Lifeboat Foundation

U.S. Cyber Command’s new training platform is slated to deliver the second iteration this fall providing additional capabilities and user capacity, program officials said.

The Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE) is an online client that allows Cyber Command’s warriors to log on from anywhere in the world to conduct individual or collective cyber training as well as mission rehearsal. The program is being run by the Army on behalf of the joint cyber force and Cyber Command.

Officials delivered the first version of the program to Cyber Command in February and the environment was used for the first time in Cyber Command’s premier annual tier 1 exercise Cyber Flag in June. The second version is expected to include additional capabilities, including allowing more users to conduct team or individual training.

A new facility in Sao Paulo is making parts for the Brazilian Air Force’s Gripens.

The road to the next great scientific or technological advance starts with basic science and research. Basic research is central to the DoD’s long-term competitive strategy to create and maintain military superiority for the nation. The DoD has a long history of conducting and sponsoring basic research, focusing on understanding how and why things work at a fundamental scientific level.

The Pentagon’s artificial intelligence hub is shifting its focus to enabling joint warfighting operations, developing artificial intelligence tools that will be integrated into the Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control efforts.

“As we have matured, we are now devoting special focus on our joint warfighting operation and its mission initiative, which is focused on the priorities of the National Defense Strategy and its goal of preserving America’s military and technological advantages over our strategic competitors,” Nand Mulchandani, acting director of the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, told reporters July 8. “The AI capabilities JAIC is developing as part of the joint warfighting operations mission initiative will use mature AI technology to create a decisive advantage for the American war fighter.”

Appropriators are also backing the purchase of a bunch of other aircraft across the services.

Hope mission will gather sorely needed data on the Martian atmosphere, boost Emirati space science.

A bacterial toxin cracks open door to new precision-editing tool for DNA in mitochondria.

Three times in the coming month or so, rockets will light their engines and set course for Mars. A trio of nations — the United States, China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — will be sending robotic emissaries to the red planet, hoping to start new chapters of exploration there.

Each mission is a pioneer in its own right. The United States is sending its fifth rover, NASA’s most capable ever, in the hope of finding evidence of past life on Mars and collecting a set of rocks that will one day be the first samples flown back to Earth. China aims to build on its lunar-exploration successes by taking one of its rovers to Mars for the first time. And the UAE will be launching an orbiter — the first interplanetary mission by any Arab nation — as a test of its young but ambitious space agency.

It is far from a given that all these missions will make it; Mars is notorious as a graveyard for failed spacecraft. But if they do, they will substantially rewrite scientific understanding of the planet. The two rovers are heading for parts of Mars that have never been explored(see ‘Landing sites’), and the UAE’s orbiter will track the changing Martian atmosphere.

Elon Musk is hell bent on finding a way to dig tunnels cheaper and more quickly in order to avoid his least favourite thing: traffic.