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Category: military – Page 195

The Navy’s Smallest Warship Gets a Big Laser Gun

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.

The Navy Will Put a Laser Gun on a Destroyer by 2021

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.

The U.S. Army Plans To Field the Most Powerful Laser Weapon Yet

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.

Ukraine takes note as Turkey opens new chapter in drone warfare

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” | >

Preparing for a Dark Future: Biological Warfare in the 21st Century

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.

Space industry consortium concerned about financial health of small businesses

WASHINGTON — The Space Enterprise Consortium — an organization created in 2017 to attract space companies to work on military contracts — is canvassing firms to gauge the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on businesses.

The consortium known as SpEC is run by the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles. It has more than 350 member companies, many of them space startups and small businesses.

In an April 15 email the consortium asked members to identify those that have fewer than 50 employees.

Why did a Chinese university hire Charles Lieber to do battery research?

Among the ongoing mysteries surrounding last week’s arrest of Harvard University nanoscientist Charles Lieber is the precise nature of the research program Lieber was conducting in his cooperation with Chinese researchers.

Lieber was arrested on 28 January on charges of making false statements to U.S. law enforcement officials and federal funding agencies about a collaboration he forged with researchers in China. He was released two days later on a $1 million bond. An affidavit outlining the charges against Lieber notes that in January 2013, he signed an agreement between Harvard and Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China. According to the affidavit, “The stated purpose of the agreement, which had a five-year effective term, was to ‘carry out advanced research and development of nanowire-based lithium ion batteries with high performance for electric vehicles.’”

Officials at WUT have not responded to requests for comment on their agreement with Lieber. But it outlines just the kind of high-tech work that U.S. prosecutors involved in efforts to investigate Chinese attempts to acquire advanced technology from U.S.-based researchers say they are concerned about. They allege that the Chinese government has used such collaborations to improperly take advantage of the federally funded research enterprise, and gain an edge in economic and military advances.

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