Category: military – Page 224
Friend, foe or unknown force flying overhead? Congress should find out
The good news is that America already possesses vast sensor networks, ranging from the depths of the oceans to the harsh bleakness of space, capable of collecting the requisite information. All that Congress need do at this juncture is to require the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence to review the UAP issue and deliver a report providing a comprehensive assessment. This report should include not only an estimate of the situation but a description of the structure and processes required to ensure effective collection and analysis going forward.
Since 2015, dozens of Navy F-18 fighter jets have encountered unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAPs) — once commonly referred to as UFOs — off the East Coast of the United States, some not far from the nation’s capital. Encounters have been reported by other military aircraft and civilian airliners elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad, too, including videos shot by airline passengers.
What these UAPs were and who was flying them — whether friends, foes or unknown forces — remains a mystery. Yet careful examination of the data inevitably leads to one possible, disturbing conclusion: A potential adversary of the United States has mastered technologies we do not yet understand to achieve capabilities we cannot yet match.
It is long past time for Congress to discover the answers to those questions and to share at least some of its conclusions with the public.
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Urban Warfare Project
In the future, I can say with very high degrees of confidence, the American Army is probably going to be fighting in urban areas. We need to man, organize, train and equip the force for operations in urban areas, highly dense urban areas, and that’s a different construct. We’re not organized like that right now.
– Gen. Mark A. Milley, Chief of Staff of the Army.
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The Next Battlefield: Connected, Augmented and Urban
The wars of the future will be fought in megacities around the world by soldiers connected — and possibly even augmented — by neural implants and AIn this episode, we examine how military leaders are preparing for a radical shift in combat.
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The U.S. Military Is Buying a $130 Million Laser Weapon
Pew pew o.o
“High energy laser weapons have been a system that the United States has wanted to add into their defense portfolio since the invention of the laser,” said senior VP of contracts at Dynetics Ronnie Chronister in a press release.
The system was designed to defend against missiles, rockets and artillery, according to Defense News. It could also prove useful against military drones and other unmanned aircraft.
The news comes after luxury automaker Rolls-Royce unveiled a new hybrid power source intended to continuously power 100-kilowatt laser weapons earlier this week. According to today’s statement, Rolls-Royce will provide the power source and thermal management system for the HEL TVD.
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New Age of Autonomous Jet Fighters on Horizon
The scenario military thinkers propose would double the number of jet fighters in a typical battle formation from four to eight. But instead of the additional aircraft being identical to an F-35 joint strike fighter, or F-15E Strike Eagle, they are low-cost, unmanned jets.
One might carry extra air-to-air missiles. Another may only have a sensor suite to boost situational awareness for the pilots in the traditional aircraft.
Whatever their payload, the enemy has to contend with double the number of targets on their radars. They have multiple “dilemmas” in front of them, giving U.S. forces an asymmetric advantage.
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Tesla battery researcher is ‘excited’ about new battery tech developed by the Army
A new Li-ion battery technology developed by the US Army has piqued the interest of Jeff Dahn, Tesla’s main battery research partner.
In the latest issue of the journal Nature, the CCDC Army Research Laboratory (ARL), which is an element of the U.S. Army, released a study demonstrating a new battery technology based on a new cathode chemistry.
They claim that the chemistry is “completely free of transition metal and delivering unprecedented high capacity by reversibly storing Li-ion at high potential (~4.2 V).”
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What Insurgency Will Look Like in 2030
With the rise of enhanced being the world will change at a fast pace similar games such as black ops 3 are a proper representation of possible outcomes in warfare. Like for instance sentient warfighting robot beings or cybernetically enhanced humans. The extremes of these also are seen in wetware which can essentially not have many limits so increased strength intelligence really anything you can imagine. Really sci-fi games such as halo are not far off at the possibilities of warfare. Really we are only limited by our imagination.
The author of “Ghost Fleet” has some guesses — and some questions that U.S. defenders will have to answer.
Robots, artificial intelligence, cyberwar, 3D printing, bio-enhancements, and a new geopolitical competition; the 21st century is being shaped by a range of momentous, and scary, new trends and technologies. We should also expect them to shape the worlds of insurgency and terrorism.
With so much change, it is too early to know all that will shake out from these new technologies in the years leading toward 2030 and beyond. But we can identify a few key trends of what will matter for war and beyond, and resulting questions that future counter-insurgents will likely have to wrestle with. Below are three, pulled from a recent New America report on what the tech and wars of 2030 might portend.
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