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Category: military – Page 43

A private Chinese company, Thrust-to-Weight Ratio Engine, was able to test a rotary detonation engine on a drone. This is the first such test. Previously, only bench tests were conducted.

Here’s What We Know.

The rotary detonation engine will open the way to the development of hypersonic transport systems, including aircraft and missiles. Another feature of the propulsion system is reduced fuel consumption.

The company’s Thrust-to-Weight Ratio Engine was developed jointly with the Industrial Technology Research Institute of Chongqing University. It was named FB-1 Rotating Detonation Engine.

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The drone can travel at 45 miles an hour and read license plates from 800 feet away. It can be equipped with a speaker and a spotlight. Who needs a police car for a chase now?

A new high-tech autonomous drone, unveiled by California-based company Skydio, could help New York Police end high-speed car chases. The company which has supplied drones for both military and utility purposes, is working to use drones as first responders (DFR) for the police in the US.

A decade ago, Skydio began its journey as a company that provides athletes with a ‘follow-me-everywhere’ drone that could help shoot videos from the air while on the move. Three years ago, the company made a significant pivot as it looked… More.

Skydio.

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Elon Musk’s SpaceX has received its first contract from the US Space Force to provide customized satellite communications for the military under the company’s new Starshield program, extending the provocative billionaire’s role as a defense contractor.

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. is competing with 15 companies, including Viasat Inc., for $900 million in work orders through 2028 under the Space Force’s new “Proliferated Low Earth Orbit” contracts program, which is tapping into communications services of satellites orbiting from 100 miles to 1,000 miles (160 kilometers to 1,600 kilometers) above Earth.

The Starshield service will be provided over SpaceX’s existing constellation of Starlink communications satellites.

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A high-energy laser weapon developed by Raytheon is now operationally ready and will be integrated onto the UK’s Wolfhound military vehicle from next month.

Wolfhound armoured vehicle with laser weapon system. Credit: Raytheon UK

Raytheon UK is set to receive its first high-energy laser weapon system to be tested and integrated in the United Kingdom, marking a significant advancement in the understanding of how such systems can be fielded. Raytheon UK is the British unit of RTX’s Raytheon business.

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Femtotech: Computing at the femtometer scale using quarks and gluons.
How the properties of quarks and gluons can be used (in principle) to perform computation at the femtometer (10^−15 meter) scale.

I’ve been thinking on and off for two decades about the possibility of a femtotech. Now that nanotech is well established, and well funded, I feel that the time is right to start thinking about the possibility of a femtotech.

You may ask, “What about picotech?” — technology at the picometer (10-12m) scale. The simple answer to this question is that nature provides nothing at the picometer scale. An atom is about 10–10 m in size.

The next smallest thing in nature is the nucleus, which is about 100,000 times smaller, i.e., 10–15 m in size — a femtometer, or “fermi.” A nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons (i.e., “nucleons”), which we now know are composed of 3 quarks, which are bound (“glued”) together by massless (photon-like) particles called “gluons.”

Hence if one wanted to start thinking about a possible femtotech, one would probably need to start looking at how quarks and gluons behave, and see if these behaviors might be manipulated in such a way as to create a technology, i.e., computation and engineering (building stuff).

In this essay, I concentrate on the computation side, since my background is in computer science. Before I started ARCing (After Retirement Careering), I was a computer science professor who gave himself zero chance of getting a grant from conservative NSF or military funders in the U.S. to speculate on the possibilities of a femtotech. But now that I’m no longer a “wager,” I’m free to do what I like, and can join the billion strong “army” of ARCers, to pursue my own passions.

Continue reading “Hugo de Garis — Innovating Beyond the Nanoscale, Femtometer Scale Technology” | >

Computer performance is measured in FLOPS, or floating-point operations per second. The first supercomputer, which was developed in 1964, could run 3,000,000 FLOPS, i.e., 3 megaFLOPS. Exa means 18 zeros, meaning 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 FLOPS. An exascale computer can perform that many operations — something that is almost impossible to imagine.

Now, there is a huge advantage to commanding that kind of computing power in today’s world. Here is what the same McKinsey report says: “Exascale computing could allow scientists to solve problems that have until now been impossible. With exascale, exponential increases in memory, storage, and compute power may drive breakthroughs in several industries: energy production, storage, transmission, materials science, heavy industry, chemical design, AI and machine learning, cancer research and treatment, earthquake risk assessment, and many more.”

Put simply, China now may have the computing power at its disposal to match, or even overtake, technology leaders like the United States in several areas that could be key to becoming the dominant economic and military power in the world. China could also pair its advances in artificial intelligence with this mind-boggling computering power and achieve technological and military dominance quite quickly.

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Play EVE Online ➡️ https://eve.online/Ridddle_EN_megastructures.

In this video, we explore the biggest construction sites of the future — the ones that will one day provide us with real megastructures of all kinds and purposes.

From space elevators and Dyson spheres, to enormous ships and gargantuan space stations to live in. But we won’t just marvel at their scale — the real questions are: could we really build all these in the near future, what tech do we need to get the job done, and ultimately, will it work as intended, or these megastructures will turn out to be megagraves?

In our analysis we well use real engineering projects, as well as top sci-fi examples from books, movies and also from the unique world of massive multiplayer online game EVE Online.

EVE Online — (https://eve.online/Ridddle_EN_megastructures) It is set in a rich sci-fi universe, where players can create their own character and explore a vast and complex virtual world built according to the well-thought set of consistent in-world rules.

The game is known for its intricate economy, politics, and warfare mechanics, where players can engage in a variety of activities, including mining resources, trading, fighting, and of course, building numerous megastructures with rich customisation options.

Continue reading “The Craziest Megastructures Scientists Are Willing to Build” | >

The US has embarked on a program to develop electronic-warfare drone swarms, the latest in its multiple projects to master what could potentially be war-winning AI and drone technology, though with significant operational and strategic implications and risks.

This month, Breaking Defense reported that the US Navy is seeking industry and government agencies to participate in a July 2024 exercise called Silent Swarm 2024, which aims to demonstrate early-stage unmanned systems’ capabilities to fight on the electromagnetic battlefield.

Breaking Defense notes that the event, hosted by Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane, will showcase “swarming, small, attritable” unmanned systems capable of distributed electromagnetic attack, deception, and digital payload delivery, with the tech must be within readiness levels (TRL) two to five, with higher numbers indicating more advanced systems.

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of long-term disability and premature death, especially among military personnel and those playing contact sports. Substantial research has examined acute and chronic neurological consequences of TBI; however, non-neurological conditions associated with TBI are understudied.

A new review paper by investigators from Mass General Brigham presents key findings on long-term associations between TBI and cardiovascular disease, highlighting that nervous system dysfunction, neuroinflammation, changes in the brain-gut connection, and post-injury comorbidities may elevate risk of both cardiovascular and cognitive dysfunction in TBI survivors compared to the .

The review, published in The Lancet Neurology, emphasizes the need for future cardiovascular research, surveillance and intervention in TBI survivors.

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