• New laser weapon dazzles, confuses pirates

    There were 430 pirate attacks last year, an increase of 5.6 percent on the previous year; in a bid to develop a suitable non-lethal weapon to help fend off this threat, BAE Systems studied pirate behavior; the conclusion was that an automatic weapon was needed, one that would not put any of the crew at risk, and one which would distract suspected pirates rather than harm them

  • U.S. to deploy see-all Gorgon Stare UAV

    New U.S. UAV will be equipped with nine cameras which can transmit live video images of physical movements across an entire town; the new airborne surveillance system can send dozens of live images to a maximum of ten soldiers on the ground who would use hand-held devices similar in size to an iPad or Kindle

  • Biometric technologies save lives in the field

    This is not your father’s military: Within minutes of knocking down the door of a suspected bomb maker in the Middle East, U.S. troops can fingerprint everyone they find inside, send scans across a satellite link, and find out if the subjects are suspected terrorists

  • New camera technology may give soldiers eyes in the back of their heads

    DARPA is looking for ideas on how to develop a small and light device which will give the user zoom vision, various forms of night sight, and act as a heads-up display besides; perhaps best of all, the proposed kit would also offer “full sphere awareness” — that is, eyes in the back of your head

  • Senate to ratify New START pact today

    The New START pact passed a key procedural hurdle on Tuesday when the Senate voted to bring the weapons pact between the United States and Russia to the floor of the Senate for a final vote, which is likely to be held today, Wednesday; the Senate voted 67-28 to pass a cloture motion, seemingly enough to assure final ratification; eleven Republicans joined with fifty-six Democrats to pass the cloture motion; it will take sixty-seven votes to ratify the New START pact; even if the U.S. arsenal is reduced by 30 percent, as stipulated in New START, the United States would still have 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads; there are signs that these aging systems need refurbishing and modernization — and the $80 billion over ten years earmarked for this purpose is a good investment

  • BAE develops vehicles for ground war of the future

    A range of technologies could improve the effectiveness and fuel efficiency of current military vehicles, while laying the groundwork for future fighting vehicles; BAE looked at 567 technologies and 244 vehicle concepts, which had to fit only two criteria — the vehicle could weigh no more than 30 tons, and had to carry an equivalent punch to a Challenger 2 tank; the company settled on seven future vehicles

  • General Atomic says its Blitzer rail gun already "tactically relevant"

    Last Friday the U.S. Navy tested a rail gun with muzzle energies of 64 megajoules; the gun aims to deliver a projectile to a target 200 miles away at speeds of up to Mach 7+; not to be outdone, General Atomics has just released information about how, back in September, it tested its own rail gun — dubbed the Blitzer; while the Navy researchers are still preoccupied with the velocity of the projectile and muzzle energy, GA says it is farther along in weaponizing its system, which it describes as already “tactically relevant”

  • DoE report warns of U.S. vulnerability to China's rare-earth supplies

    A U.S. Department of Energy report draws attention to the need to diversify the supply of rare Earth metals needed for clean technology and defense; China currently supplies 97 percent of the world’s rare Earth elements; the largest U.S. producer of rare earths last week announced a $130 million funding deal with Japanese company Sumitomo that promises the financier “substantial quantities of rare-earth products”

  • U.S. Navy demonstrates 100-mile hypersonic rail gun test shot

    The latest test by the U.S. Navy of a rail gun saw a trial firing which pushed muzzle energy to a blistering 33 megajoules (MJ); the Navy wants to achieve lab trials at 64 MJ, potentially offering 200 mile range with projectiles striking at Mach 5, before trying to build an actual weapon

  • U.S. Army envisions an XM-25 smart gunner in every squad from 2014

    U.S. military unveils XM-25 portable airburst artillery piece plans; the XM-25 shoots special, fat 25 mm projectiles which are more or less a cross between ordinary rifle bullets and 40 mm launched grenades; the XM-25 rounds have an added special feature: an extremely accurate time fuse which is set electronically by the gun’s systems at the moment of firing, permitting them to explode in midair at a precise distance from the muzzle

  • Ray gun runs at full power for six hours

    Laser weapons are potentially very powerful, but until now they had one major drawback: All the earlier versions of the weapon were essentially giant rocket engines that burned chemical fuels and reached impressive powers; some even shot down test missiles; all of them, however, only ran for seconds at a time, and needed special fuels that would have created nightmares for battlefield logistics; a new Northrop Grumman ray gun has now run at full power for more than six hours

  • USAF looking to emulate fruit-flies for killer insect swarm drones

    The U.S. Air Force is studying how fruit flies maneuver within a heavily instrumented “simulation tunnel” in order to develop tiny, potentially lethal insect-sized flying robots; tiny military swarm droids could scatter across towns or cities to locate or spy on persons of interest to the U.S. military; they might even be able to land on the back of someone’s neck and blow his head off using some kind of tiny warhead

  • U.S. Air Force creates powerful supercomputer out of PS3s

    The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has connected 1,760 PlayStation 3 systems together to create the fastest interactive computer in the entire Defense Department; the Condor Cluster, as the group of systems is known, is capable of performing 500 trillion floating point operations per second (500 TFLOPS)

  • Color-changing "blast badge" detects exposure to explosive shock waves

    Researchers develop a color-changing patch that could be worn on soldiers’ helmets and uniforms to indicate the strength of exposure to blasts from explosives in the field; blast-induced traumatic brain injury is the “signature wound” of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; with no objective information of relative blast exposure, soldiers with brain injury may not receive appropriate medical care and are at risk of being returned to the battlefield too soon

  • Advanced UAVs help war on terrorism -- and companies' bottom line

    Ever-more sophisticated UAVs giving U.S. better eyes, ears, and even noses; new sensors enable flying drones to listen in on cell phone conversations and pinpoint the location of the caller on the ground; some can even “smell” the air and sniff out chemical plumes emanating from a potential underground nuclear laboratory; these advances mean a growing and potentially huge business for the defense industry: the drone electronics industry now generates about $3 billion in revenue, but this is expected to double to $6 billion in the next eight years