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Category: military – Page 185

Scientists found that a class of particles known as bosons can behave as an opposite class of particles called fermions, when forced into a line.

The research, conducted at Penn State University and funded in part by the Army Research Office, an element of U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory, found that when the internal interactions among bosons in a one-dimensional gas are very strong, their velocity distribution transforms into that of a gas of non-interacting fermions when they expand in one dimension. The research is published in the journal Science.

“The performance of atomic clocks, quantum computers and quantum systems rely upon the proper curation of the properties of the chosen system,” said Dr. Paul Baker, program manager, atomic and molecular physics at ARO. “This research effort demonstrates that the system statistics can be altered by properly constraining the dimensions of the system. In addition to furthering our understanding of foundational principles, this discovery could provide a method for dynamically switching a system from bosonic to fermionic to best meet the military need.”

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The airspace above future battlefields is expected to be increasingly congested with large numbers of unmanned aerial systems, manned aircraft, munitions and missiles filling the skies. To de-conflict airspace activities of friendly forces and rapidly counter an enemy’s actions on the battlefield requires new technologies to effectively integrate effects from all domains.

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Remember those tales of drones harassing northeastern Colorado back in December?

If they ever come back, the Air Force may have a new way to zap them from the sky. The service announced Monday it is ready to test its first high-energy lasers for use against enemy drones overseas.

“(Troops) will utilize this system as an operational asset against small unmanned aircraft systems for the duration of the field assessment,” said Michael Jirjis, who headed development of the laser for the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio.

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One of the U.S. Navy’s newest and smallest warships is the latest to receive a laser weapon system. The USS Little Rock, which made the news last year after being trapped in Canada by ice, will get a laser during an upcoming deployment sometime this year. The laser is one of the most powerful military lasers yet and should give it the ability to damage or destroy small boats, drones, and aircraft.

According to U.S. Naval Institute News, defense contractor General Dynamics will install a 150 kilowatt laser weapon system aboard the littoral combat ship USS Little Rock. The ship is based in Mayport, Florida and will likely join the Navy’s 4th Fleet, responsible for Central and South America.

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Pew-pew-pew is coming soon-soon-soon.

The U.S. Navy plans to put a laser weapon on a warship by 2021. The High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler and Surveillance (HELIOS) system, or HELIOS, is a defensive weapon system designed to burn boats and shoot down unmanned drones. The weapon will go to sea with a guided missile destroyer assigned to the Pacific Fleet in two years’ time, the Navy says.

The service placed an order for HELIOS in January 2019. The $150 million contract, awarded to Lockheed Martin, calls for the company to deliver two systems. According to a company press release, one will go to White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for testing. USNI News says the Navy will install the other on a Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.

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O,.o woah o.o

The U.S. Army is pushing forward with plans for the most powerful laser weapon to date. The Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser (IFPC-HEL) will be a 250 to 300 kilowatt weapon, up to 10 times more powerful than the U.S. Navy’s Laser Weapon System. The power boost should be enough to destroy targets as large as incoming cruise missiles.

The U.S. military is pushing into lasers in a big way, with all three of the main services—Army, Navy, and Air Force—pushing hard to get them onto ground vehicles, ships, and aircraft. The main appeal of lasers is their fast reaction time, literally the speed of light, and their ability to fire a high number of shots without stockpiling bullets, missiles, or shells.

Lasers instead rely on electrical power, and as long as there is electricity to power the weapon it can theoretically crank out an endless number of shots. “Ammunition” is basically the cost of generator fuel, or about $10 per shot.

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This is a disturbing article on the utilization of drones by Turkey in attacks in Syria. What is unclear to me is whether the drones were piloted or whether they were autonomous. This is a critical distinction for me because drones that are piloted by humans are under human control and are legal. Autonomous drones are killer robots and are immoral.

“Regardless of an exact death toll and damage evaluation, there is a general understanding that the Idlib attacks were an example of effective air warfare, in which killer drones, rather than piloted jets, played a key role. “My understanding is that Turkey compensated for its inability to fly jets over Idlib by using drones, lots of drones,” says Aron Lund, a fellow with U.S.-based think tank The Century Foundation.”

Ban Killer Robots!

Those who want to win do not prepare for wars of today — they prepare for wars that are to be fought tomorrow.

As it appears, this golden rule of military art is carefully adhered to in the power corridors of Turkey, which is now playing its own complicated game in the multisided war in Syria.

The recent developments in Idlib, the last rebel-held enclave in Syria’s northeast, showed that the Turkish military is hightailing rapidly towards the future, with its massive use of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Continue reading “Ukraine takes note as Turkey opens new chapter in drone warfare” | >

Of the spread of COVID-19 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the subsequent relief of its Commanding Officer has highlighted the tension that exists between maintaining military readiness and the need to safeguard the health of members of the armed forces in the face of a pandemic.

The disease has been a feature of war for the vast majority of human history – from the plague that ravaged Athens early in the Peloponnesian War, killing the Athenian strategos Pericles; to the diseases that European settlers brought with them to the New World, devastating local populations; to the host of tropical diseases that caused appalling casualties in the China-Burma-India and Southwest Pacific theaters in World War II. The fact that we were surprised by the emergence, growth, and spread of COVID-19 reflects the false conceit of 21st century life that we have “conquered” disease.

In fact, pandemics are but one class of low-probability but high-impact contingencies that we could face in the coming years, including an earthquake or other natural disaster in a major urban area, regime change in an important state, and the collapse of financial markets leading to a global depression. When I served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning between 2006 and 2009, we explored a series of such “shocks” as well as the role the Defense Department could play in responding to them as a way of helping the Department’s leaders address such contingencies. During my time in the Pentagon, we also held a series of wargames with members of Congress and their staff, governors of several states and their cabinets, and the government of Mexico, to explore in depth the consequences of a pandemic. Much of what we found then resonates with what we are experiencing now.

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