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Category: military

https://youtube.com/watch?v=WDUPM4BBkJ8

A colonel who runs a research directorate says the Nehreta did well in recent exercises at proving grounds outside Moscow.

The Russian military will field a new armed tank-like robot that “outperformed” manned platforms in recent exercises at the Alabino proving grounds outside Moscow.

That’s what Col. Oleg Pomazuev told the Russian news site “Military Review” in late October. Pomazuev runs the Department of Innovation Research at the Russian military’s Main Directorate of Research Activities, or GUNID.

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Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt says the US is at risk of falling behind in the race to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence. Speaking at a tech summit organized by national security think tank CNAS, Schmidt predicted that America’s lead in the field would continue “over the next five years” before China catches up “extremely quickly.”

“They are going to use this technology for both commercial and military objectives, with all sorts of implications,” said Schmidt, referencing a Chinese policy document outlining the country’s ambition to become the global leader in AI by 2030. Schmidt reiterated several familiar talking points in this debate, primarily that the US is failing to invest in basic research, and that a restrictive immigration policy hobbles the country’s ability to attract AI talent from overseas.

“Some of the very best people are in countries that we won’t let into America. Would you rather have them building AI somewhere else, or rather have them here?” said Schmidt. “Iran produces some of the top computer scientists in the world, and I want them here. To be clear, I want them working for Alphabet and Google!”

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South Korea is ‘almost 100 per cent certain’ that North Korean hackers have stolen the blueprints for their warships and submarines.

The despotic regime is thought to have taken the documents after hacking into Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co Ltd’s database in April last year.

North Korea has often been implicated in cyber attacks in South Korea and elsewhere but Pyongyang has either ignored or denied accusations of hacking.

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DARPA’s OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) program envisions future small-unit infantry forces using small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and/or small unmanned ground systems (UGSs) in swarms of 250 robots or more to accomplish diverse missions in complex urban environments. By leveraging and combining emerging technologies in swarm autonomy and human-swarm teaming, the program seeks to enable rapid development and deployment of breakthrough capabilities to the field.

To augment enhance OFFSET’s potential contributions to the warfighter, DARPA aims to engage with a wider developer and user audience through rapid technology-development and integration efforts called swarm sprints. Participants in these experiments—“sprinters”—can work with one or both integration teams and each other to create and test their own novel swarm tactics and enabling technologies.

For more information, visit www.darpa.mil.

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China has carried out a test flight of an unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, that could provide rapid cargo delivery to remote islets in the South China Sea without airstrips, in Beijing’s latest move to secure its presence in the disputed waters.

The drone – built from a modified low-cost fixed-wing plane – can carry 1.5 tonnes of cargo and land on a runway of just 200 metres, according to the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, which led the project.

It can also use a dirt track or grass field for take off and landing at military facilities that do not have an airfield, the institute said on its website on Friday.

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NASA’s new X3 thruster, which is being developed by researchers at the University of Michigan in collaboration with the agency and the US Air Force, has broken records in recent test. It’s hoped that the technology could be used to ferry humans to Mars.

The X3 is a type of Hall thruster, a design that uses a stream of ions to propel a spacecraft. Plasma is expelled to generate thrust, producing far greater speeds than are possible with chemical propulsion rockets, according to NASA.

A chemical rocket tops out at around five kilometers per second (3.1 miles/sec), while a Hall thruster can reach speeds of up to 40 kilometers per second (25 miles/sec).

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