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Category: military – Page 301

At Camp Pendleton, Marines are testing a new, cutting edge form of live-fire training using robotic targets.

Stationary and on-rails targets are all well and good, but enemy combatants haven’t behaved like that since the formal battle lines of the Revolutionary War. It’s long past time for a training program that provides a more accurate simulation of today’s combat situations, and the Marines of Camp Pendleton are taking steps toward just that.

The “Autonomous Robotic Human Type Targets” sport wigs and zip around at up to 8 miles per hour on two wheels. Rather than simply popping up and down or riding along a prescribed track, these targets attempt to be as unpredictable and erratic as their real-life counterparts. They’ll change speeds, swerve, and respond to one another when hit. The robots will even advance on Marines in an aggressive response.

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U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the National Guard’s cyber squadrons will play an increasingly important role in assessing the vulnerabilities of U.S. industrial infrastructure and could be asked to join the fight against Islamic State.

The National Guard – a reserve military force that resides in the states but can be mobilized for national needs – is a key part of the military’s larger effort to set up over 120 cyber squadrons to respond to cyber attacks and prevent them.

One such unit, the 262nd squadron, is a 101-person team that includes employees of Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google. The unit is “famous throughout the country” for several high profile vulnerability assessments, Carter said at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Washington late on Friday.

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A cognitive neuroscientist and his team at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California, seem to have achieved the impossible.

According to a press release, the team “measured the brain activity patterns of six commercial and military pilots, and then transmitted these patterns into novice subjects as they learned to pilot an airplane in a realistic flight simulator.”

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Reserve you calendars for March 9th because New America’s Cybersecurity Initiative is hosting its annual Cybersecurity for a New America Conference in Washington, D.C.

On Wednesday, March 9, New America’s Cybersecurity Initiative will host its annual Cybersecurity for a New America Conference in Washington, D.C. This year’s conference will focus on securing the future cyberspace. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.

So, what does cyberwar mean anyway?

At core, when we talk about cyberwar, we’re just talking about warfare conducted through computers and other electronic devices, typically over the Internet. As the very ’90s prefix cyber– (when was the last time you heard someone talk about cyberspace with a straight face?) suggests, it’s been part of our cultural and political conversations since the early ’80s. In recent years, however, such conversations have picked up as those in power become more conscious of our reliance on computers—and our consequent vulnerability. Perhaps more importantly, information like that disclosed by Edward Snowden has demonstrated that governments have already made preparations for virtual conflict, whether or not they’re actively engaging in it now. (Click here for a cheat sheet.)

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Within the next year, the U.S. Air Force plans to unveil novel spacecraft concepts that would be powered by a potentially revolutionary reusable engine designed for a private space plane.

Since January 2014, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has been developing hypersonic vehicle concepts that use the Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE), which was invented by England-based Reaction Engines Ltd. and would propel the company’s Skylon space plane.

In April 2015, Reaction Engines announced that an AFRL study had concluded that SABRE is feasible. And AFRL is bullish on the technology; the lab will reveal two-stage-to-orbit SABRE-based concepts either this September, at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’ (AIAA) SPACE 2016 conference in Long Beach, California, or in March 2017, at the 21st AIAA International Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies Conference in China, said AFRL Aerospace Systems Directorate Aerospace Engineer Barry Hellman. [The Skylon Space Plane in Pictures].

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I hear this author; however, can it pass military basic training/ boot camp? Think not.

Back when Alphabet was known as Google, the company bought Boston Dynamics, makers of the amazingly advanced robot named Atlas. At the time, Google promised that Boston Dynamics would stop taking military contracts, as it often did. But here’s the open secret about Atlas: She can enlist in the US military anytime she wants.

Technology transfer is a two-way street. Traditionally we think of technology being transferred from the public to the private sector, with the internet as just one example. The US government invests in and develops all kinds of important technologies for war and espionage, and many of those technologies eventually make their way to American consumers in one way or another. When the government does so consciously with both military and civilian capabilities in mind, it’s called dual-use tech.

But just because a company might not actively pursue military contracts doesn’t mean that the US military can’t buy (and perhaps improve upon) technology being developed by private companies. The defense community sees this as more crucial than ever, as government spending on research and development has plummeted. About one-third of R&D was being done by private industry in the US after World War II, and two-thirds was done by the US government. Today it’s the inverse.

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