Lifeboat Foundation

The T-55 medium tank took all the best traits of the T-54, but added on a series of upgrades necessary for the crew to survive the penultimate weapon: the atomic bomb.

Circa 2018 o,.,o.

The U.S. Army is testing a system designed to protect military vehicles smaller than tanks from attacks. The “Iron Curtain” uses a combination of sensors and downward-firing projectiles to stop incoming rockets and missiles from striking vehicles by setting off their shaped charge warheads. The result could be vehicles as small Humvees protected from anti-tank guided weapons.

The proliferation of anti-tank weapons with shaped charges has made the modern battlefield very deadly for any vehicle daring to cross it. High explosive, anti-tank (HEAT) warheads are found on everything from shoulder-fired rocket propelled grenade launchers of the Taliban to Kornet-EM anti-tank guided missiles arming the Russian Army. Defeating them is one of the Army’s top concerns, and a brigade of Abrams tanks equipped with the Israeli Trophy active protection system (APS) is headed to Europe in the near future.

Continue reading “The Army Is Testing a Missile-Proof ‘Iron Curtain’” »

During the Cold War, Vozrozhdeniya Island was a top-secret testing ground for deadly Soviet super-pathogens. Despite over two decades of abandonment, their legacy lives on.

Among the drugs being investigated is remdesivir, an experimental antiviral made by the US drug company Gilead Sciences. It has been characterized as one of the most promising by health authorities, including WHO officials —though that optimism is inspired only by anecdotal information. US data on remdesivir’s performance in controlled clinical trials is expected next month, and data from late-stage trials conducted in China will be released by the end of April.

The US military, however, has already secured access to remdesivir for its service members.

On March 10, the Pentagon announced a deal with Gilead Sciences in which the pharmaceutical company would supply the military with the intravenous drug at no cost. “Together with our government and industry partners, we are progressing at almost revolutionary rates to deliver effective treatment and prevention products that will protect the citizens of the world and preserve the readiness and lethality of our service members,” Army Brig. Gen. Michael Talley, commanding general of the US Army Medical Research and Development Command (USAMRDC) and Fort Detrick, Maryland, said in a media statement at the time.

The federal government has invoked the Defense Production Act to produce millions of N95 masks in the coming weeks, the Pentagon announced Saturday.

The DPA allows the government to pressure companies into manufacturing supplies for national defense purposes.

The project will cost $133 million and will create “over 39 million” masks within the next 90 days, Mike Andrews, a Department of Defense spokesperson announced in a press release Saturday. The authorization to use the DPA for N95 production was given to the Defense Department on Friday by the White House, according to the press release.

The Pentagon is executing its first project under the authorities granted by the Defense Production Act in order to produce more than 39 million critical N95 masks amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

“On the evening of April 10, the Department of Defense received approval from the White House Task Force to execute the first DPA Title 3 project responding to COVID-19,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mike Andrews said in a statement.

“The $133M project will use these authorities to increase domestic production capacity of N95 masks to over 39 million in the next 90 days,” the statement added.

DARPA is planning to develop a travel adapter for the human body. Called the ADvanced Acclimation and Protection Tool for Environmental Readiness (ADAPTER), the new program aims to produce an implantable or ingestible bioelectronic device to help soldiers handle jet lag and diarrhea.

Anyone who has traveled extensively knows that jet lag and diarrhea are not jokes. Jet lag and other sleep-cycle disruptions such as shift work can impair alertness and athletic performance, and cause disorientation, fatigue, indigestion, irritability, insomnia, and excessive sleepiness. Meanwhile, travel diarrhea can produce symptoms that range from unpleasant to severe.

This is bad enough for tourists or business people, but for soldiers jet lag and diarrhea can be a real hindrance as hundreds or even thousands of soldiers can be deployed to the other side of the world at a moment’s notice, only to end up running so far ahead of the logistical chain that they have to rely on local food and water instead of standard military rations. The end result is soldiers impaired by disrupted sleep cycles or requiring medical attention for intestinal problems as a result of consuming contaminated food and water.

Chip maker Intel has been chosen to lead a new initiative led by the U.S. military’s research wing, DARPA, aimed at improving cyber-defenses against deception attacks on machine learning models.

Machine learning is a kind of artificial intelligence that allows systems to improve over time with new data and experiences. One of its most common use cases today is object recognition, such as taking a photo and describing what’s in it. That can help those with impaired vision to know what’s in a photo if they can’t see it, for example, but it also can be used by other computers, such as autonomous vehicles, to identify what’s on the road.

But deception attacks, although rare, can meddle with machine learning algorithms. Subtle changes to real-world objects can, in the case of a self-driving vehicle, have disastrous consequences.

If the Pentagon does build the mobile reactors, it will deploy them far from the front lines – and even if they’re hit, their revolutionary TRISO fuel pellets will stay intact at temperatures that can melt steel.