A swarm of 150 drones buzzed over Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine’s head during this year’s Super Bowl half time show, spelling out the words “One Love.”
It was a dazzling display of drone technology — and military developers in the United States and United Kingdom are increasingly interested in using something similar, but with a very different goal in mind: to surround enemy aircraft, confusing them and forcing them out of the sky.
The Chinese military is looking to procure test systems for magnetized plasma artillery, according to a notice on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) weapon and equipment procurement website weain.mil.cn last week.
Released on Wednesday and due expire on Thursday, the notice invites tenders for a theory-testing and a launch system for magnetized plasma artillery.
Although the weapon sounds as if it comes from a sci-fi movie, it will probably not shoot high-energy plasma but ultra-high velocity cannon shells.
Circa 2017
Someday, it could carry supplies to soldiers on the battlefield.
Since 2015, when images of a Russian nuclear torpedo first leaked on state television, the world has asked itself why Moscow would build a weapon that could end all life on Earth.
While all nuclear weapons can kill thousands in the blink of an eye and leave radiation poisoning the environment for years to come, Russia’s new doomsday device, called “Poseidon,” takes steps to maximize this effect.
The Pentagon is funding brain-implant research aimed at creating neurally “enhanced” soldiers.
WASHINGTON — A new U.S. intelligence report warns that both China and Russia are investing in weapons that could attack U.S. satellites and assets in space, and that both nations are now preparing to use space as a battlefield.
Last month, the Defense Intelligence Agency released a report about China’s military capabilities, warning that the Asian country was making advances in counterspace technology that could threaten U.S. satellites responsible for communications, reconnaissance, GPS and early warnings of missile launches.
But a new DIA report, “Challenges to Security in Space,” warns that both China and Russia are making advances in space technology, and that both are likely to turn to space early on in any major military conflict to cripple their adversaries.
Dr. David Sandwell, a geophysicist at Scripps, has been awarded American Geophysical Union’s Charles A. Whitten Medal for creating the world’s first comprehensive, high-resolution map of the ocean floor.
In a long-running project sponsored by the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research, Sandwell combined satellite data with sonar measurements to develop a global depth chart of unprecedented detail. His work has charted thousands of previously unidentified mountains, trenches, and other features in the deepest and least explored parts of the ocean. The work is not only of academic interest: it provides crucial intelligence and scientific information for the Navy.
“Dr. Sandwell’s groundbreaking work provides the first high-resolution map of the ocean floor,” said Dr. Tom Drake, head of ONR’s Ocean Battlespace and Expeditionary Access Department. “This has opened new research areas for oceanography, marine geology and geophysics — critical topics for the U.S. Navy.”
