No Denying It: The Air Armament Center says it plans to solicit industry later this month to conduct a study on how to integrate the Active Denial System on to Mine Resistant Armored Personnel vehicles. ADS is a millimeter wave, nonlethal directed energy weapon created by Raytheon. The Air Force Research Lab was involved in its development and testing during a five-year OSD-sponsored advanced concept technology demonstration that concluded in September 2007. That effort yielded a Humvee-based ADS prototype and a second experimental design less mobile. Efforts are now shifting to the operationalization of the ADS, with AAC playing the lead role within the Air Force in designing variants that could be produced and fielded in numbers. The ADS-MRAP study is expected to run from May through August.
The Air Force is moving forward with a new, algorithm-driven system to help U.S. Northern Command better detect airborne threats. NORTHCOM and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which are tasked with protecting the homeland from attack, depend on a slew of radars and other data systems to monitor U.S.…