Lifeboat Foundation

The wars of the future will be fought in megacities around the world by soldiers connected — and possibly even augmented — by neural implants and AIn this episode, we examine how military leaders are preparing for a radical shift in combat.

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Pew pew o.o

“High energy laser weapons have been a system that the United States has wanted to add into their defense portfolio since the invention of the laser,” said senior VP of contracts at Dynetics Ronnie Chronister in a press release.

The system was designed to defend against missiles, rockets and artillery, according to Defense News. It could also prove useful against military drones and other unmanned aircraft.

Continue reading “The U.S. Military Is Buying a $130 Million Laser Weapon” »

The scenario military thinkers propose would double the number of jet fighters in a typical battle formation from four to eight. But instead of the additional aircraft being identical to an F-35 joint strike fighter, or F-15E Strike Eagle, they are low-cost, unmanned jets.

One might carry extra air-to-air missiles. Another may only have a sensor suite to boost situational awareness for the pilots in the traditional aircraft.

Whatever their payload, the enemy has to contend with double the number of targets on their radars. They have multiple “dilemmas” in front of them, giving U.S. forces an asymmetric advantage.

Continue reading “New Age of Autonomous Jet Fighters on Horizon” »

Scenes from inside the Arctic Circle show a rapidly growing military presence.

A new Li-ion battery technology developed by the US Army has piqued the interest of Jeff Dahn, Tesla’s main battery research partner.

In the latest issue of the journal Nature, the CCDC Army Research Laboratory (ARL), which is an element of the U.S. Army, released a study demonstrating a new battery technology based on a new cathode chemistry.

Continue reading “Tesla battery researcher is ‘excited’ about new battery tech developed by the Army” »

The EU is funding the development of AI-powered drones that would autonomously patrol Europe’s borders. The project’s potential for military use can’t be ignored.

With the rise of enhanced being the world will change at a fast pace similar games such as black ops 3 are a proper representation of possible outcomes in warfare. Like for instance sentient warfighting robot beings or cybernetically enhanced humans. The extremes of these also are seen in wetware which can essentially not have many limits so increased strength intelligence really anything you can imagine. Really sci-fi games such as halo are not far off at the possibilities of warfare. Really we are only limited by our imagination.

The author of “Ghost Fleet” has some guesses — and some questions that U.S. defenders will have to answer.

Robots, artificial intelligence, cyberwar, 3D printing, bio-enhancements, and a new geopolitical competition; the 21st century is being shaped by a range of momentous, and scary, new trends and technologies. We should also expect them to shape the worlds of insurgency and terrorism.

Continue reading “What Insurgency Will Look Like in 2030” »

From autonomous nuclear submarines to algorithms detecting a threat, to robot-guided high-speed missiles, artificial intelligence could revolutionise nuclear weapons – risking some profound ethical conundrums – a recent report reveals.

Researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and US Army Research Lab (ARL) have taken a critical step on the path to high energy batteries by improving their water-in-salt battery with a new type of chemical transformation of the cathode that creates a reversible solid salt layer, a phenomenon yet unknown in the field of water-based batteries.

Building on their previous discoveries of the water-in-salt electrolytes reported in Science in 2015, the researchers added a new cathode. This new cathode material, lacking transition metal, operates at an average potential of 4.2 volts with excellent cycling stability, and delivers an unprecedented energy density comparable, or perhaps higher than, non-aqueous Li-ion batteries. The authors report their work on May 9 in the journal Nature.

“The University of Maryland and ARL research has produced the most creative new battery chemistry I have seen in at least 10 years,” said Prof. Jeffrey Dahn of Dalhousie University in Canada, an expert in the field not affiliated with the research. “However, it remains to be seen if a practical device with long lifetime can be created.”

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