A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. On the other hand, logistics is the management of the flow of resources, between the point of origin and the point of destination in order to meet some requirements, i.e. of customers or corporations. When these words are combined–military logistics–it is the discipline of planning and carrying out the movement and maintenance of military forces.
In its most comprehensive sense, it is those aspects or military operations that deal with: design, development acquisition (the bureaucratic management and procurement process dealing with a nations investments in the technologies, programs, and product support necessary to achieve its national security strategy and support its armed forces), storage, distribution, maintenance, evacuation, and disposition of material, a term used in English to refer to the equipment and supplies in military and commercial supply chain management; transport of personnel; acquisition or construction, maintenance, operation, and disposition of facilities; acquisition or furnishing of services; and, medical and health service support.
Military science is the process of translating national defence policy, or public policy dealing with international security and the military, to produce military capability. This is done through employing military scientists, including theorists, researchers, experimental scientists, applied scientists, designers, engineers, test technicians, and military personnel responsible for prototyping. In so doing, military science seeks to interpret policy into what military skills are required, which, by employing military concepts and military methods, can use military technologies, military weapon systems, and other military equipments. All of which will then produce the required military capability.
Military science involves creation of military theories, or the analysis of normative behavior and trends in military affairs and military history, beyond simply describing events in war and military theories, especially since the influence of Clausewitz in the nineteenth century attempt to encapsulate the complex cultural, political and economic relationships between societies and the conflicts they create. Aside from theories, concepts, methods and systems applicable to the functions and activities of the armed forces, a country’s government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations, are also involved. It is usually undertaken to increase overall military capability, defined by the Australian Defence Force as “the ability to achieve a desired effect in a specific operating environment,” by increasing efficiency, effectiveness and simplicity of complex concepts, methods and systems used in military operations, the coordinated military actions of a state on response to a developing situation, in peace during a war.
Military science is the means by which military personnel (a blanket term used to refer to members of any armed force) obtain the following: military technology, the collection of equipment, vehicles, structures and communication systems that are designed for use in warfare; weapons, also known as “arm” or “armament,” a tool or instrument used in order to inflict damage or harm to living beings–physical or mental–artificial structures, or systems; equipment; and military education and training, a process which intends to establish and improve the capabilities of military personnel in their respective roles. This is to satisfactorily provide military capability as required by the national defense policy to achieve strategic goals, used in strategic planning to define desired end-state of a war or aq campaign. It is also used to establish enemy capability as part of technical intelligence (“TECHINT”), which in a pure military context, is intelligence about weapons and equipment used by the armed forces of foreign nations (often referred to as foreign material).
In military history, military science had been used during the period of Industrial Revolution, a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times. It was used as a general term to refer to all matters of military theory and technology application as a single academic discipline, “academia,” the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research. This includes that of the deployment and employment of troops in peacetime or in battle.
In military education, military science is often the name of the academic department in the education institution (“higher,” “post-secondary,” “tertiary,” or third level education”), a division of a university–the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology–or school faculty devoted to a particular academic discipline, that administers officer candidate education/school, or “Officer Cadet School (OCS), or institutions which train civilians and enlisted personnel in order for them to gain a commission as officers in the armed forces of a country. However, this education usually focuses on the officer leadership training and basic information about employment of military theories, concepts, methods and systems, and officer graduates, a rank in some militaries of the world that is an appointed position while a person is in training to become an officer, are not military scientists on completion of studies, but rather junior military officers, a military rank, a system of hierarchical relationships in armed forces, police, intelligence agencies or other institutions organized along military lines.
See: Mobile Backhaul
Satellite communications are affected by moisture and different kinds of precipitation like rain or snow. All of it happens in the signal path between end users or ground station and the satellite being utilized. This interference with the signal is known as “rain fade.”
Rain fades are less pronounced on the lower frequency “L” and “C” bands, but can become quite severe in the higher frequency “Ku” and “Ka” band. For satellite Internet services in tropical areas with heavy rain, use by of the C band (4/6 GHz) with a circular polarization satellite is popular. Satellite communications on the Ka band (19/29 GHz) can use special techniques such as large “rain margins,” “adaptive uplink power control” and “reduced bit rates” during precipitation.
“Rain margins” are the extra communication link requirements needed to account for signal degradations because of moisture and precipitation. They are of acute importance on all systems operating at frequencies over 10 GHz.
The amount of time during which serve is lost can be reduced by increasing the size of the satellite communication dish, a dish-shaped type of parabolic antenna designed to receive microwaves from communications satellites, which transmit data transmission or broadcasts, such as satellite television, so as to gather more of the satellite signal on the downlink and also to provide a stronger signal in the uplink. In other words, increasing antenna gain through the use of a larger parabolic reflector is one way of increasing the overall channel gain and, consequently, the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, which allows for greater signal loss due to rain fade without S/N ratio dropping below its minimum threshold for successful communication.
Modern consumer-grade dish antennas tend to be fairly small, which reduces the rain margin or increases the required satellite downlink power and cost. However, it is often more economical to build a more expensive satellite and smaller, less expensive consumer antennas than to increase the consumer antenna size to reduce the satellite cost, as the antenna cost reduction is magnified through economies of scale, which in microeconomics, are the cost advantages that an enterprise obtains due to expansion; whereas any reduction of the satellite cost is not.
Large commercial dishes of 3.7 m top 13 m diameter are used to achieve large rain margins and also to reduce the cost per bit by requiring far less power from the satellite. Satellites typically use photovoltaic (PV) solar power, a method of generating electrical power by converting solar radiation into direct current electricity using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, so there is no expense for the energy itself, but a more powerful satellite will require larger, more powerful solar panels and electronics, often including a larger transmitting antenna. The larger satellite components not only increase materials costs but also increase the weight of the satellite, and in general, the cost to launch a satellite into an orbit is directly proportional to its weight. In addition, since satellite launch vehicles (i.e. rockets) have specific payload size limits, making parts of the satellite larger may require either more complex folding mechanisms for parts of the satellite like solar panels and high-gain antennas, or upgrading to a more expensive launch vehicle that can handle a larger payload.
Modern download DVB-S2 carriers (“Digital Video Broadcasting – Satellite – Second Generation), a digital television broadcast standard that has been designed as a success for the popular DVB-S system, with RCS feedback, are intended to allow the modulation method to be dynamically altered, in response to rain problems at a receive site. This allows the bit rates to be increased substantially during normal clear sky conditions, thus reducing overall costs per bit.
NewSat limited (ASX: NWT) is Australia’s largest specialist satellite communications company. It delivers Internet, voice, data and video communications via satellite, providing a full range of managed satellite communication services. They have established a reputation as the partner of choice for governments, corporations and private enterprises with the use of its unique-to-Australia Teleport infrastructure.
NewSat currently has the ability to provide coverage to 75% of the globe, ranging from Australia to Asia to the Middle East, to Africa and across the Indian Ocean, up to Europe and the Pacific Ocean, the East Coast of the United States of America.
The company’s world acclaimed Teleports in Perth (Western Australia) and Adelaide (South Australia) were Finalists (Top 3) in the 2010 and 2012’ “Awards for Excellence” of the World Teleport Association, and made the 2011 “Top Operator Rankings.” The two Teleports are also accredited to supply services to the Australian Department of Defense (DRSS) and are recognized as highly secure Global Access Points, supporting certified classified networks to ensure the transmission of vital and sensitive information for government clients.
They will be expanding their satellite capabilities through the Jabiru Satellite Program, beginning with the launch and operation of Jabiru-1, a large Ka band next generation satellite, the continent’s first independently owned commercial satellite, providing superior coverage over Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, or the MENA Region. Jabiru-2, on the other hand, also planned to be launched on 2012, will deliver enhanced coverage in and around Australia.
NewSat has rights to eight premium orbital slots and its fleet of next generation geostationary satellites that will lead Australia’s space quest.
See: Satellite Communications Company
In war-fighting, countermeasures, or measure or actions taken to counter or offset another one, can have a variety of meanings. First are the immediate tactical action to reduce vulnerability like: chaff, originally called “Window” by the British and “Düppel” by the Second World War era German Luftwaffe (from the Berlin suburb where it was first developed), a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminum, metallized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of secondary targets on radar screens or swamps the screen with multiple returns; decoys, device that meant as a distraction, to conceal what an individual or a group might be looking for; and maneuvering.
Second on the list are the counter strategies which exploit a weakness of an opposing system, such as adding more multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) warhead, a collection of nuclear weapons, which are less expensive than the interceptors fired against them.
Last is the defense suppression. That is, attacking elements of the defensive system.
Countermeasures of various types have been long been a key part of warfighting strategy. However, with the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), they attained a special prominence due to the system cost, scenario of a massive sophisticated attack, strategic consequences of a less-than-perfect defense, outer space passing of many proposed weapons systems, and political debate.
Whereas the current US National Missile Defense (NMD) system, the missile defense intended to shield an entire country against incoming missiles like intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) or other ballistic missiles, is designed around a relatively limited and unsophisticated attack, SDI planned for a massive attack by a sophisticated opponent. This raised significant issues about economic and technical costs associated with defending against anti-ballistic missile defense countermeasures, tactical or strategic actions taken by an attacker to overwhelm, destroy, or evade anti-ballistic missile defenses, used by the attacking side.
For example, if it had been much deeper to add attacking warheads than to add defenses, an attacker of similar economic power could have simply out produced the defender. This requirement of being “cost effective at the margin” was first formulated by Paul Nitze, a high-ranking United States government official who helped shape Cold War defense policy over the course of numerous presidential administrations, November, 1985.
In addition, SDI envisioned many space-based systems in fixed orbits, ground-based sensors, command, control and communications facilities, etc. In theory, an advanced opponent could have targeted those, in turn requiring self-defense capability or increased numbers to compensate for attrition.
A sophisticated attacker having the technology to use decoys, shielding, maneuvering warheads, defense suppression, or other countermeasures would have multiplied the difficulty and cost of intercepting the real warheads, SDI design and operational planning had to factor in these countermeasures and the associated cost.
The petroleum industry includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transporting, usually by oil tankers and pipelines, and marketing products. Here, the “integrated operations” (IO) refers to new work processes and ways of performing oil and gas exploration and production, which has been facilitated by new information and communication technology (ICT), often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT), but is usually a more general term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers, middleware as well as necessary software, storage- and audio-visual systems, which enable users to create, access, store, transmit, and manipulate information.
Multi-discipline collaboration in plant operation is one example. IO has in a sense also taken the form of a movement for renewal of the oil and gas industry. In short, IO is collaboration with production in focus.
The most striking part of IO has been the use of always-on videoconference rooms between offshore platforms and land-based offices. This includes broadband connections for sharing of data and video-surveillance of the platform. This has made it possible to move some personnel onshore and use the existing human resources more efficiently. Instead of having e.g. an expert in geology on duty at every platform, the expert may be stationed on land and be available for consultation for several offshore platforms. It’s also possible for a team at an office in a different time zone to be consulting the night-shift of the platform, so that no land-based workers need work at night.
Common to most companies is that IO leads to cost savings as fewer people are stationed offshore and an increased efficiency. Lower costs, more efficient reservoir management and fewer mistakes during well drilling will in turn raise profits and make more oil fields economically viable. IO comes at a time when the oil industry is faced with more “brown fields,” also referred to as “tail production,” where the cost of extracting the oil will be higher than its market value, unless major improvements in technology and work processes are made. It has been estimated that deployment of IO could produce 300 billion NOK of added value to the Norwegian continental shelf alone. On a longer time-scale, working onshore control and monitoring of the oil production may become a necessity as new fields at deeper waters are based purely on unmanned sub-sea facilities.
The security aspect of reducing the offshore workforce has been raised. Will on-site experience be lost and can familiarity with the platform and its processes be obtained from an onshore office? The new working environment in any case demands changes to HSE routines. Some of the challenges also include clear role and responsibility definitions and clarifications between the onshore & offshore personnel. Who in a given situation has the authority to take decisions, the on site or the offshore staff. The increased integration of the offshore facilities with the onshore office environment and outside collaborators also expose work-critical ICT-infrastructure to the internet and the hazards of everyday ICT. As for the efficiency aspect, some criticize the onshore-offshore collaboration for creating a more bureaucratic working environment.
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geological formations beneath the Earth’s surface. Petroleum is also the raw material for many chemical products (petrochemical) like pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics.
The petroleum industry includes the global processes of: hydrocarbon exploration (oil and gas exploration), the search by petroleum geologists and geophysicists for hydrocarbon deposits beneath the Earth’s surface, such as oil and natural gas; extraction of petroleum, the process by which usable petroleum is extracted and removed from the Earth; oil refinery or petroleum refinery, an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as naphtha, gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas; transporting, often by oil/petroleum tankers (merchant ships designed for the bulk transport of oil) and pipelines transport (transportation of goods through a pipe), and marketing petroleum products, traded on various oil bourses based on established chemical profiles, delivery locations, and financial terms.
The industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream, midstream, and downstream. The upstream oil sector is a term commonly used to refer to the searching for and the recovery and production of crude oil and natural gas. On the other hand, the downstream oil sector is a term used to refer to the refining of crude oil, and the selling and distribution of natural gas and products derived from crude oil. Midstream operations include elements of traditional upstream and downstream business; usually included in the downstream category.
Petroleum is vital to many industries, the production of an economic good or service within an economy. It is of importance to the maintenance of industrial civilization itself, and thus is a critical concern for many nations.
Oil accounts for a large percentage of the world’s energy consumption, ranging from as low as 32% for Europe and Asia, up to a high of 53% for the Middle East, a region encompassing Western Asia and Northern Africa.
Other geographic regions’ consumption patterns are as follows: South and Central America (44%), Africa (41%), the world’s second-largest and second-most-populous continent, after Asia, and North America (40%).
The world consumes 30 billion barrels (4.8 km2) of oil per year, with developed nations being the largest consumers. The United States consumes 25% of the oil produced in 2007. The production, distribution, refining, and retailing of petroleum taken as a whole represents the world’s largest industry in terms of dollar value.
Governments like the US government provide a heavy public subsidy to petroleum companies, with major tax breaks at virtually every stage of oil exploration and extraction. It includes costs of oil field leases and drilling equipment.
See; Ka Band
Sometimes abbreviated to COMSAT, a communications satellite is an artificial satellite (an object placed into orbit by human endeavor) stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications, or the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. Modern communication satellites use a variety of orbits, including: geostationary orbits, or Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO), a circular orbit 35,786 km (22,236 mi) above the Earth’s equator and following the direction of the Earth’s rotation; Molniya orbits, a type of highly elliptical orbit with an inclination of 63.4 degrees, an argument of perigree of -90 degree and an orbital period of one half of a sidereal day; other elliptical orbits, which in astrodynamics or celestial mechanics is a Kepler orbit with the eccentricity less than 1, including the special case of a circular orbit, with eccentricity equal to zero; and, low polar (satellite orbit passing above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited, usually a planet like the Earth, but possibly another body such as the Sun, on each revolution) and non-polar Earth orbits.
For fixed or point-to-point services, a connection referring to a communications connection between two nodes or endpoints (telecommunications) communications satellites provide a microwave radio relay technology, a technology for transmitting digital and analog signals such as long-distance telephone calls, television programs, and computer data, between two locations on a line of sight radio path, complementary to that of communication cables. They are also used for mobile applications like communications to ships, vehicles, planes and hand-held terminals, and for TV and radio broadcasting (distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio-visual medium), for which application of other technologies like cable television, a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber’s property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional broadcast television via radio waves in which a television antenna is required, is impractical or impossible.
On the coast of Louisiana, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) saw an oil invasiuon, May 24, 2010, through the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) instrument aboard NASA’s Terra spacecraft. It shows the encroachment of oil from the former Deepwater Horizon rig into the Louisiana’s wildlife habitats in near-true color, except that data from the instrument’s near-infrared band, where vegetation appears bright have been blended with the instrument’s green band to enhance the appearance of vegetation.
There are dark filaments of oil drawing near the shores of Blind Bay and Redfish Bay at the eastern edge of the Mississippi River delta, and the Garden Island Bay further south, which are home to many kinds of fish.
NASA also reported that on May 6, the oil reached the Breton National Wildlife Refuge on the north, an arc-shaped form of land and runoff associated with the Chandeleur Islands. It is the second oldest in the United States which is home for many kinds of birds. After 18 days, the image shown has a very apparent filaments of oil crossing the island barrier, previously eroded by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The images cover an area measuring 110 by 119 kilometers (68 by 74 miles).
Africa, the world’s second largest and second most populous continent, has their economic growth rate at about 5.0% for 2010 and 5.5% in 2011. And with this, there is an expectation of a more efficient communication which can only be brought by the satellites. On its forefront is South Africa, a place of multi-ethnicity and -diversity, and ranked as an upper-middle income economy by the World Bank, and the largest economy in the continent–the 28th-largest in the world.
From a copy of the speech of the Minister of Science and Technology of South Africa, Naledi Pandor MP, at the opening of the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), IICC, on Cape Tow, October 3, 2011, Parliamentary Question: DST: International Astronautical Congress, said that their country has “much to offer the world in space science and technology,” although it was only last year that their government finally placed all the necessary institutes, strategies and policies together.
Pandor said that they have a space programme which is not only about the pursuit of frontier research and knowledge as a goal in itself, but is also about developing all aspects of the space industry at the tip of Africa for the benefit of the whole of Africa which was shaped by their National Space Strategy.
It set South Africa three core objectives: to capture a South African share of the global market for small to medium-sized space systems; to improve decision making through the integration of space-based systems with ground-based systems for providing data; and, to develop applications for the provision of geospatial, telecommunications, timing and positioning products and services.
Signal of Satellite 