Lifeboat Foundation

O„.o carbon nanotube suit.

Researchers announce new military funding in search for body armor skin that could be 300 percent stronger than anything we’ve seen before.

In Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, there’s a scene where inventor Lucius Fox, played by Morgan Freeman, explains that Wayne Enterprises has created a prototype body armor for the U.S. infantry that’s as light as Kevlar but bullet- and knife-proof. Bruce Wayne asks why it never went into production. “The bean counters figured a soldier’s life wasn’t worth the 300 grand,” Fox replies.

Continue reading “One Step Closer to a Batsuit for Soldiers” »

Getting far better at predicting what research will produce may be the only way to save the world.

It is vital that would-be bombmakers be disabused of any notion that they could evade tough international sanctions. We need a country-neutral, reasonably predictable, more-or-less automatic sanction regime that puts all countries on notice, even friends of the powerful.

By Victor Gilinsky Henry Sokolski

Just as we’ve had to discard business-as-usual thinking to deal with the current worldwide health emergency; it’s time to get serious about the spread of nuclear weapons. It doesn’t have the immediacy of the coronavirus, but it will last a lot longer and is no less threatening. In particular, we need to fortify the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which is fifty years old this year and badly needs fixing. The April 2020 Review Conference will likely be postponed, which provides time to develop something more than the usual charade of incremental proposals that nibble at the problem.

Researchers have used artificial intelligence to detect Vietnam War-era bomb craters in Cambodia from satellite images—with the hope that it can help find unexploded bombs.

The new method increased true bomb crater detection by more than 160 percent over standard methods.

The model, combined with declassified U.S. military records, suggests that 44 to 50 percent of the bombs in the area studied may remain unexploded.

If the U.S. is going to do more work in cold weather climates to deter malign activity from Russia and China, one Air Force general says it will need more equipment to operate full-time in the South Pole.

Pacific Air Forces commander Gen. Charles Q. Brown said Tuesday he’d like to see a boost in “some of the capability we have, but don’t have a lot of.”

“Icebreakers, for example. LC-130s? There’s not a lot of those,” Brown said during a speech at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies in Arlington, Virginia.

Strange, very strange.

Military teams that monitor foreign missile and warplane threats to the United States are isolated at a number of military sites, including Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado.

Continue reading “U.S. military command teams are being isolated in infamous Cheyenne mountain bunker” »

The Army has a message for its retirees: Uncle Sam wants you to help fight the novel coronavirus.

A message sent by Defense Finance and Accounting Services, which processes and dispenses retiree pay, asked troops who had previously served in specific health care specialties to consider “re-joining the team” to address the current pandemic crisis. It’s signed by Lt. Gen. Thomas Seamands, deputy chief of staff for U.S. Army Personnel, G-1.

“We need to hear from you STAT!” reads the message, obtained by Military.com.

When asked, “What kind of superpower would you like to have,” most of us say “invisibility.” Even Derek Jeter. Invisibility, like the ability to fly, is the stuff of childhood dreams. And for decades, cloaking devices have been a favorite plot device of science-fiction and fantasy classics like “Star Trek,” “Harry Potter” and “Doctor Who.”

Today, the F-35 strike fighter jet makes this fantasy a reality, as it navigates airspace with the most advanced powers of hide and seek. Its multiple stealth devices – radar-absorbing materials and internal infrared sensors – comprise the ultimate invisibility cloak. In the F-35 and elsewhere, stealth and cloaking technologies have become more comprehensive and durable, with applications for military and other industries. This is what happens when science meets imagination.

“With improvements, tanks or planes can be cloaked from human observation, car trunks can be made see-through, blind spots can be cloaked to be seen easily or cloaking can even be used as art or included for architectural effects,” said Joseph Choi, a researcher with the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics.

Circa 2000

The intentional release of biological agents by belligerents or terrorists is a possibility that has recently attracted increased attention. Law enforcement agencies, military planners, public health officials, and clinicians are gaining an increasing awareness of this potential threat. From a military perspective, an important component of the protective pre-exposure armamentarium against this threat is immunization. In addition, certain vaccines are an accepted component of postexposure prophylaxis against potential bioterrorist threat agents. These vaccines might, therefore, be used to respond to a terrorist attack against civilians. We review the development of vaccines against 10 of the most credible biological threats.