Tag: military industrial complex

The inventor of taser and the body cam wants to put them on drones

Rick Smith, whose inventions changed the way millions of people understand modern policing, now wants to send them to war.

Smith invented the Taser, the stun gun that is often the first thing police officers reach for when things get tense. As public concern mounted that cops were maybe a bit too eager to tase people, Smith invented the police-worn body camera, which has become a staple of U.S. police departments and plays a starring role in our national conversation about police reform.

So what’s next? Smith says AI and robotics will dramatically change how police departments do what they do. They could also reshape the American way of war.

Smith’s company, Axon, is already using machine learning on body camera footage. The company has access to huge amounts of body-camera video because police departments pay Axon to host it on Microsoft Azure. “Basically every big department you can think of, NYPD, LA, Chicago, D.C., we host all their data in the cloud for them,” Smith said during the recent AUSA conference in Washington, D.C.

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Military Is Developing ‘Cognitive Warfare’ Weapons

Western governments in the NATO military alliance are developing tactics of “cognitive warfare,” using the supposed threats of China and Russia to justify waging a “battle for your brain” in the “human domain,” to “make everyone a weapon.”

NATO is developing new forms of warfare to wage a “battle for the brain,” as the military alliance put it.

The US-led NATO military cartel has tested novel modes of hybrid warfare against its self-declared adversaries, including economic warfare, cyber warfare, information warfare, and psychological warfare.

Now, NATO is spinning out an entirely new kind of combat it has branded cognitive warfare. Described as the “weaponization of brain sciences,” the new method involves “hacking the individual” by exploiting “the vulnerabilities of the human brain” in order to implement more sophisticated “social engineering.”

Until recently, NATO had divided war into five different operational domains: air, land, sea, space, and cyber. But with its development of cognitive warfare strategies, the military alliance is discussing a new, sixth level: the “human domain.”

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“Ready For Fielding” – US AC-130 Gunship Receives Laser Cannon

One of the most feared planes on the modern battlefield is the U.S. Air Force’s AC-130H Spectre gunship. The service has made major upgrades to the gunship, including a new offensive laser weapon system. 

Lockheed Martin published a press release last week outlining how the Airborne High Energy Laser (AHEL) “is ready for fielding today.” 

“Completion of this milestone is a tremendous accomplishment for our customer,” said Rick Cordaro, vice president, Lockheed Martin Advanced Product Solutions. “These mission success milestones are a testament of our partnership with the U.S. Air Force in rapidly achieving important advances in laser weapon system development. Our technology is ready for fielding today.”

The gunship, nicknamed “Hell in the Sky,” packs a serious punch with three side-firing weapons, including a 25mm Gatling gun, a 40mm Bofors cannon, and a 105mm howitzer. The fourth will be the AHEL, a chemical energy weapon, unleashing concentrated pulses of light to transfer energy to the target, quickly heating it and damaging it. 

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Oh Great They’re Putting Guns On Robodogs Now

So hey they’ve started mounting sniper rifles on robodogs, which is great news for anyone who was hoping they’d start mounting sniper rifles on robodogs.

At an exhibit booth in the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting and exhibition, Ghost Robotics (the military-friendly competitor to the better-known Boston Dynamics) proudly showed off a weapon that is designed to attach to its quadruped bots made by a company called SWORD Defense Systems.

“The SWORD Defense Systems Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (SPUR) was specifically designed to offer precision fire from unmanned platforms such as the Ghost Robotics Vision-60 quadruped,” SWORD proclaims on its website. “Chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor allows for precision fire out to 1200m, the SPUR can similarly utilize 7.62×51 NATO cartridge for ammunition availability. Due to its highly capable sensors the SPUR can operate in a magnitude of conditions, both day and night. The SWORD Defense Systems SPUR is the future of unmanned weapon systems, and that future is now.”

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Why Is the US Increasing the Pentagon’s Budget by $37,000,000,000 Despite Leaving Afghanistan?

After 20 years and over $2 trillion dollars, the Afghanistan War is finally over. Does that mean our massive defense budget will finally be trimmed? Nope.

Congress is actually on the verge of passing an increase to the Pentagon’s budget, preparing to allocate $740 billion for the fiscal year 2021-2022. That’s more than President Joe Biden even requested. In fact, it’s $37 billion more.

The National Defense Authorization Act, better known as the NDAA, is passed annually and allocates funding for our military industrial complex. With few exceptions, it is passed with overwhelming bipartisan support each year. It’s worth knowing that the military budget is the largest portion of the discretionary federal budget, accounting for 11 percent of overall federal spending.

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US military eyes prototype mobile nuclear reactor in Idaho

The U.S. Department of Defense is taking input on its plan to build an advanced mobile nuclear microreactor prototype at the Idaho National Laboratory in eastern Idaho.

The department began a 45-day comment period on Friday with the release of a draft environmental impact study evaluating alternatives for building and operating the microreactor that could produce 1 to 5 megawatts of power. The department’s energy needs are expected to increase, it said.

“A safe, small, transportable nuclear reactor would address this growing demand with a resilient, carbon-free energy source that would not add to the DoD’s fuel needs, while supporting mission-critical operations in remote and austere environments,” the Defense Department said.

The draft environmental impact statement cites President Joe Biden’s Jan. 27 executive order prioritizing climate change considerations in national security as another reason for pursuing microreactors. The draft document said alternative energy sources such as wind and solar were problematic because they are limited by location, weather and available land area, and would require redundant power supplies.

The department said it uses 30 terawatt-hours of electricity per year and more than 10 million gallons (37.9 million liters) of fuel per day. Powering bases using diesel generators strains operations and planning, the department said, and need is expected to grow during a transition to an electrical, non-tactical vehicle fleet. Thirty terawatt-hours is more energy than many small countries use in a year.

The department in the 314-page draft environmental impact statement said it wants to reduce reliance on local electric grids, which are highly vulnerable to prolonged outages from natural disasters, cyberattacks, domestic terrorism and failure from lack of maintenance.

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U.S. generals planning for a space war they see as all but inevitable

A ship in the Pacific Ocean carrying a high-power laser takes aim at a U.S. spy satellite, blinding its sensors and denying the United States critical eyes in the sky.

This is one scenario that military officials and civilian leaders fear could lead to escalation and wider conflict as rival nations like China and Russia step up development and deployments of anti-satellite weapons.

If a satellite came under attack, depending on the circumstances, “the appropriate measures can be taken,” said Lt. Gen. John Shaw, deputy commander of U.S. Space Command.

The space battlefield is not science fiction and anti-satellite weapons are going to be a reality in future armed conflicts, Shaw said at the recent 36th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.

U.S. Space Command is responsible for military operations in the space domain, which starts at the Kármán line, some 100 kilometers (62 miles) above the Earth’s surface. This puts Space Command in charge of protecting U.S. satellites from attacks and figuring out how to respond if hostile acts do occur.

Military space assets like satellites and ground systems typically have been considered “support” equipment that provide valuable services such as communications, navigation data and early warning of missile launches. But as the Pentagon has grown increasingly dependent on space, satellites are becoming strategic assets and coveted targets for adversaries.

“It is impossible to overstate the importance of space-based systems to national security,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in a keynote speech at the symposium.

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NASA Awards SpaceX, Blue Origin, and 3 Other Companies $146 Million in Contracts to Go to the Moon

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, announced this week the award of five contracts for $146 million to U.S. companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, to design lunar landers.

As reported by Forbes, these private companies will work over the next 15 months on various projects for the development of the Artemis program to ensure the return of humanity to the moon in 2024.

Contracts are well distributed, according to the statement from NASA:

  • SpaceX: $9.4 million
  • Blue Origin: $25.6 million
  • Dynetics: $40.8 million
  • Lockheed Martin: $35.2 million
  • Northrop Grumman: $34.8 million

The idea is that the five companies develop sustainable models of landing modules to regularly transport astronauts to the moon. Much of what is designed for Earth’s satellite will apply to future missions to Mars.

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Biden to announce joint deal with U.K. and Australia on advanced defense-tech sharing

President Joe Biden will announce a new working group with Britain and Australia to share advanced technologies in a thinly veiled bid to counter China, a White House official and a congressional staffer told POLITICO.

The trio, which will be known by the acronym AUUKUS, will make it easier for the three countries to share information and know-how in key technological areas like artificial intelligence, cyber, underwater systems and long-range strike capabilities.

One of the people said there will be a nuclear element to the pact in which the U.S. and U.K. share their knowledge of how to maintain nuclear-defense infrastructure.

There’s nothing explicitly mentioning China in the three-way deal, the people said, but both noted that the subtext of the announcement is that this is another move by Western allies to push back on China’s rise in the military and technology arenas.

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