Lifeboat Foundation

US Air Force wishes to artificially increase plasma density in the ionosphere so that we can have better radio reception.

The big kahuna of American rocket companies is the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin that until this year held a monopoly on the lucrative business of launching rockets for the US Air Force.

But that monopoly is no more. The company faces a new era of competition as Elon Musk’s maturing SpaceX aims to fly more space missions in one year than ULA does, and as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin breaks ground on a new factory for orbital rockets.

ULA, for its part, isn’t sitting still. “I came here to transform the company, position it in this new competitive marketplace with all these different players,” says Tony Bruno, who took the CEO job at ULA in August 2014 after a three-decade career in Lockheed’s missile-defense business. In his first full year in charge, ULA returned more than $400 million in operating profits to its two owners, but the company must prepare for when its final no-bid launch contract expires in 2019.

Continue reading “SpaceX’s biggest rival is developing ‘space trucks’ to ferry cargo in an orbital economy” »

What he says is mostly true. Russia and China will build robot soldiers. Russia is actually ahead of the US in robotic tank type vehicles. But, i doubt these countries will hesitate to raise an army of robot combat soldiers when that becomes practical, probably around 2025’ish, which would force the US to field their own.

The future of war will involve autonomous robots instead of humans, according to Air Force General and Vice Chair of the Joint of Chiefs of Staff Paul Selva, who warned enemies could build “Terminator”-like machines to fight in battlefields.

DARPA’s quest to perfect the portable clock for GPS, and other military assets. Time release perfected is a nice added feature.

Time for an upgrade.

Russia is working to deploy a revolutionary hypersonic maneuvering strike missile by 2020, according to a Russian defense industry leader.

Boris Obnosov, director of the state-run Tactical Missiles Corp., told a Russian news agency the new hypersonic missile will be capable of penetrating advanced missile defenses and represents a revolutionary advance in military technology.

“It’s obvious that with such speeds—when missiles will be capable of flying through the atmosphere at speeds of seven to 12 times the speed of sound, all [air] defense systems will be weakened considerably,” Obnosov told the Rambler News Service this week.

Continue reading “Russia to Field Hypersonic Missiles by 2020” »

No surprises here.

(Bloomberg) — While the West sees Russia as a cyber predator, hackers in the East increasingly view it as prey, according to online security company Kaspersky Lab, which says there?s been a sharp spike in attacks from China.

Hmmmm.

The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps should advance the way they use unmanned systems, favoring greater autonomy over remotely-controlled missions and developing multi-vehicle systems such as swarms and cascaded operations, according to a recently released report by the Defense Science Board.

The DSB report, requested by the Pentagon’s acquisition chief in November 2014, notes a variety of Pentagon-wide challenges in developing, testing, fielding and operating autonomous systems, such as operator trust, cyber security and developing a test and evaluation plan for learning systems.

Continue reading “Board Recommends Further Use Of Autonomy In Sea Control, Support Of Ground Troops” »

Ever wanted to down a neighborhood nuisance drone and couldn’t? Or maybe you have some frustration that has built over time and want to release it. Well, here is your chance. DARPA wants you to down a rogue drone.

The Pentagon’s futuristic think tank is thinking about how to stop errant drones and it wants the public’s help. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Tactical Technology Office this week announced a request for information to help create “novel, flexible, mobile layered” anti-drone soluti…

I see a future in TSA, FBI, CIA, local law enforcement, insurance companies’ fraud units, etc.

Purdue is leading part of an international effort to develop a system for the military that would detect doctored images and video and determine specifically how they were manipulated.

“This team has some of the most senior and skilled people out there in the field, some of whom helped to create the area of media forensics,” said Edward Delp, Purdue’s Charles William Harrison Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, in a press release.

Continue reading “System might detect doctored images and videos for the military” »