Lifeboat Foundation

ST. GEORGE — An invention that could lead to the end of gunpowder is not just an idea — it’s already been used in a real-world military mission.

Priced at $1 million, ZHeus 3 is not a gun; it’s a “platform” that has taken Harvester, a St. George-based inventor, 15 years to design. Harvester could not release his full name because he still has a commitment to national security.

The idea for this invention, along with an improved armor, began some 15 years ago when Harvester’s best friend died in his arms after being shot during an Air Force mission. The bullet shot straight through his friend’s bulletproof vest and kept going.

Innovation.

The U.S. Air Force plans to have an operational combat drone by 2023. The service plans to build out a family of unmanned aircraft, known as Skyborg, capable of carrying weapons and actively participating in combat. The Air Force’s goal is to build up a large fleet of armed, sort-of disposable jets that don’t need conventional runways to take off and land.

Continue reading “The F-16’s Replacement Won’t Have a Pilot at All” »

Designed with former elite military operatives, the Ceramic Clothing System from Vollebak is as hardcore as any extreme conditions you might encounter. It boasts a three-part layering system that is the first in the world to use ceramic technology to make their T-Shirt, Baselayer, and Midlayer. All three are abrasion resistant yet soft, stretchy, breathable and as comfy as your favorite sports clothing. And each Ceramic layer is embedded with over 100,000 particles that can’t be scratched off or washed away.

The Pentagon’s Joint AI Center is working on lethal “tactical edge AI,” but is not working on facial recognition, said JAIC director Nand Mulchandani.

Researchers at the Army Research Laboratory have developed a new method to protect and safeguard quantum information, moving quantum networks a step closer to reality.

Quantum information science is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field exploring new ways of storing, manipulating and communicating information. Researchers aim to create powerful computational capabilities using new hardware that operates on quantum physics principles.

For the army, these new quantum paradigms could potentially lead to transformational capabilities in fast, efficient and secure collecting, exchanging and processing vast amounts of information on dynamic battlefields in the future.

Antibiotic resistance is on the rise and is recognized by both the CDC¹ and the U.S. Military² as a current – and formidable – global health threat. The U.S Department of Defense (DoD) has long documented the warfighter’s outsized risk of exposure to infectious disease, including the increasing number of multi-drug resistant (MDR) organisms that have challenged military wound care in Iraq and Afghanistan³. Despite this looming crisis, there has been a notable exodus of pharmaceutical companies from the antibiotic space, as well as several high-profile failures of biotechnology companies focused on antibiotic development⁴. Current therapeutics to combat microbial infections, including MDR microbes and bacterial biothreats, are insufficient to meet the growing need, and existing methods to develop new treatments are too slow and/or costly to combat emerging drug resistance in pathogenic microorganisms.

DARPA’s Harnessing Enzymatic Activity for Lifesaving Remedies (HEALR) program aims to utilize a new therapeutic design toolkit and novel strategies/modalities to effectively treat microbial infections. Specifically, HEALR seeks to develop new medical countermeasures (MCMs) by recruiting native cellular machinery to recognize and clear disease-related targets for treating these infections. These advances could result in host-driven degradation or deactivation of pathogen targets, which may not only inhibit but could stop the pathogen in its tracks.

“HEALR presents the opportunity to identify drugs that are safer, more effective, and better address drug resistance and bacterial infections than existing therapeutic modalities,” noted Seth M. Cohen, Ph.D., program manager for the DARPA HEALR program. “By harnessing innate cellular processes, such as those exploited by proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) and similar approaches, HEALR intends to achieve superior outcomes over existing therapies.”

The road to the next great scientific or technological advance starts with basic science and research. Basic research is central to the DoD’s long-term competitive strategy to create and maintain military superiority for the nation. The DoD has a long history of conducting and sponsoring basic research, focusing on understanding how and why things work at a fundamental scientific level.

The Pentagon’s artificial intelligence hub is shifting its focus to enabling joint warfighting operations, developing artificial intelligence tools that will be integrated into the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts.

“As we have matured, we are now devoting special focus on our joint warfighting operation and its mission initiative, which is focused on the priorities of the National Defense Strategy and its goal of preserving America’s military and technological advantages over our strategic competitors,” Nand Mulchandani, acting director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told reporters July 8. “The AI capabilities JAIC is developing as part of the joint warfighting operations mission initiative will use mature AI technology to create a decisive advantage for the American war fighter.”

Appropriators are also backing the purchase of a bunch of other aircraft across the services.