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Category: military

Circa 2015 :3

We already have smart guns, but DARPA has taken the next logical step — the defense agency has built smart bullets. The military agency has shown off new footage of its Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance — shortened to EXACTO rounds — that show the smart bullets maneuvering in mid-air to hit moving targets.

DARPA first showed off its EXACTO technology in a video released last year. The clip highlighted the agency’s advanced bullet as it’s fired from a rifle, showing it veering off course half-way through its flight to hit a designated area. This new video, taken during tests earlier this February, shows the rounds compensating for the acceleration of a moving target, deviating from their natural course to slam into their torso-shaped objective.

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The U.S. Department of Defense wants to test a directed energy weapon in space, one that it hopes will someday destroy ballistic missiles moments after launch. The weapon, a so-called neutral particle beam, would be boosted into space and tested from orbit in 2023.

Neutral particle beams don’t get as much attention as lasers but are attractive in their own right. The weapons work by accelerating particles without an electric charge—particularly neutrons—to speeds close to the speed of light and directing them against a target. The neutrons knock protons out of the nuclei of other particles they encounter, generating heat on the target object.

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The Navy intends to deploy its conventional prompt strike hypersonic weapon on Virginia-class attack submarines, after previous discussions of putting the weapon on the larger Ohio-class guided-missile submarine (SSGN), according to budget request documents.

In its Fiscal Year 2021 budget overview, the Navy outlines a research and development portfolio with 5 percent more funding than this current year – for a total of $21.5 billion – that is aimed at “providing innovative capabilities in shipbuilding (Columbia class), aviation (F-35), weapons (Maritime Strike Tomahawk), hypersonics (Conventional Prompt Strike), unmanned, family of lasers, digital warfare, applied [artificial intelligence], and [U.S. Marine Corps] expeditionary equipment. These technologies are crucial to maintaining DON’s competitive advantage.”

On the Conventional Prompt Strike, the Navy wants to invest $1 billion for research and development.

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A US think tank says North Korea appears to be building facilities that can be used to assemble ballistic missiles near the capital, Pyongyang.

On Tuesday, the Center for Strategic and International Studies published the results of an analysis on a construction site near Pyongyang International Airport. The site was captured in satellite images.

Pictures show three new buildings. The largest one is about 120 meters wide and 40 meters in depth. They all have bay doors, wide enough for large vehicles. The center says one of the buildings may be able to accommodate an intercontinental ballistic missile.

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The military has been talking about incorporating electric vehicles in their fleet and with the Tesla Cybertruck being described as an “armored personnel carrier from the future”, a rendering artist decided to explore what a Cybertruck would look like as an electric Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.

As we reported last week, the military is developing a plan to use EVs for remote missions and even cited Tesla as an example that larger EVs are viable.

With Tesla CEO Elon Musk describing the Cybertruck as ‘an armored personnel carrier from the future’, several people suggested that the military could end up using the Cybertruck as a platform to build electric military vehicles.

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