The U.S. Air Force says it has picked aviation startup JetZero to design and build a full-size demonstrator aircraft with a blended wing body, or BWB, configuration. The goal is for the aircraft, which has already received the informal moniker XBW-1, to be flying by 2027. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall made the Read more about Blended Wing Body Demonstrator Jet Contract Awarded By Air Force[…]
War in Europe has caused Ukraine’s military spend to jump up by 640%. How do the world’s largest military budgets compare? Source: Mapped: World’s Top 40 Largest Military Budgets
The United Kingdom’s deal to buy three, rather than the previously planned five Boeing E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft for the Royal Air Force “represents extremely poor value for money” and “an absolute folly.” Those are among the conclusions of a report published today by the U.K. Defense Committee, a body Read more about UK buys 3 radar E-7 planes for 90% of the price of original 5, creating huge capability gap, shows how broken procurement is[…]
[…] President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly trying to reverse a decision to relocate the Space Command’s headquarters from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama, largely due to concerns regarding the state’s strict anti-abortion law that was put into effect last summer. In December 2022, the Biden administration directed the U.S. Air Force to conduct a review Read more about Space Force doesn’t want HQ in anti-abortion Alabama, so their congressman Targets Air Force Funds[…]
In a future fight, control of advanced drones belonging to the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force could be passed back and forth between assets from either service as the situation demands. Uncrewed platforms are set to make up the majority of the Navy’s future carrier air wings, with up to 60 percent of all Read more about Navy Carrier-Based Drones Will Be Able To Be Controlled By The Air Force[…]
An Australian engineering company has created a cardboard drone that runs on open source software, standard hardware, and can be assembled and flown with no prior experience. The Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System (PPDS) costs less than $3,500 apiece, a price made possible by the craft’s use of FOSS and commercial-off-the-shelf hardware. Michael Partridge, SYPAQ’s Read more about Cardboard drones running open source software take flight[…]
To better cope with threats emanating from Russia, the countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden have created a unified Nordic air defense alliance, pooling the resources of their air forces. They have upwards of 300 fighter jets between them as well as training, transport and surveillance fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. Those four nations on Read more about Nordic Air Defense Pact Combines Forces Of Hundreds Of Fighter Aircraft[…]
Australian airline Qantas issued standing orders to its pilots last week advising them that some of its fleet experienced interference on VHF stations from sources purporting to be the Chinese Military. The Register has confirmed the reports. The interference has been noticed in the western Pacific and South China Sea. Qantas has advised its crew Read more about Purported Chinese warships interfering with passenger planes[…]
The US believes a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down over its territory is part of a wider fleet that has spanned five continents. “The United States was not the only target of this broader programme,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. […] Citing unnamed officials, the Washington Post reported that the US Read more about Chinese balloon part of worldwide fleet, US officials say[…]
[…] This information was included in the Defense Department’s annual Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China report, more commonly known as the China Military Power Report (CMPR), which serves as an assessment of China’s current defense strategy and military capabilities. While the CMPR analyzes a wide array of Chinese military advancements, Read more about More Details On China’s Exotic Orbital Hypersonic Weapon Come To Light[…]
New, highly detailed images of the artificial islands China has built in the South China Sea have emerged. They show the intricacies of the radar installations, airfields, and naval gun emplacements, among buildings and other structures, located there. Captured by photographer Ezra Acayan flying in an aircraft near the man-made fortresses in the Spratly Islands, Read more about China’s Man-Made South China Sea Islands Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before[…]
RAND Corporation researchers developed and supported the implementation of a methodology to assess the value of resource options for U.S. Navy cybersecurity investments. The proposed methodology features 12 scales in two categories (impact and exploitability) that allow the Navy to score potential cybersecurity investments in the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) process. The authors include a Read more about A Methodology for Quantifying the Value of Cybersecurity Investments in the Navy[…]
In recent years you’ve probably seen a couple of photos of tablets and smartphones strapped to the armor of soldiers, especially US Special Forces. The primary app loaded on most of those devices is ATAK or Android Tactical Assault Kit. It allows the soldier to view and share geospatial information, like friendly and enemy positions, Read more about The TAK Ecosystem: Open SourceMilitary Coordination[…]
[…] A report today from Breaking Defense confirmed that Lockheed Martin delivered its LANCE high-energy laser weapon to the Air Force in February this year. In this context, LANCE stands for “Laser Advancements for Next-generation Compact Environments.” The recipient for the new weapon is the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, which is charged with Read more about First Laser Weapon For A Fighter Delivered To The Air Force[…]
Boeing has hit a milestone with its anti-jam satellite communications. According to the aircraft maker, it demonstrated successful integration of its Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) software elements with an industry partner’s user terminal. The ground-based military satellite communications system allows Boeing-built Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellites and terminals to transmit data using the US Read more about Boeing demos ground-based satellite anti-jam system[…]
Thesis: pretty soon Russia will stop their war. They have linked up the landmass to the Crimea, control access to the Black Sea and that was their goal all along. They don’t have enough soldiers to take over and administer the Ukraine. The police forces in the Ukraine will never align with a Russian puppet Read more about Opinion: Russia is now reaching endgame in Ukraine[…]
n undersea fiberoptic cable located between mainland Norway and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean has been put out of action in a still-mysterious incident. The outage on the subsea communications cable — the furthest north of its kind anywhere in the world — follows an incident last year in which different cables linking Read more about Undersea Cable Connecting Norway With Arctic Satellite Station Has Been Mysteriously Severed[…]
The Federal Aviation Administration has finally put out an official statement regarding a still very mysterious ground stop order that it issued to all aircraft in the western U.S. and Hawaii yesterday around 2:30 PM PST. While the incident is now confirmed, there are still a significant number of unanswered questions, including the most important Read more about FAA’s Statement On Mysterious US wide Air Traffic Halt after Korean missile launch Leaves More Questions Than Answers[…]
[…]DARPA’s Guaranteeing AI Robustness against Deception (GARD) program […] focuses on a few core objectives. One of which is the development of a testbed for characterizing ML defenses and assessing the scope of their applicability […] Ensuring that emerging defenses are keeping pace with – or surpassing – the capabilities of known attacks is critical Read more about DARPA Open Sources Resources to Aid Evaluation of Adversarial AI Defenses[…]
If the Pentagon is going to rely on algorithms and artificial intelligence, it’s got to solve the problem of “brittle AI.” A top Air Force official recently illustrated just how far there is to go. In a recent test, an experimental target recognition program performed well when all of the conditions were perfect, but a Read more about This Air Force Targeting AI Thought It Had a 90% Success Rate. It Was More Like 25%[…]
[…] A contract for the sale of the 80 Rafales was agreed today between Eric Trappier, Chairman and CEO of Dassault, and Tareq Abdul Raheem Al Hosani, CEO of Tawazun Economic Council, which is responsible for security and defense acquisitions on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dassault describes the deal as “the largest Read more about The UAE Just Became The Biggest Export Customer For Dassault’s Rafale Fighter[…]
Draken International has signed a contract to bring yet more F-16 fighter jets to its fast-expanding “red air” fleet, as the adversary air support contractor adds ex-Norwegian Vipers to the dozen former Dutch examples it acquired earlier this year. Up to 12 F-16s acquired from Norway will form part of an impressive private tactical jet Read more about Draken Doubles Its Fleet Of Private Aggressor F-16s With A Dozen Surplus Jets From Norway[…]
Apparently there are many people using drugs in the armed forces so Henk Kamp, idiot in charge, has decided that drug testing is needed. Besides it being a massive invasion of personal privacy, this problem needs another solution. Source: Defensie wil militairen preventief testen op drugs | Nieuwsbericht | Defensie.nl
U.S. officials believe that a DJI Mavic 2, a small quadcopter-type drone, with a thick copper wire attached underneath it via nylon cords was likely at the center of an attempted attack on a power substation in Pennsylvania last year. An internal U.S. government report that was issued last month says that this is the Read more about Likely Drone Attack On U.S. Power Grid Revealed In New Intelligence Report[…]
The U.S. Navy has successfully invented a special electronic device that is designed to stop people from talking. A form of non-lethal weapon, the new electronic device effectively repeats a speaker’s own voice back at them, and only them, while they attempt to talk. It was developed, and patented back in 2019 but has only Read more about A New Navy Weapon Actually Stops You From Talking[…]