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Category: military – Page 41

I’m excited to share my new opinion article for Newsweek. It advocates for transforming America from a military-industrial complex into a science-industrial complex! Give it a read!

America spends 45 percent of its discretionary federal spending on defense and wars, while around us, the world burns in ways that have nothing to do with fighting or the military. Global warming has escalated into an enormous crisis. A fifth of everyone we know will die from heart disease. And an opioid crisis is reducing the average lifespans of Americans for the first time in decades. There’s plenty of tragedy, fear, and hardship all around us, but it has nothing to do with the need to make more bombs. It does, however, have to do with science.

It seems obvious America should do something different than spend so much of its tax dollars on defense. We should consider halving that money, and directing it to science, transforming America from a military-industrial complex into a science-industrial complex. Despite science and technological progress being broadly responsible for raising the standard of living around the world over the last 50 years, America spends only 3 percent of its GDP ($205 billion) on science and medical research across the federal government. Notably, this is dramatically less than the $877 billion the U.S. will spend on defense this year.

The famous designation of the term military-industrial complex comes from former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address, where he warned America and its economy could descend into being a conflict-driven nation. Over 60 years after his speech, we have become just that. A Brown University study found that since 2001, the U.S. has spent $5.9 trillion on wars in the Middle East and Asia. For contrast, the 2023 budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is a paltry $49 billion.

Continue reading “Could We Transform America Into a Science-Industrial Complex?” | >

In its own tests, its proprietary camera system outperformed LiDARs in multiple conditions.

After getting his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Leaf Jiang spent more than a decade building laser ranging systems for the military for various 3D sensing applications. In his experience, Leaf found that laser-based detection systems were too expensive to be deployed on autonomous vehicles being developed for the future, and that’s how NoDar was born.

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems use laser beams to scan their surroundings and create 3D images from the data obtained when surfaces reflect the light. As companies look to make autonomous driving more mainstream,… More.

Scharfsinn86/iStock.

Continue reading “MIT grad swaps lasers for cameras, enhances car vision” | >

A potential new way to protect sensitive electronics from the extreme heat generated by flying at high speed could give the United States an edge in the race to deploy hypersonic missiles and new spacecraft.

A July research paper in the American Chemical Society’s journal ACS Nano describes one potential solution that uses focused plasma, the photons and highly charged particles that make up the so-called fourth state of matter. If the method bears out in further research, it could usher in hypersonic weapons with much more advanced electronic guidance and could even enable on-the-ground weapons to evade heat sensors.

The breakthrough grew out of efforts to use a laser to measure the temperature of electronics in plasma-facing environments, work the Air Force is supporting through a grant at the University of Virginia, said professor Patrick Hopkins, one of the researchers on the paper.

Read more | >

Countering China and bolstering national security dominated the conversation in a Hilton hotel on Guam, 15 hours before and oceans away from the Milwaukee arena hosting the first Republican primary debate.

Nine members of the GOP-led House committee on natural resources convened in the US-governed Pacific island territory for a rare field hearing – during the summer recess – on countering China’s influence in the region.

At a time when Democrats and Republicans view China as an economic and global security threat, island nations who offer the US military proximity to China in exchange for aid emphasized they are especially vulnerable to Chinese cyber-attacks and economic exploitation as they struggle to recover from the pandemic.

Read more | >

The team conceptualized this robot based on real dogs’ motor control processes.

Robotic dogs are considered valuable future assets in various fields, including warfare, package delivery services, and search and rescue operations, to name a few. And the ones with the dexterity to navigate on extremely rough terrain could be game-changers for future space exploration.

A team of engineers has unveiled a dog-inspired quadruped robot adept at running without aid or even motors. This distinguishes this prototype from others that rely on control motors to maintain their running stride.

Read more | >

Imagine a person on the ground guiding an airborne drone that harnesses its energy from a laser beam, eliminating the need for carrying a bulky onboard battery.

That is the vision of a group of CU Boulder scientists from the Hayward Research Group. In a new study, the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering researchers have developed a novel and resilient photomechanical material that can transform light energy into mechanical work without heat or electricity, offering innovative possibilities for energy-efficient, wireless and remotely controlled systems. Its wide-ranging potential spans across diverse industries, including robotics, aerospace and biomedical devices.

In a new study published in Nature Materials, the Hayward Research Group has developed a novel and resilient photomechanical material that can transform light energy into mechanical work without heat or electricity. The photomechanical materials offer a promising alternative to electrically-wired actuators, with the potential to wirelessly control or power robots or vehicles, such as powering a drone with a laser beam instead of a bulky on-board battery.

Read more | >

Hermeus’ audacious plan to build a passenger plane able to travel at Mach 5 is a longshot, but it’s won Pentagon backing.

Earlier this month, a curved aluminum skeleton 40 feet long sat waiting in Hermeus’ cavernous Atlanta factory. It was the prototype of a drone called Quarterhorse. It will never fly. Instead, it’s scheduled for ground-testing starting in September. Hermeus CEO AJ Piplica and his cofounders believe it’s the first step on a long road to an audacious goal: building a plane capable of carrying 20 passengers at hypersonic speed — five times faster than sound, or 3,850 miles per hour.

Imagine New York to Paris in 90 minutes. Quite an upgrade from the seven-and-a-half hours of a… More.

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WASHINGTON — The Space Development Agency announced Aug. 21 it awarded contracts worth $1.5 billion to Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to build and operate 72 satellites.

The Space Development Agency (SDA), an organization under the U.S. Space Force, is building a mesh network of military satellites in low Earth orbit.

The 72 satellites will make up a portion of SDA’s network known as Tranche 2 Transport Layer. SDA is building a large constellation called the proliferated warfighter space architecture that includes a Transport Layer of interconnected communications satellites and a Tracking Layer of missile-detection and warning sensor satellites.

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