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Happy 60th Birthday to Vela, Watchman for Nuclear Detonations
Sixty years ago last week, on Oct. 16, 1963, the United States launched a pair of satellites whose primary purpose was to determine the feasibility of using satellites to detect nuclear detonations in outer space. The satellites were part of the Vela program, initiated in 1959 to provide a nuclear detonation detection capability to verify compliance with nuclear treaties. On Sept. 27, 1984, the last of the Vela satellites were turned off.
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Residents Unprepared for Wildland Fires, Face Barriers in Implementing Prevention Measures
Individual and social factors contribute to lack of preparedness, despite many available residential wildfire mitigation and educational programs.
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DARPA Selects Teams to Boost Supply-and-Demand Network Resiliency
DARPA selected teams to develop new tools and analytics capable of helping the Department of Defense and its commercial partners improve systemic resilience in various supply-and-demand networks. Resilient Supply-and-Demand Network performers will create a general-purpose toolkit to improve systemic resilience in modern supply chains.
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Iran's “Axis of Resistance”: Network Designed to Create Chaos, Fight Tehran's Enemies
Iran has been increasingly vocal about the prospect of additional firepower entering the fray to score a victory for what Tehran calls the “axis of resistance” against Israel. The axis, refined by the Islamic republic over the last four decades, is a loose-knit network of proxies, Tehran-backed militant groups, and allied state actors who play an important role in Iran’s strategy to oppose the West, Arab foes, and, primarily, Israel.
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U.S.: China's Nuclear Arsenal Exceeding Predictions
China’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than expected, according to the latest unclassified Pentagon assessment, with a senior U.S. defense official warning the Chinese military is “on track to exceed previous projections.”
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How Does Israel's Last Invasion of Gaza Compare to Now?
Analyzing the 2014 Gaza War, the last time Israel invaded the strip, could give a window into how the coming days and weeks will play out.
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Israel's Strategic Crisis
After the crisis caused by being caught by surprise on 7 October, Israel now faces a second crisis as its government struggles to find a strategy to meet its stated objective of pushing Hamas out of Gaza and rendering it incapable of further atrocities in the future.
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Little Improvement in Mandated Disaster plans, Despite Required Updates
Hurricanes, floods, heat waves and other disasters are striking the United States with increased severity and frequency, and since 2000 the Federal Disaster Mitigation Act has required states and local jurisdictions to have plans in place to reduce damages from such events. There has been only little improvement over time to these plans, in spite of regularly required updates.
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U.S., Marshall Islands Security Deal Will Limit China’s Access to Western Pacific
The Republic of the Marshall Islands and the U.S. signed agreements Monday evening that will give Washington a stronger presence in the Western Pacific and the right to deny China and other nations access to the islands’ territorial waters.
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Gun Deaths Among Children and Teens Have Soared – but There Are Ways to Reverse the Trend
Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among U.S. children and teens following a huge decadelong rise. Recently published analyses found an 87% increase in firearm-involved fatalities among Americans under the age of 18 from 2011 to 2021.
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New Cyber Algorithm Shuts Down Malicious Robotic Attack
Researchers have designed an algorithm that can intercept a man-in-the-middle (MitM) cyberattack on an unmanned military robot and shut it down in seconds.
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Analysts Examine Israel’s Security Failures in Hamas Attack
Analysts point to numerous security failures by Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus ahead of Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel.
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Intelligence Failure or Not, the Israeli Military Was Unprepared to Respond to Hamas’ Surprise Attack
Intelligence can only do so much. The other key piece of defense is understanding how your enemy thinks and operates. And there the Israelis also appeared to struggle.
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Improving Strategy for Social Media Communications During Wildfires
In the last 20 years, disasters have claimed more than a million lives and caused nearly $3 trillion in economic losses worldwide. Specifically examining wildfires, researchers contradict existing crisis communication theory that recommends Disaster relief organizations (DROs) speak with one voice during the entirety of wildfire response operations.
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Not the Usual Suspects: New Interactive Lineup Boosts Eyewitness Accuracy
Allowing eyewitnesses to dynamically explore digital faces using a new interactive procedure can significantly improve identification accuracy compared to the video lineup and photo array procedures used by police worldwide.
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More headlines
The long view
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Using Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires
Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.