under way take dimensions to whole new lengths. The LEMV (it stands for Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle) is a mammoth hybrid airship championed by the U.S. Army as part of a future fleet of reconnaissance vehicles. As required in the U.S. Army’s LEMV proposal request, the non-rigid autonomous airship must be able to operate at 20,000 feet above sea level, have a 2,000-mile radius, and remain deployed for 21 days.

The 250-foot-long airship will be able to house a 5,000-pound payload of radar and motion-imagery sensors, in addition to other spyware. While the LEMV has yet to be built—Lockheed Martin is one possible airframe supplier—the buoyant behemoth is expected to deploy to Afghanistan within 18 months.

Photograph courtesy AeroVironment, Inc.

On the other end of the spectrum is AeroVironment’s NAV (Nano Air Vehicle) “Mercury,” which weighs less than an ounce. Mercury mimics a bird in flight with its ability to climb and descend vertically—as well as fly sideways and backwards—and is part of a new class of small remote-controlled gadgets able to fly indoors and gather intelligence in urban settings.

Lockheed Martin’s NAV, based on a maple seed, is in the second stage of testing. As we reported in 2006, Lockheed Martin hopes that soldiers will be able to carry the NAV in their pockets, and use the technology to photograph cave interiors, or to see what’s lurking down a blind alley.

Photograph courtesy Lockheed Martin.

According to Jill Krugman, a public affairs officer with Lockheed Martin, DARPA stopped funding the project at the conclusion of phase one. But the company felt development should continue, and the corporation has been funding the project through Independent Research and Design (IRAD). “Through IRAD,” says Krugman, “the team developed the approximately 30″ SAMARAI as a technology demonstrator.” (View a YouTube video of the 30″ prototype here.) As the project progresses, the team will build increasingly smaller versions, based upon what they learn during testing.

According to a report in Flight International, India’s defense ministry is buying Russian-built MiG-29K fighters as “part of a 2004 order…that was incorporated into a deal for the aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov.”

Wait—India has an aircraft carrier?

That navy workhorse, the aircraft carrier, has been around for 100 years. (Ok, nearly. While the concept was presented in 1909, the first ship, the Royal Navy’s HMS Furious, didn’t make its debut until 1917.) But after a century, very few countries still have carriers as part of their arsenal. The United States has the most by far, with a whopping 11. The United Kingdom, with its long naval history, has just two. Italy and Spain also have two carriers, while France, Russia, Brazil, India, and Thailand each have one.

The Admiral Gorshkov

That list doesn’t include the number of carriers in development, however, nor does it say anything about the history of each ship. For instance, India’s active carrier, the Viraat, is a Centaur-class carrier that started life as the HMS Hermes with the Royal Navy (and was built during 1944-1953). The Hermes, sold to India in 1987, was retrofitted from 1999-2000, and returned to the fleet in 2001.

In 2004 the Indian government purchased the Russian-built, Kiev-class Admiral Gorshkov, which was built in 1978 and commissioned in 1987. (It was put up for sale in 1996, but didn’t find a taker until 2004.) Currently being upgraded, the Gorshkov (which will become the Vikramaditya, named for an ancient Indian king) won’t be ready for service until 2014.

And, as reported by the Government of India’s Press Information Bureau in February 2009, India has begun building its first indigenous aircraft carrier, making it one of only four nations with the capability to do so.

Flickr photo by Airsafe.

Yes, our avian brothers committed feathered mayhem in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 classic The Birds, but is that any reason they should continue to be chucked into aircraft engines?

Here’s the deal: All aircraft have to pass certification tests proving that the airplane can continue operating in the event of a bird-strike. The certification process divides the bird population into small-, medium- and large-size. Small birds can weigh up to 3.2 ounces, medium-size birds up to 2.5 pounds, and large birds over 2.5 pounds (a Canada goose can easily weigh 12 pounds).

The most common way to conduct the test is to shoot dead birds (usually chickens or geese) into an aircraft engine to see if the engine can still produce thrust. As William Langewiesche described in the June 2009 issue of Vanity Fair (“Anatomy of a Miracle”), “In real time the birds pass almost instantaneously through the test engines. They go in whole and emerge as spray. Animal advocates have objected to this.”

How much of a problem are bird-strikes, anyway? They’re actually a huge concern to commercial and military aviation; it is estimated that they cost U.S. commercial aviation more than $1 billion each year in aircraft damage and lost revenue caused by delays. The U.S. Air Force alone experiences about 2,500 bird-strikes annually. (Military aircraft are more vulnerable as they tend to travel at lower altitudes where birds fly.)

The first known aircraft fatality caused by a bird, according to a 2002 study by Navjot Sodhi, published in the American Ornithologists’ Union journal The Auk, “occurred in 1912, when a gull (Larus sp.) was caught in the control cables of an aircraft, causing it to crash.”

And it’s only gotten worse.

Sodhi reports that faster, wide-body aircraft receive more bird-strikes than older, narrow-body jets: “With the wider bodied aircraft, birds have to fly twice as far to escape than they do for the older small-bodied aircraft.”

Is it really necessary to use actual birds for engine testing?

At certain stages of aircraft development, artificial birds are used in place of the real thing, but more often, the birds are…actual birds, slaughtered right before testing. (Langewiesche notes: “There is a concern among some engine specialists that the farm-raised test birds being used today are themselves unrealistic, because they are flabby compared with their wild brethren, who seem to cause more damage than test birds of the same weight.”)

But help is on the way. BAE Systems in London is working on an advanced computer simulation to take the place of actual birds, at least during some tests. According to Stuart McCallum of BAE Systems, there is plenty of debate about the merits of using artificial versus actual birds in testing. “It varies depending on a number of factors such as impact angle, target shape and material,” he wrote to us by email.

BAE uses physical artificial birds (made of gelatin) for testing, as well as a computer representation of a Canada goose. “The shape of these [artificial] birds are often cylinders, representing the torso of the bird. They do not account for the neck and wings of a Canada goose, in contrast to the computer representations which do,” says McCallum.

The cost, however, is minimal. “Physical artificial birds are not too expensive to produce,” says McCallum, “being based largely on gelatin. The current computer simulation model took some time to develop, but since it’s a computer representation we can use it to analyze impacts with aircraft continually, with no recurring costs.”

Ultimately, it’s the certification authorities that will decide if artificial birds—or a computer model—can take the place of actual birds. “We need to prove that artificial birds are representative of real birds if they are to be used in the ‘final’ qualification [engine] tests,” says McCallum.

Photograph courtesy Jane's.

Remember the Dewoitine D 26, the single-seat, single-engine parasol fighter trainer? Wondering how many were ever built? Open your trusty Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft, and you’ll learn that 11 were produced for the Swiss Air Force.

Jane’s will also tell you the first flight of the Douglas B-66 Destroyer (October 28, 1952); how many passengers the Sikorsky S-55/Westland Whirlwind can carry (10); and the maximum speed of Lockheed’s SR-71 (2,012 mph).

On November 1, 2009, Jane’s celebrated its 100^th anniversary as the world’s foremost aviation reference guide. Within its pages are the technical and production details of all known powered aircraft, currently in—or anticipating—commercial production.

The venerable guide was founded by John Frederick Thomas Jane, a somewhat indifferent student, as the publication’s Web site notes: “Jane was never top of his class but did show a keen interest in rugby and chemistry, although he was banned from the chemistry lab when his teachers discovered that his only real interest in the subject was furthering his knowledge of making explosives.”

Current editor in chief Paul Jackson. Photograph courtesy of Jane's.

The reluctant student eventually became an authority on naval matters, publishing the first edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships in February 1898. But after Louis Blériot flew across the English Channel in 1909, Jane turned his attention to aircraft. The first edition of Jane’s All the World’s Airships was published in 1909.

The current, and sixth editor, Paul Jackson, joined Jane’s compiling team in 1987, becoming editor in chief in 1995. He’s well aware of the reverence inspired by his publication. In a company press release he recalled, “At air shows, I will always carry a tape measure. One time I was checking the dimensions of an aircraft and a small boy asked his father, ‘What is that man doing?’ His father replied, having noticed my name badge, ‘That, son, is the man from Jane’s.’”

Copyright VANOC/COVAN

While there are still 105 days until the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada, the Olympic Torch Relay has already begun.

Some 12,000 people will participate in the relay, which runs from October 30, 2009 to February 12, 2010 (the longest relay in Olympic history). The relay participants “will run, walk, paddle, wheel, sail, and even fly” the flame across Canada, says an October 28 press release from the Vancouver Organizing Committee.

Fly? How do you carry the Olympic flame on board an aircraft?

The easy way—in a miner’s lantern for safekeeping.

The Vancouver 2010 lantern. Image copyright VANOC/COVAN

On October 29, Greek officials entrusted the Olympic flame to a Canadian delegation, which included two flame attendants. The attendants—22-year-old Dina Ouellette and 23-year-old Aronhiaies Herrne—used a wand to capture the flame and light a miner’s lantern, the Vancouver Organizing Committee reported. The delegation—and the flame—boarded a Canadian Forces CC-150 Polaris, and were scheduled to arrive in Victoria, British Columbia at 7:15 a.m. (Pacific Time), Friday, October 30.