(Source: CSPAN via Youtube)

It is amazing how passionate this man is.  While making a case for the Government to act swiftly, he took chastising the TSA to a new level for its latest nightmarish handling of the new security procedures. this easily qualifies as verbal beat down.  TSA has done a poor job handling this public backlash.  They ought to get a new PR/Social Media/Communications team to handle this boondoggle.  Poor Michael Chertoff – the former Secretary of the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS)  got a bad bruising in this verbal tirade.

Related articles

• Ron Paul Unleashes On TSA: “Enough Is Enough” (disquietreservations.blogspot.com)
• Ron Paul to Congress TSA: “Enough is Enough” (nyletterpress.wordpress.com)
• “Duncan Blasts TSA Pat-Downs, Body Scanners” and related posts (dprogram.net)
• Guest post: Washington’s “sweetheart” deals may have gone too far this time (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)
• “VIDEO: Bombshell: Former Homeland Chief Got ‘Sweetheart Deal’ Selling Scanners To TSA” and related posts (theyeshivaworld.com)
• Ron Paul Introduces American Traveler Dignity Act, Encourages TSA Opt Out Day (fdlaction.firedoglake.com)
• TSA Administrator Acknowledges “Invasive” Pat-Downs, Screeners (news.firedoglake.com)
• When Rights Get Squeezed (online.wsj.com)
• Grope up: Enough is Enough edition (emergentchaos.com)
• California DA Vows to Prosecute Airport Screeners Who Touch Travelers Inappropriately (foxnews.com)

(Source: Washingtonexaminer.com; Slate.com)

After losing my mind reading/following all the mind-numbing accusations and chaos surrounding the issue of full body scanners/advance security pat down searches performed by TSA staff at airports, I was looking for something fun to read on this issue.  As if someone read my mind, The Washington Examiner had a piece, in fact a cartoon, that just captured the essence of the issue at hand.  Thank you, Nate Beeler, for giving me a good chuckle with this great cartoon. Loving it!

Image Courtesy: Nate Beeler - WashingtonExaminer.com

Also, I came across these other amazing cartoons this issue, courtesy of Slate.com.  FYI – this is just a sampling of the awesome collection Slate.com has made available on its website.  The website also has a ton of other amazing cartoons on various important topics, all neatly tagged and categorized.  Click here to access them all (those categorized on this topic).

Related articles

• Did you know airports can opt out of TSA screening? (riehlworldview.com)
• Investigate the TSA, Not Tyner (fdlaction.firedoglake.com)
• TSA Body Scanners: Do They Even Work? (cbsnews.com)
• “Investigate the TSA, Not John Tyner” and related posts (progressivealaska.blogspot.com)
• What’s the Real Radiation Risk of the TSA’s Full Body X-Ray Scans? | 80beats (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
• Body Scans: What You Need to Know About New TSA Security (newsfeed.time.com)
• Noah Shachtman: Has Airport Security Gone Too Far? (online.wsj.com)
• 100 body-scanner images leaked (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)
• Gizmodo Joins The Internet War on TSA With 100 ‘Leaked’ Body Scans (blogs.forbes.com)
• TSA Administrator Acknowledges “Invasive” Pat-Downs, Screeners (news.firedoglake.com)

(Source: via the DC Department of Transportation Tweet)

As part of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s ongoing efforts to advance arts in the District of Columbia, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) selected tattoo artist Steed Taylor to paint a road tattoo entitled “Daughters and Sons Knot”. Mr. Taylor’s design highlights Washington DC’s relationship with war and loss by honoring metropolitan area soldiers recently killed while serving their country. The names of those soldiers’ children will be incorporated in the design. The design is a complex Celtic Knot with 6 loops, a symbolic number for harmony and alluding to the interdependence within a community as well as a family. The road tattoo is approximately 60 feet wide and 300 feet long and made with the help of local volunteers and neighbors.

Installation Begins Saturday July 24 through Sunday July 25 from 7AM – 7PM each day. A dedication ceremony will be held Sunday at 1pm after which the design’s outline will be painted by the community.

A road tattoo? If roads are considered the skin of a community, then a road has a similar relationship to the public body as skin does to the individual body, allowing roads to be marked as people mark their skin for commemoration, communication or ritual. View an example of how a road tattoo is created.  Gallery plan b is coordinating the installation with Mr. Taylor. Images and additional information can be found on their website.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO HELP PAINT! Help make an incredibly meaningful public artwork for our city and be a part of DC history! For questions or more information e-mail Gallery Plan b, 202-234-2711, or Steed Taylor.

Note: The project will require traffic and parking restrictions along the 800 block of Vermont Avenue, NW, from Friday after rush hour to Sunday evening. Participants are encouraged to arrive via Metro (The McPherson Metro Station-Vermont Avenue exit). Limited on-street parking is nearby.

Webinar Overview

TSAG Case Studies Workshop & Webinar
2009 Fort Hood, Texas Army Base Shooting Incident
A Multi-Agency Emergency

Date: August 3, 2010
Time: 1:00–4:00 P.M. Eastern Time
Cost: All T3s are free of charge
PDH: 3.0 — Webinar participants are responsible for determining eligibility of these PDHs within their profession.
Register On-line
Contact the T3 Administrator

T3 Webinars are brought to you by the ITS Professional Capacity Building Program (ITS PCB) at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) ITS Joint Program Office, Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA). Reference in this webinar to any specific commercial products, processes, or services, or the use of any trade, firm or corporation name is for the information and convenience of the public, and does not constitute endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by U.S. Department of Transportation.

Note: This workshop and webinar is a unique learning opportunity offered by the Transportation Safety Advancement Group (TSAG) and the US DOT ITS Joint Program Office’ Talking Technology & Transportation (T3) program. The workshop will be presented to a live audience at the workshop location as well as to remote T3 webinar participants. T3 participants are invited to submit written questions before the Webinar as well as during workshop question and answer periods.

Webinar participants may attend remotely for any portion of the 3 hour workshop. An audio of the event’s proceedings, synchronized with its presentations, will be available in the T3 Webinar archives and on the TSAG website (www.tsag-its.org) approximately 4 weeks following the workshop.

Background

The Transportation Safety Advancement Group (TSAG) is sponsored by the US Department of Transportation (US DOT) ITS Joint Program Office (JPO) and serves to promote technology for public safety. TSAG advises the ITS Joint Program Office on public safety technologies and on their impacts on public safety including operations management, emergency response, and emergency responder safety. Through a broad based membership comprised of transportation and public safety professionals, TSAG initiates programs that promote inter-disciplinary, inter agency and inter jurisdictional coordination and cooperation, and that promote partnerships for advancing public safety technologies. For more information, visit the TSAG website.

Through its Case Studies Workshops series TSAG conducts post reviews of actual recent events and incidents, and of associated emergency responder experiences. Case Studies Workshops facilitate discussions by multi discipline and multi agency professionals for identifying technology, institutional and policy based success, failures and lessons learned. Case Studies Workshops & Webinars are focused on the fundamental TSAG “technology for public safety” TSAG mission.

TSAG operates through resources provided by the US Department of Transportation and serves its program mission in compliance with US DOT regulations, policies and specified contract provisions.

Fort Hood, Texas Army Base Shooting Incident

On November 5, 2009, a gunman opened fire at the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood, Texas. Thirteen people were killed and 43 others were wounded or injured. Initial emergency alerts of the incident were communicated via calls to one of the Central Texas Regional Consolidated Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), and subsequently were transferred to Fort Hood’s 9-1-1 Call Center. Two minutes and forty seconds after the initial 911 call, first responders from Fort Hood arrived of the scene. Soon after, EMS assets from the surrounding entities arrived to support Fort Hood responders. One-and-a-half minutes later, the assailant was incapacitated and emergency treatment and evacuation was initiated.

The initial response to the incident was prompt and efficient. Two ambulances and an incident commend vehicle from the Fort Hood Post Hospital arrived on the scene within two minutes and fifty seconds. Ultimately, ambulances and EMS personnel from throughout the region responded, treated and evacuated the wounded and injured.

The foregoing narrative illustrates how efficiently the initial response to this event was handled. The incident however, raised important questions about the degree to which the Department of Defense is prepared for similar incidents in the future, especially multiple, simultaneous incidents. It also brought into sharp focus the need to review the connections, both in relationships and technology, between the defense community and the civilian first responder community called to support in military protection incidents.

Case Studies Workshop & Webinar Overview

Case Studies Workshop & Webinar presenters will walk the audience through details of the Fort Hood incident with a focus on how the integration between the military and civilian responders between responder disciplines worked. The Workshop will focus on emergency response and management protocols, strategies and technologies, including communications between and among Police, Emergency Medical Services, and Public Safety Dispatch Personnel. Workshop presenters will discuss successes, failures and lessons learned and will highlight emergency response activities of local and regional emergency responders and will review operations strategies and technologies at the time of and in response to the incident.

Target Audience

Workshop participants include TSAG members, NRITS registrants, and other like interest guests. T3 Webinar target audiences include state and local public safety interests including emergency responders, transportation operations, emergency communications, and other public safety practitioners. Additionally, private and academic and technology research interests are encouraged to participate.

TSAG Case Study Workshop Concept and Purpose

The TSAG Case Studies Workshop concept targets case-studies of actual incidents or events associated with each of the eight (8) TSAG interest-community teams. TSAG communities of Interest include:

• Academic & Research
• Emergency Communications
• Emergency Management
• Emergency Medical Services
• Transportation Operations
• Fire and Safety
• Law Enforcement
• Technology and Telematics

Thus, through reviews of actual recent events, incidents, and first-responder experiences, Case Studies Workshops facilitate after-event discussions by multi-discipline and multi-agency professionals for the purpose of:

• Clarifying actual circumstances of the event / incident
• Reviewing established response protocols and procedures
• Reviewing public safety technology applications
• Identifying unique management and response circumstances and challenges
• Reviewing successes, failures, and lessons-leaned

The TSAG Case Studies Workshop & Webinar series is focused on the fundamental TSAG “technologies for public safety” TSAG mission.

Learning Objectives

The broad learning objectives of the TSAG Case Studies Workshop series include:

• Identify transportation-safety technologies and their real-time applications to operations surveillance and management
• Identify incident identification, emergency response and management
• Identify inter-agency and inter-discipline coordination and communications
• Learn of technology successes, failures, and lessons-learned

Federal Host:

Linda Dodge, Chief of Staff, US DOT, ITS Joint Program Office

Presenter:

Jim Reed, Executive Director, The Central Texas Council of Governments (CTCOG), Belton, Texas

Jim Reed serves as Executive Director of The Central Texas Council of Governments (CTCOG) in Belton, Texas. As CTCOG Executive Director he administers a seven county region that includes both urban and rural areas. He oversees various regional programs, including Transportation Planning, Aging Services, Housing, Homeland Security, Regional Planning, Economic Development, and Partners with Workforce. Under his direction, CTCOG was recognized as having the number-one rated Homeland Security program in the Nation. Mr. Reed has served as the Chair of the Texas Association of Regional Councils Executive Director’s Council and is the Past President of the National Executive Director’s Council. He also serves on the National Council of Peers for RPO America and has received the Al Notzon Regional Unity Award and the Walter Scheiber National Leadership Award. This year he was a nominee for the American Institute of Certified Planners National College of Fellows.

(Sources: Popular Mechanics; Washington Post; Defense Update)

This week the Israeli Air Force (IAF) held a ceremony spotlighting the “operational acceptance” of its biggest unmanned aerial vehicle, the 4.5-ton Heron TP, or “Eitan.” The far-flying UAV, with a wingspan almost as long as a 737 airliner, appeared on the runway with a comparatively diminutive F-15 alongside it.

But how will Israel use them? The Eitan can carry a ton of payload and can reach Iran’s nuclear facilities, which the United Nations last week determined is hiding an active weapons program. But that does not mean these will be used as bombers. The IAF has been buying and upgrading airplanes specifically for long-distance strikes such as a potential attack against Iran. At least 50 F-15 Raam and F-16 Soufa aircraft have been converted by installing extra fuel tanks for greater range and countermeasures to defeat radar and missiles. So maybe the warplane/UAV tag team presented at the “operational acceptance ceremony” speaks to how manned and unmanned aircraft will work together on missions: The drone provides information while the manned airplanes drop the guided munitions.  (Click here to read the Popular Mechanics coverage on this issue)

Some interesting nuggets of information:

• Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters) making them the size of passenger jets.  It weighs nearly 4.5 tons.
• The Eitan can carry a ton of payload and can reach Iran’s nuclear facilities (repeated from 2nd paragraph above)
• The planes can fly 20 consecutive hours, and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying payloads.
• It could provide surveillance, jam enemy communications and connect ground control and manned air force planes.
• Apart from long range, long endurance Intelligence, Surveillance and Target Acquisition Reconnaissance (ISTAR) missions, Eitan is designed to execute a large variety of operational missions, including aerial refueling and strategic missile defense.
• The Heron TP has been in development for about a decade, but the aircraft first saw action during Israel’s offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip just over a year ago. The IAF already rushed this UAV into action during the 2008–’09 war in Gaza, so the ceremony really served as a reminder to Iran that its drone fleets can reach the nation.

Israel considers Iran a strategic threat because of its nuclear program, long-range missiles and repeated references by its leaders to the Jewish state’s destruction.

Israel has hinted at the possibility of a military strike against Iran if world pressure does not halt Tehran’s nuclear program. Israel and the U.S. believe Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons; Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

Israeli companies are considered world leaders in drone technology and now export unmanned aircraft to a number of armies, including U.S.-led forces that have used them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

FYI – Back in 2009, TransportGooru brought to you an article published by the  Esquire magazine that explored the use of UAVs in the United States armed forces in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.    Click here to learn more about the UAVs in the United States military.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Israel Unveils New Drone Fleet That Can Reach Iran (huffingtonpost.com)
• Jeremy White: Israel’s New Drone Not for Use Against Iran (huffingtonpost.com)
• Israel unveils unmanned drones which can fly to Iran (telegraph.co.uk)
• Israel Unveils Drones Able to Hit Iran (nytimes.com)
• Unmanned drones set to give defence a lift (telegraph.co.uk)
• Israeli Super Drones Put Iran Within Range (news.sky.com)
• New Israeli Drone Can Fly to Iran (abcnews.go.com)
• Israel’s new drones can reach Iran (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Israel Unveils New Drone Fleet That Can Reach Iran (abcnews.go.com)
• Israel unveils new drone aircraft (news.bbc.co.uk)

(Source: Washington Post)

Two armored U.S. Secret Service vehicles, including a limousine sometimes used by Vice President Biden, struck and killed a man hours before dawn Wednesday as he was crossing rain-slicked Suitland Parkway near the D.C.-Maryland border, authorities said.

(Source: Esquire)

In a brilliant article, Esquire’s Brian Mockenhaupt goes deep into the world of UAVs (aka Drones) and those who operate them for the US military.   Here are some interesting excerpts from this lengthy, 5-page article, which is a MUST READ material if you are a tech junkie or an aviation nut..

Image Courtesy: Esquire - Dan Winters: The Predator's big brother, the Reaper, is a third bigger, flies three times as fast, and carries a much bigger payload

At this very moment, at any given moment, three dozen armed, unmanned American airplanes are flying lazy loops over Afghanistan and Iraq. They linger there, all day and all night. When one lands to refuel or rearm, another replaces it. They guard soldiers on patrol, spy on Al Qaeda leaders, and send missiles shrieking down on insurgents massing in the night. Add to those the hundreds of smaller, unarmed Unmanned Aerial Vehicles being flown over the two countries by the Army, the Marines, and coalition countries, and a handful of missile-laden planes owned by the Central Intelligence Agency circling above Pakistan. Efficient and effective, the planes have fast become indispensable assets, transforming today’s battlefields just as profoundly as the first airplanes transformed warfare during World War I.

Every so often in history, something profound happens that changes warfare forever. Next year, for the first time ever, the Pentagon will buy more unmanned aircraft than manned, line-item proof that we are in a new age of fighting machines, in which war will be ever more abstract, ever more distant, and ruthlessly efficient.

The Air Force now has 138 Predators and 36 Reapers. The military’s overall UAV inventory has swollen to seven thousand, from hand-launched Ravens to jet-powered Global Hawks, which can fly twelve miles high and monitor a swath the size of Kentucky in a day. And the revolution has just begun. Within the next twenty years, the Air Force envisions unmanned planes launching tiny missiles in hypertargeted strikes, swarms of bug-sized UAVs, and squadrons of networked unmanned fighters, bombers, and tankers, many of which will fly autonomously. And the enemy will have unmanned planes, too. More than forty countries currently fly them. In February, an American F-16 shot down an Iranian drone flying over Iraq. And Hezbollah has used them to spy on Israel and attack a ship during fighting in 2006. They can be built cheaply, with off-the-shelf software and hardware, a natural progression for insurgents who have been building increasingly sophisticated bombs.

Much of the U.S. Air Force Predator and Reaper fleet for Afghanistan is maintained out of a small cluster of buildings and tents next to the runway at Kandahar Airfield. It is here that I saw the planes up close for the first time. Where fighter jets are at once sleek and muscled, these planes look emaciated. Rap a knuckle on a rib cage and hear the hollow reply. It’s hard to see how this is the plane that’s revolutionizing warfare. Perched on twiggy landing gear, it looks less like a piece of deadly, cutting-edge military hardware than an oversized version of the windup balsa-wood planes boys build from kits. Twenty-seven feet long, with a forty-nine-foot wingspan, the Predator weighs just twelve hundred pounds without fuel or missiles. A four-cycle snowmobile engine mounted in the rear propels it with a high-pitched whine. The Reaper, a third bigger than the Predator, seems far sturdier, and with a larger engine it flies at three hundred miles per hour, three times faster. The next generation will be jet-powered with a three-thousand-pound payload. Yet even the wispy Predator has a menacing quality. Glass-bubbled cockpits remind us that man controls the killing machine.

The planes are also much cheaper to buy and fly. A Predator costs about $4 million and a Reaper $11 million, half as much as an F-16, one of the Air Force’s workhorses. In Iraq and Afghanistan, jets and UAVs are often called on for similar missions that support ground troops. The drones can’t do strafing runs or intimidate with a low, fast, ear-splitting flyover, but they use a fraction of the resources, a moped instead of a monster truck. F-16’s, which fly in pairs for safety, burn about a thousand gallons of fuel an hour. At that rate, they can stay over a target for about an hour before they must swap out with other planes or fill up at an aerial tanker. A Predator carries a hundred gallons of fuel with which it can stay aloft for twenty-four hours. As the Air Force likes to point out, a bomb from an F-16 killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but the final strike against the Iraqi insurgent leader came after Predators had gathered six hundred hours of surveillance footage in the hunt for him and his associates. Keeping two F-16’s in the air that long would require about 120 tanker trucks’ worth of fuel.

Although they have never set foot in Afghanistan, Nelson and Anderson make effective counterinsurgents. They have spent hours watching the same roads, the same villages, the same people. “You gradually gain a better understanding of who they are and how they live,” Nelson says. He felt the same during his Mormon mission to the Dominican Republic, after his sophomore year at the Air Force Academy. For two years he walked or rode his bike on unpaved roads through villages and talked to people twelve hours a day. There he saw homes made of coffee cans and palm fronds. Now he gazes at houses made of mud bricks. To balance out the lack of human interaction, he has taken Afghanistan-familiarization courses offered by the Air Force. “You can picture them more as a people and a civilization,” he says.

Indeed, they see many things meant to be secret, like men having sex with sheep and goats in the deep of night. I first heard this from infantry soldiers and took it as rumor, but at Bagram I met a civilian contractor who works in UAV operations. “All the time,” he said. “They just don’t think we can see them.” Which sums up a major allure of UAVs: Though they should know better by now, many insurgents still feel safe working in darkness or in the shelter of distant mountains and valleys, so they are exposed again and again. The unmanned planes have eroded their freedom of movement and simple early-warning systems, two of their few assets when outmatched in weapons, technology, and resources. Helicopters can be heard a mile or more away. Spotters watch vehicles leave bases and follow the slow advance of dismounted patrols. Surprise is a rarity for U. S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The insurgents almost always know they’re coming, with at least several minutes’ notice. So they toss weapons behind a rock and become, in an instant, civilians. But with a camera parked three miles overhead, last-minute subterfuge doesn’t work.

Enter the Betas, the future armchair fighter jocks. The Air Force is now training a first-ever test group brought straight into the Predator program. After six months of screening and basic flight instruction, the Betas started a nine-week initial qualification course at Creech, the same taken by pilots, which includes forty hours in a simulator and nine or more actual flights. The eight Beta students were still in the academics phase when I visited Creech, but the nonpilots, who came from jobs like military police, civil engineering, and acquisitions, had so far performed as well as trained pilots, Gersten says. For this type of work, how they grew up might be more important than whether they’ve logged a thousand hours flying supersonic. “This generation, where were they when 9/11 started? They were in junior high and high school,” Gersten says. “And they grew up with the very technology that we fly with here.” Those who dreamed of being fighter pilots might never get the chance as the skies unman, but America’s pool of gamers, texters, and TV watchers is certainly vast and deep. The Betas’ progress is being closely tracked by the Pentagon, which can build plenty of planes if it has the people to fly them.

Click here to read more.

To promote greater cooperation between the U.S. and Indian aviation sectors, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA), in cooperation with the India Ministry of Civil Aviation, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Airports Authority of India, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, US. Transportation Security Administration, U.S.-India Aviation Cooperation Program, and the American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE)/International Association of Airport Executives (IAAE), is sponsoring the U.S.- India Aviation Partnership Summit. The event will take place December 7-9, 2009, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The summit will include participation from India’s three key civil aviation agencies – Ministry of Civil Aviation, Directorate General of Civil Aviation and Airports Authority of India – key industry members in the aviation sector, the U.S. government (USTDA, DOT/FAA, TSA, Departments of State and Commerce), and select members of Congress.

• Registration
• Agenda
• Hotel
• Transportation
• Sponsors
• Exhibitors
• Contacts

The 2009 U.S.-India Aviation Partnership Summit is designed to foster high-level dialogue on key issues related to India’s ongoing modernization: aviation safety, air traffic control management, aviation security, airspace utilization, sector environmental practices, and sector training. The summit will serve as a technical, policy and commercial symposium to assist Indian civil aviation agencies and aviation industry representatives in identifying advanced technology and practices that would best suit its expansion and modernization needs. The summit will provide momentum to the growing strategic and commercial relationship between the Indian and U.S. aviation sectors for the long term.

The U.S. India Aviation Partnership Summit will include a two-day conference in Washington, D.C., followed by two days of site visits to FAA and industry facilities in the Washington, D.C., area, and the FAA Technical Center in Atlantic City, N.J.

Topics To Be Covered

. Current State and Future Prospects of the India Aviation Industry
. Air Traffic Management Modernization in India: Opportunities and Challenges
. Airport Infrastructure Development/Financing
. Aircraft Maintenance and Certification
. Aviation Security
. Aviation Environmental Best Practices
. General Aviation Update (General Aviation Development in India and Helicopter Expansion)
. Aviation Training in India

Click here for more details

(Source: New York Times; Mail Online; Heavy Lift)

For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming.

The ships started their voyage in South Korea in late July and will begin the last leg of the trip this week, leaving a Siberian port for Rotterdam in the Netherlands carrying 3,500 tons of construction materials.

Russian ships have long moved goods along the country’s sprawling Arctic coastline. And two tankers, one Finnish and the other Latvian, hauled fuel between Russian ports using the route, which is variously called the Northern Sea Route or the Northeast Passage.

But commercial ships have always been thwarted by the dangerous pack ice, as have those attempting the more famous Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific over the top of Canada.   The Northeast Passage has been frozen solid for centuries, but as global warming pushed back the ice, Russia made repeated attempts to get ships through in the last 20 years.

The Bremen-based project and heavy lift shipping company, Beluga Shipping,succeeded in sending two merchant vessels – Beluga Fraternity and Beluga Foresight –  through the formerly impenetrable Northeast Passage from Asia to Europe.

Image Courtesy: New York Times via Mail Online - The fabled Northeast Passage

Both vessels had set sail in July from Ulsan in South Korea, to enter the Northern Sea Route via the inspection point at Vladivostok in order to deliver their project cargoes further into the region than any other merchant vessel had been able to do before. Now, 44 cargo modules with single weights of 200 tons or more have been discharged offshore onto barges using the ship’s onboard cranes for on-transport to Surgut.

The two ships will now head to Rotterdam via Murmansk to unload the remaining 3,500 freight tons of construction parts packed in wooden boxes.

During the passage through the East Siberian Sea, the Sannikov Strait and the Vilkizki Strait, the Beluga vessels followed in a little convoy behind Russian Atomflot-ice breakers 50 Let Pobedy and Rossia. Small icebergs, icefields and iceblocks were safely negotiated.

Lawson W. Brigham, a professor of geography at the University of Fairbanks who led the writing of an international report on Arctic commerce, the Arctic Marine Shipping Assessment, confirmed that the passage of the two German ships appeared to be the first true commercial transit of the entire Northeast Passage from Asia to the West.

He credited Beluga for taking on both the summertime Arctic waters, which still pose threats despite the recent sea-ice retreats, and Russian red tape, a maze of permits and regulations.  “This may be as much of a test run for the bureaucracy as for the ice,” said Dr. Brigham, an oceanographer who is a former Coast Guard icebreaker captain.

The proceedings from the recently held Intelligent Vehicle Technology Transfer (IVTT) Joint Military/Civilian Workshop on IntelliDrive are now available online for your perusal and downloading.   The Workshop was held at the Holiday Inn, Gaithersburg, Maryland on July 30, 2009.

For those who are not in the know, the Intelligent Vehicle Technology Transfer (IVTT) Joint Military/Civilian Workshop on IntelliDrive^sm is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); and it is supported by the Department of Transportation Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (DOT ITS JPO), the Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC), the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI); the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America); and the Intelligent Systems Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (ISD NIST)

Please link to the IVTT website at www.Intelligent-Vehicle.com and go to the “Prior Events” tab and then click on “Workshop 2009” to access the Presentations and other Workshop information. (Alternatively, you can copy paste the following link: http://www.intelligent-vehicle.com/index.php/events-2009). Or you can simply click each of the following hyperlinked files to simply download them.

• Agenda 31 March 09.pdf
• Presentation 01 Scott Welcome.pdf
• Presentation 02 Finkelstein IVTT Technological Transformation.pdf
• Presentation 03 Dumas Intelligent Vehicle Technology In DARPA.pdf
• Presentation 04 Wilcox Robotic Systems Joint Project office.pdf
• Presentation 05 Rossi Emerging Intelligent Vehicles In FCS.pdf
• Presentation 06 Govers Guardium UGV.pdf
• Presentation 07 Shoemaker Autonomous Intelligent Vehicle Research.pdf
• Presentation 08 Scott Autonomous Intelligent Vehicle Technology At NIST.pdf
• Presentation 09 Schmidt Intelligent Vehicles And IntelliDrive.pdf
• Presentation 10 Fitch Intelligent Vehicle Perception And Autonomy.pdf
• Presentation 11 Pilutti Autonomous Vehicles And Collision Avoidance.pdf
• Presentation 12 Schmitt Intelligent Commercial Vehicles.pdf
• Presentation 13 Langer Autonomous Driving At VW.pdf
• Presentation 14 McBride Autonomous Vehicle Research At Ford.pdf
• Presentation 15 Rajkumar Making Autonomous Driving Real.pdf
• Presentation 16 Kern Intelligent Cars Trucks And Buses.pdf
• Presentation 17 Snyder Autonomous Intelligent Vehicles Now.pdf
• Presentation 18 McCormick Connected Vehicle Proving Center.pdf
• Presentation 19 Dallas Robotics Technology Consortium.pdf
• Presentation 20 Bishop Intelligent Vehicles Global Perspective.pdf
• Presentation 21 Albus Intelligent Vehicle Technology Gaps.pdf
• Presentation 22 Ayyub Intelligent Vehicles Towards Cognition.pdf
• Presentation 23 Finkelstein IVTT Roadmap.pdf
• Registrants List.pdf

The workshop was deemed a great success, and the DOT’s developing IntelliDrive system of systems can help satisfy the DOD’s needs for complex networks of sensors, vehicles, communications, and control centers. Please stay tuned to your website for the announcement(s) regarding the next event.

Do not forget to thank, Dr. Bob Finkelstein, the manager of IVTT Program for making these presentations publicly available.