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Science & Technology News, Weapons

The Army’s first laser weapon is almost ready for a fight

A Northrop Grumman photo illustration of the defense contractor’s Stryker-mounted laser weapon in action.  (Northrop Grumman)

BY JARED KELLER 

Pew pew pew!

Slowly but surely, the Army is inching towards fielding its first true combat-capable, high-powered laser weapon mounted on a Stryker infantry carrier vehicle.

The service announced on Tuesday that it had successfully completed its first-ever Directed Energy-Maneuver Short-Range Air Defense (DE M-SHORAD) “combat shoot-off” between two unique laser systems at Fort Sill in Oklahoma earlier this summer. 

The shoot-off saw the two 50-kilowatt laser weapons — developed in a competition between defense contractors Northrop Grumman and Raytheon — participate in “a series of vignettes designed to emulate realistic threats and combat scenarios,” according to the service.

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Science & Technology News, Weapons

THREE WORDS: SUPERSONIC. COMBAT. DRONES.

SKYNET IN THE SKY, BASICALLY.

Fly Like an Arrow

A Singapore-based aerospace company has developed a combat drone capable of reaching supersonic speeds. 

Kelley Aerospace unveiled their concept for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) called the Arrow last week, according to Auto Evolution. The drone’s capable of flying more than 2,600 nautical miles at mach 2.1, or 1,611 miles per hour. That means the drone can fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in a little over three hours — all while breaking the sound barrier.

Oh, and: It looks, straight up, like a UFO. 

Continue reading… “THREE WORDS: SUPERSONIC. COMBAT. DRONES.”
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AI, military drones, Science & Technology News, Weapons

AI warning : Robot soldiers only 15 years away from ‘changing face’ of warfare – expert

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) empowered fighting robots will soon transform combat, a military expert has warned.

General Sir Nick Carter, the UK’s Chief of Defence last week suggested the British Army may one day fill its ranks with “robot soldiers”. This may seem like a daunting prospect, and one that will never come to fruition – but a military expert has now predicted such highly-intelligent military robots are actually a mere 15 years away from “changing the face” of warfare.

The high-tech machines will employ cutting-edge AI to inform strategy concerning the “layout of the land and possible threats” in real-time, Charles Glar has revealed.

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AI, Automation, Military, Robots, Science & Technology News, Weapons

UK Army could be 25-percent robotic by 2030, says British general

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Do you want Skynet? Because this is how you get Skynet

The big picture: The UK military is moving forward with plans to develop and deploy several thousand combat robots, some which might be autonomous. So far, militaries worldwide have avoided using unmanned technologies in combat situations. Semi-autonomous drones have a pilot who is always at the controls, so humans make the final strike decisions, not AI.

British Army leaders think that by 2030 nearly a quarter of the UK’s ground troops will be robots. That is almost 30,000 autonomous and remote-controlled fighting machines deployed within about a decade.

“I suspect we could have an army of 120,000, of which 30,000 might be robots, who knows?” General Sir Nick Carter told The Guardian in an interview.

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Automation, Robots, Science & Technology News, Weapons

‘Robot soldiers could make up quarter of British army by 2030s’

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General Sir Nick Carter, chief of the Defence Staff,

Thirty thousand “robot soldiers” could form an integral part of the British army in the 2030s, working alongside humans in and around the frontline, the head of the armed forces said in a television interview on Sunday.

Gen Sir Nick Carter said the armed forces needed “to think about how we measure effects in a different way” – and he called on the government to proceed with the previously promised five-year integrated defence review.

Speaking to Sky News on the morning of Remembrance Sunday, the chief of the defence staff suggested that “an armed forces that’s designed for the 2030s” could include large numbers of autonomous or remotely controlled machines.

“I mean, I suspect we could have an army of 120,000, of which 30,000 might be robots, who knows?” Carter said, although he stressed he was not setting any particular target in terms of future numbers.

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drones, Military, Science & Technology News, Weapons

The Navy’s underwater drone is the future of submarine warfare

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The Navy could theoretically procure many armed Orcas for the price of a single Virginia.

Here’s What You Need To Remember: The Orca isn’t the first underwater drone under construction, and it certainly won’t be the last.

At a military parade celebrating its 70th anniversary, the People’s Republic of China unveiled, amongst many other exotic weapons, two HSU-001 submarines—the world’s first large diameter autonomous submarines to enter military service.

The unarmed robot submarines visibly had communication masts and sonar aperture suggestive of their intended role as tireless underwater surveillance systems intended to report on the movements of warships and submarines of other navies in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

While the United States may not be the first to operationally drone a Large Diameter Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (LDUUV), it is not far behind with a slightly smaller sub Extra Large UUV. In February 2019, the Navy awarded Boeing a $274.4 million contract to build four (later increased to five) Orca autonomous vehicles, beating out a more elongated and cylindrical design proposed by Lockheed Martin.

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Boeing, Military, new technology, Science & Technology News, Weapons

General Atomics and Boeing’s new liquid laser could win high-energy weapon race

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The powerful, compact HELLADS liquid laser

The military has been striving to build a laser powerful enough to make an effective weapon literally since the first ruby laser was demonstrated back in 1960. Now General Atomics is working with Boeing BA +6.8% to finally realize the goal of a truly weapons-grade laser using new ‘liquid laser’ technology to break through the barrier holding back current devices.

The original ruby laser had an output of a fraction of watt, and could not be scaled up. Many other types of laser have been developed over the last sixty years, with generous military funding channeled into those that showed weapons potential. The gas dynamic laser, which resembled a lasing reaction taking place inside a rocket motor, was highly classified in the 1970s. One researcher joked that the best way to harm an enemy with such a massive a laser was to drop it on them.

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Augmented Reality, Military, Science & Technology News, Weapons

The US Army is testing augmented reality goggles for dogs

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The AR goggles will allow military canine handlers to issue commands remotely.

 

The US Army is trialing a new technology that could “fundamentally change how military canines are deployed in the future” — a pair of augmented reality goggles for dogs.

Dogs are put to many uses in modern militaries, from detecting explosives and searching for targets to accompanying infantry patrols in dangerous areas. Usually, handlers issue commands to their dogs using hand signals or laser pointers, but these techniques require line of sight with the dog, limiting how far canines can stray from their humans.

AR reality goggles, though, could let military dogs operate at a distance without handlers losing control. The goggles have a built-in camera that transmits live footage remotely, and a heads-up display that can be used to show commands to the dogs. A dog could be directed to search a specific location, for example, while their handler stays hidden.

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Military, Science & Technology News, Space, SpaceX, Weapons

Work begins on Starlink-like constellation of small hypersonic missile-tracking satellites

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The Pentagon’s grand space strategy envisions a shift from larger, expensive satellites to massive constellations of smaller, easier to replace ones.

 The U.S. military has hired L3Harris and SpaceX to build small satellites with powerful infrared sensors capable of spotting and tracking ballistic missiles and hypersonic weapons. These satellites could become part of a large and broader early warning constellation with hundreds of space-based sensors and communications nodes watching for incoming threats, monitoring their flight, and potentially providing targeting data to missile defense assets.

The Pentagon announced that the Space Development Agency (SDA) had awarded the contracts to L3Harris and SpaceX, worth around $193.5 million and just over $149 million, respectively, on Oct. 5, 2020. Each company will be responsible for building four satellites, each with a wide field of view (WFOV) overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) sensor, in support of work on what SDA calls Tranche 0 of the Tracking Layer of the planned overarching early warning constellation.

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government, Military, Science & Technology News, Weapons

The US military’s heat weapon is real and painful. Here’s what it does.

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It is in the same category as a sonic tool that’s known as “the voice of God.”

Earlier this week, an NPR report uncovered an exchange from June 1, in which a military police officer wanted to know if the D.C. National Guard owned a pain-inducing heat weapon for potentially using on protesters. He also asked about a powerful auditory communication system that’s been compared to the “voice of God.”

The weapon, the Active Denial System (ADS), is a real thing, as is the sound system, which is called a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD).

In documents published by NPR, a member of the National Guard recounted the email thread in which the question was asked, and stated: “I responded that the DC National Guard was not in possession of either an LRAD or an ADS.”

The fact that a controversial weapon was floated as a possible means of dealing with what the Washington Post described as “peaceful protesters” has sparked outrage, with the ACLU writing on Twitter: “REMINDER: Our government shouldn’t be conspiring to use heat rays against us for exercising our constitutional rights.”

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Aviation, military drones, Weapons

Anduril’s new drone offers to inject more AI into warfare

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A swarm of Ghost 4s, controlled by a single person on the ground, can perform reconnaissance missions like searching for enemy weapons or soldiers.

Anduril’s Ghost 4 drone can carry systems capable of jamming enemy communications or an infrared laser to direct weapons at a target.

THIS SPRING, A team of small drones, each resembling a small, sensor-laden helicopter, scoured a lush stretch of wilderness near Irvine, California. They spent hours circling the sky, seeking, among other things, surface-to-air missile launchers lurking in the brush.

The missiles they found weren’t enemy ones. They were props for early test flights of a prototype military drone stuffed with artificial intelligence—the latest product from Anduril, a defense-tech startup founded by Palmer Luckey, the creator of Oculus Rift.

The new drone, the Ghost 4, shows the potential for AI in military systems. Luckey says it is the first generation that can perform various reconnaissance missions, including searching an area for enemy hardware or soldiers, under the control of a single person on the ground. The vehicle uses machine learning (the method behind most modern AI) to analyze imagery and identify targets, but it also relies on more conventional rules-based software for critical control and decisionmaking among swarm teammates.

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Driverless vehicles, Military, Science & Technology News, Weapons

U.S. military getting closer to autonomous off road combat vehicles

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Researchers at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory and the University of Texas at Austin have developed an algorithm that could have big implications for autonomous vehicles. With the algorithm, autonomous ground vehicles are able to improve their own navigation systems by watching a human drive.

The approach developed by the researchers is called adaptive planner parameter learning from demonstration, or APPLD. It was tested on an Army experimental autonomous ground vehicle.

The research was published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters. The work is titled “APPLD: Adaptive Planner Parameter Learning From Demonstration.”

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