Singapore company toys with concepts of the future.

• Author: Tiron, Roxana
• Position: Technology Watch

While the U.S. Army is pegging its future on the ambitious future combat systems--a family of manned and unmanned vehicles and aircraft--a partly government-owned Singaporean company also is looking at a series of concepts to deploy faster and lighter forces.

Singapore Technologies Kinetics made headlines during this year's Asian Aerospace show for signing a memorandum of understanding with Lockheed Martin to work on the development of the Mule, a 2.5-ton vehicle meant for reconnaissance or transport missions under the FCS architecture. Lockheed Martin works as a sub-contractor to the lead systems integrator team of Boeing and SAIC.

ST Kinetics, is the land systems arm of the Singapore Technologies conglomerate that is made up of a series of other companies working in the aerospace, electronics and marine sectors.

Many of the concepts that the company is working on are based on the philosophy that the answer to making forces lighter and more easily deployable is the development of technologies that can be linked together.

One of ST Kinetics' recent developments is a light strike vehicle, called the Spider. The Spider is a line-of-sight, semi-autonomous vehicle, which can be used both as a troop carrier and as a robot to detect ordinance or hidden enemies.

"Imagine a situation where the crew of a Spider comes to a bridge, for example, and then they suspect that somebody is hiding under it," Patrick Choy, head of marketing, told National Defense. "The soldiers can get out and then operate the vehicle by remote control."

The vehicle can fit six people and has a collapsible roll cage frame that allows the vehicles to be stacked in C-130 cargo aircraft. According to the company, six Spiders can fit into one C-130.

When switching to the robotic controls, the vehicle has a range of 500 meters, "enough to keep you out of a blast area," Choy said. In the future, the vehicle will be outfitted with a global positioning system to become fully autonomous, said Choy.

The Spider is propelled by a 130-horse power engine and can handle rugged conditions, said the company. The Spider is built out of tubes, all approach that makes the vehicle light, said Choy. Because it is light, the vehicle also can be dropped into the field from helicopters, he added.

"What we are also doing, is putting a protection suite round the vehicle," said Choy. The suite can be applied without adding significant weight to the vehicle, or sacrificing its payload, Choy pointed out.

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