• Heavy Israeli air strikes near Damascus destroy Iranian missile shipment to Hezbollah

    Israel launched heavy airstrikes Friday and Sunday on a military base near Damascus, destroying shipments of sophisticated Iranian Fateh-110 missiles to Hezbollah. These were the second and third such strikes in as many months. Israel’s first strike on Syrian targets took place on 30 January. That strike destroyed advanced SA-17 surface-to-air missiles the Assad regime was trying to ship to Hezbollah on orders of Iran.

  • Central Washington State proposed for a UAV research and testing site

    The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 enacted by Congress calls for establishing six unmanned aircraft system research and testing sites in the United States. A consortium of Washington State-based organizations will soon submit the final section of a proposal to site an unmanned aircraft system research and testing facility in central Washington. If successful, the proposal to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will result in the FAA naming the Pacific Northwest Unmanned Aerial Systems Flight Center as one of six U.S. testing facilities later this year.

  • Seeking new ideas for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs)

    Troops operating in forward locations without telecommunication infrastructure often rely on a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) to communicate and share data. A constraint with current MANETs is they can only scale to around fifty nodes before network services become ineffective. DARPA is exploring new technologies unencumbered by Internet Protocols (IP) which could be the key to enabling large MANETs. The Internet facilitated far-reaching technical advances, but in this technology area the Internet may be the roadblock.

  • U.K. businessman convicted of selling fake explosives detectors

    James McCormick, a British businessman, was convicted of having made millions in profits from selling fake bomb detectors to Iraq, Georgia, and several other countries. McCormick bought $20 golf ball finders in the United States, then sold the devices, which had no working electronics, for $40,000 each. The Iraqi government used more than $40 million in U.S. aid money to buy 6,000 of the devices, despite being warned by the U.S. military that the devices were a sham. The Iraqi military used the fake detectors at check-points, leading to scores of soldiers and civilians being killed by suicide trucks which went through the check points undetected. The police in Kenya says it will continue to use the devices.

  • New fertilizer can be used to grow food – but not build bombs

    Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is used in agriculture, but when mixed with a fuel such as diesel, it is highly explosive. It was used in about 65 percent of the 16,300 homemade IEDs in Afghanistan in 2012.About 1,900 troops were killed or wounded in IED attacks in 2012, 60 percent of American combat casualties. There have been more than 17,000 global IED incidents in 123 countries in the past two years. Timothy McVeigh used ammonium nitrate in Oklahoma City in 1995. Scientists have developed a fertilizer that helps plants grow but cannot detonate a bomb.

  • Israel's military intelligence: Assad forces used chemical weapons

    Israeli military intelligence for the first time publicly said that the Syrian military used chemical weapons in an attack on civilians on 19 March. Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the head of AMAN’s (Israel’s military intelligence) research division, said that information gathered by Israel’s military intelligence, some of it pubic, some of it not, indicates that the weapon used in the attack outside Aleppo was sarin nerve gas. Brun said the Syrian regime has used sarin gas in several other small-scale attacks. Syria has the world’s largest arsenal of chemical weapons.

  • Winner announced in the first DARPA FANG Challenge

    The Ground Systems team outpaces more than 200 teams and 1,000 participants, submitting the winning mobility in the Fast Adaptable Next-Generation Ground Vehicle (FANG) Mobility/Drivetrain Challenge, and drivetrain subsystem design and claiming the $1 million prize.

  • Hagel reassures Israel, discusses large arms deal

    U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived in Israel Sunday for his first visit in the country as secretary of defense. Some elements in the pro-Israel lobby in the United States campaigned against Hagel’s nomination, and Hagel went out of his way to assure Israelis that his position on Israel is not what it was portrayed to be. One of the main reasons for Hagel’s visit is to discuss a major U.S. arms deal that would offer Israel missiles for its fighter aircraft – but also plus KC-135 refueling planes which could be used in a long-range strike on a country such as Iran. Until now, the United States refused to sell refueling tankers to Israel.

  • New submarine hunting program reaches milestones

    DARPA’s Distributed Agile Submarine Hunting (DASH) Program has tested two complementary prototype systems as part of its Phase 2 development effort. The prototypes demonstrated functional sonar, communications, and mobility at deep depths.  The successful tests furthered DASH’s goals to apply advances in deep-ocean distributed sonar to help find and track quiet submarines.

  • DARPA shows smaller pixels, smaller thermal cameras for soldiers

    The U.S. military uses long-wave infrared (LWIR) cameras as thermal imagers to detect humans at night. These cameras are usually mounted on vehicles as they are too large to be carried by a single soldier and are too expensive for individual deployment. DARPA researchers, however, recently demonstrated a new five-micron pixel LWIR camera that could make this class of camera smaller and less expensive.

  • U.S. Army weak on mobile devices security

    The U.S. Army has developed a mobile strategy to guide its adoption of mobile devices. A Department of Defense audit found that the Army has been lax in developing security guidelines for the use of the thousands of mobile devices now in service, and that these already-weak and insufficient security guidelines are inconsistently implemented.

  • Exploring the human brain to support national security

    The other day, at a White House event, President Barack Obama unveiled a new research initiative designed to revolutionize the understanding of the human brain. DARPA plans $50 million in 2014 investments to translate this increased understanding of brain function to create new capabilities.

  • Large robotic jellyfish to patrol the oceans

    The Office of Naval Research wants to place self-powering, autonomous machines in waters for the purposes of surveillance and monitoring the environment, in addition to other uses such as studying aquatic life, mapping ocean floors, and monitoring ocean currents. Researchers have built a device for that purpose — a life-like, autonomous robotic jellyfish the size and weight of a grown man, 5 foot 7 inches in length and weighing 170 pounds.

  • Growing U.S. concern over North Korean miscalculation

    U.S. officials are increasingly concerned with the escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula and the risk of miscalculation. The fear is that North Korea’s young leader, Kin Jong Un, may have launched the harsh rhetorical campaign against South Korea and the United States for domestic reasons – especially the need to establish his leadership credentials in the eyes of the skeptical North Korean military – but that his youth and inexperience may lead him to over-play his hand. “He is 28, 29 years old, and he keeps going further and further out, and I don’t know if he can get himself back in,” Rep. Peter King (R-New York), former chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said.

  • GAO lauds U.S. Navy's science and technology R&D

    The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is the Department of the Navy’s science and technology (S&T) provider, charged with discovering, developing, and transitioning innovative S&T to meet soldier needs. Since its inception in 1946, ONR research efforts have supported the development of the laser, GPS, transistors, fiber optics, radar, cell phones, and more. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report cites ONR’s Future Naval Capabilities (FNC) as an example of efficient, cost-effective program for making science and technology research functional.