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Archive for the ‘military’ category: Page 178

Aug 26, 2019

Forget the F-35: The Tempest Could Be the Future (Armed with Lasers, Hypersonic Missiles and Swarms)

Posted by in categories: drones, energy, military

With a flourish of a silk curtain at the Farnborough Air Show on July 16, British defense secretary Gavin Williamson unveiled a full-scale model of the Tempest, the UK’s concept for a domestically built twin-engine stealth fighter to enter service in the 2030s. The Tempest will supposedly boast a laundry list of sixth-generation technologies such as being optionally-manned, mounting hypersonic or directed energy weapons, and capability to deploy and control drone swarms. However, it may also represent a Brexit-era gambit to revive defense cooperation with Germany and France.

London has seeded “Team Tempest” with £2 billion ($2.6 billion) for initial development through 2020. Major defense contractor BAE System is leading development with the Royal Air Force, with Rolls Royce contributing engines, European firm MBDA integrating weapons, and Italian company Leonardo developing sensors and avionics.

Design will supposedly be finalized in the early 2020s, with a flyable prototype planned in 2025 and production aircraft entering service in 2035, gradually replacing the RAF’s fourth-generation Typhoon fighters and complementing F-35 stealth jets. This seventeen-year development cycle is considered ambitious for something as complicated and expensive as a stealth fighter.

Aug 26, 2019

Disappearing act: Device vanishes on command after military missions

Posted by in categories: materials, military

A polymer that self-destructs? While once a fictional idea, new polymers now exist that are rugged enough to ferry packages or sensors into hostile territory and vaporize immediately upon a military mission’s completion. The material has been made into a rigid-winged glider and a nylon-like parachute fabric for airborne delivery across distances of a hundred miles or more. It could also be used someday in building materials or environmental sensors.

The researchers will present their results today at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall 2019 National Meeting & Exposition.

Continue reading “Disappearing act: Device vanishes on command after military missions” »

Aug 25, 2019

SwRI and GE design and operate the highest temperature sCO2 turbine in the world

Posted by in categories: finance, military, solar power, sustainability

SAN ANTONIO — April 8, 2019 — A team of Southwest Research Institute and General Electric (GE) engineers have designed, built and tested the highest temperature supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) turbine in the world. The turbine was developed with $6.8 million of funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), in addition to $3 million from commercial partners GE Research, Thar Energy, Electric Power Research Institute, Aramco Services Company and Navy Nuclear Laboratory. Additionally, the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS) program provided financial support and extended the test program to validate advanced thermal seals.


Copyright © 2019 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Aug 23, 2019

DARPA’s Handheld Nuclear Fusion Reactor

Posted by in categories: computing, military, nuclear energy, particle physics

fusionsunLast year, Pentagon mad science arm DARPA was working on one of its wildest projects yet: a microchip-sized nuclear reactor. The program is now officially done, the agency says. But these sorts of far-out projects have a habit of being reemerging under new managers and new names.

The project, known as the “Chip-Scale High Energy Atomic Beams” program, is an effort aimed at working on the core technologies behind a tiny particle accelerator, capable of firing subatomic particles at incredible speeds. It’s part of a larger DARPA plan to reduce all sorts of devices to microchip-scale – including cryogenic coolers, video cameras and multi-purpose sensors. All of the projects are ambitious (this is DARPA, after all). But this had to be the most ambitious of the lot. Here’s how DARPA’s plans for fiscal year 2009 described it:

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Aug 23, 2019

Carnegie Mellon and Oregon State team wins first leg of DARPA Subterranean Challenge robot competition

Posted by in categories: drones, health, military, robotics/AI

The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) kicked off the Subterranean Challenge in December 2017, with the goal of equipping future warfighters and first responders with tools to rapidly map, navigate, and search hazardous underground environments. The final winner of the four-event competition won’t be selected until 2021, but Team Explorer from Carnegie Mellon University and Oregon State University managed to best rivals for the initial prize.

On four occasions during the eight-day Tunnel Circuit event, which concluded today, each team deployed multiple robots into National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health research mines in South Park Township, Pennsylvania, tasked with autonomously navigating mud and water and communicating with each other and a base station for an hour at a time as they searched for objects. Team Explorer’s roughly 30 university faculty, students, and staff members leveraged two ground robots and two drones to find 25 artifacts in its two best runs (14 more than any other team), managing to identify and locate a backpack within 20 centimeters of its actual position.

“Mobility was a big advantage for us,” said team co-leader Sebastian Scherer, associate research professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, in a statement. “The testing [prior to the event, at Tour-Ed Mine in Tarentum, Pennsylvania] was brutal at the end, but it paid off in the end. We were prepared for this … We had big wheels and lots of power, and autonomy that just wouldn’t quit.”

Aug 22, 2019

Planetoid Mines — A New Asteroid Mining Company

Posted by in categories: military, space travel

Is a privately-owned startup based out of New Mexico, USA. Their team leans on expertise gained at NASA, the US Department of Energy, Sandia and Los Alamos National Labs, and the US Air Force. Planetoid Mines’ primary focus is developing the core components that enable asteroid mining. Many of their instruments and tools will be compatible with mining applications on the lunar surface and on Earth.

A lot of activity has been brewing with regards to new space exploration initiatives. Launch costs are plummeting due to market competition and the development of reusable rockets. Additionally, there has been a measurable uptick in growth and investment in commercial space ventures. Every major national space agency has ambitions for operations in lunar orbit and on the lunar surface within the next 5 to 20 years.

Aug 22, 2019

Amazon, Microsoft, ‘putting world at risk of killer AI’: study

Posted by in categories: military, robotics/AI

Washington (AFP) — Amazon, Microsoft and Intel are among leading tech companies putting the world at risk through killer robot development, according to a report that surveyed major players from the sector about their stance on lethal autonomous weapons.

Dutch NGO Pax ranked 50 companies by three criteria: whether they were developing technology that could be relevant to deadly AI, whether they were working on related military projects, and if they had committed to abstaining from contributing in the future.

“Why are companies like Microsoft and Amazon not denying that they’re currently developing these highly controversial weapons, which could decide to kill people without direct human involvement?” said Frank Slijper, lead author of the report published this week.

Aug 21, 2019

Japan warns North Korea now has miniaturized nukes

Posted by in categories: existential risks, military

North Korea has miniaturised nuclear warheads and made them small enough to fit on ballistic missiles, Japan believes.

Tokyo defence chiefs warn in a new white paper that North Korea’s military activities pose a ‘serious and imminent threat’.

Continue reading “Japan warns North Korea now has miniaturized nukes” »

Aug 21, 2019

Elon Musk back to promoting bombing Mars with nuclear weapons

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, engineering, environmental, military, space

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk not only wants to explore Mars, he wants to ‘nuke’ it.

In a tweet this week, Musk reiterated calls to ‘Nuke Mars!’ adding that t-shirts are ‘coming soon.’

Continue reading “Elon Musk back to promoting bombing Mars with nuclear weapons” »

Aug 19, 2019

NASA Robots Rove Through Caves for Underground DARPA Competition (Video)

Posted by in categories: military, robotics/AI

Robots from all over the world are about to go on a subterranean adventure, competing against each other in mining tunnels to determine which ones can best navigate and find objects underground and do so autonomously.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is hosting the Subterranean Challenge Systems Competition on Aug. 15–22 in Pittsburgh as a way to develop technology for the military and first responders to map and search subterranean areas.