Lifeboat Foundation

If any organization embodies our idea of the classic mad inventors, just running amock with crazy ideas, it’s DARPA jumping dog robot? Sure. Self-guiding bullets? What can go wrong? Vertical take-off plane? Well, why not? Bioengineered spy plants? Wait, what?

Yes, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – DARPA – the part of the US Department of Defense responsible for developing technologies to be used by the military, is planning to bioengineer plants for intelligence gathering.

DARPA says its new program “envisions plants as discreet, self-sustaining sensors capable of reporting via remotely monitored, programmed responses to environmental stimuli.” Because that doesn’t sound terrifying at all. Somewhere between 1984’s foliage microphones and the classic “bug” in a pot plant.

Continue reading “DARPA Thinks Bioengineered Spy Plants Are ‘The Future Of Intelligence Gathering’” »

High-tech warfare at knife-fight ranges: that’s the ugly future of urban combat. If you thought Baghdad was bad, with its roughly six million people, imagine a “megacity” of 10 or 20 million, where the slums have more inhabitants than some countries. Imagine a city of the very near future where suspicious locals post every US military movement on Twitter with digital photos and GPS-precise coordinates. Imagine roadside bombs that fly because the bad guys downloaded blueprints for a kamikaze mini-drone and built it with their 3D printer.

As the US pulls out of the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, the Navy and Air Force may be looking to the wide-open Pacific, but the Army is increasingly concerned about the cramped alleyways of Third World cities. (The Marines, as usual, have a foot in both worlds). Chief of Staff Ray Odierno’s personal Strategic Studies Group — now led by hybrid warfare expert David Johnson — is working on the subject, as is the Army’s think tank and teaching institution, Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). This August, after months of seminars, simulations, and study, the Army War College will host a “deep future wargame” set in a megacity, probably a coastal one, circa 2035.

Continue reading “Army Grapples With Cyber Age Battles In Megacities” »

It is not Iron Man. It isn’t even Iron Fist. Lockheed Martin’s newest exoskeleton is more like Iron Leg. But for a soldier humping his weapons, ammo and body armor up a mountain in Afghanistan or a high-rise building in a future urban battle, a device to take the load off would be welcome. And, unlike science fiction supersuits, we can build it now.

Exoskeletons are part of the Pentagon’s Third Offset Strategy, which seeks to use robotics and artificial intelligence to enhance humans on the battlefield, rather than to replace them. There’s no area where the need is more acute than in the infantry, which takes the vast majority of casualties.

Continue reading “Lockheed Exoskeleton Gives Troops A Leg Up, Literally” »

It may take a drone to hunt a drone in the system that DARPA could begin testing later this year.

Hawaii ‘ballistic missile threat’ alert to phones was false alarm, officials say.

“Hawaiians were thrown into a panic Saturday morning after an emergency alert was mistakenly sent, warning them to ”seek immediate shelter” from a ballistic missile threat, and it took emergency officials 38 minutes to send a new alert to mobile phones that the threat was a false alarm.

”Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Administrator Vern Miyagi said at a press conference with the governor Saturday afternoon that a single individual sent out the alert by mistake. The individual went so far as to click through a second message, intended as a safeguard, that asked whether the alert should go out.

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DISA director Lt. Gen. Alan Lynn talks about the tech he’s eyeing, some of which is barely out of the theoretical realm.

Tomorrow’s soldiers will wield encrypted devices that unlock to their voices, or even their particular way of walking, and communicate via ad-hoc, software-defined networks that use not radio waves but light according to Lt. Gen. Alan Lynn, who leads the Defense Information Systems Agency, the U.S. military’s IT provider. On Tuesday, Lynn talked about next-generation technologies that DISA is looking into, some of which are barely experimental today.

Here are few of the key areas:

Continue reading “The Future of Military IT: Gait Biometrics, Software Nets, and Photon Communicators” »

Ever since technological advancements made drones possible, people have warned of the potential dangers of weaponised UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), which could effectively become murderous slaughterbots we need to defend ourselves against.

Now, it looks like those fears have become a reality. The Russian Ministry of Defence claims its forces in Syria were attacked a week ago by a swarm of home-made drones – the first time such a coordinated assault has been reported in a military action.

According to the Ministry of Defence, Russian forces at the Khmeimim air base and Tartus naval facility “successfully warded off a terrorist attack with massive application of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)” last Friday night.

Continue reading “First-Ever Drone Swarm Attack Has Struck Russian Military Bases, Sources Claim” »

Wirelessly powered, biomimetic spybots…

A new contest seeks flight systems inspired by Mother Nature and powered by directed-energy beams.

Continue reading “Pentagon Seeks Laser-Powered Bat Drones. Really” »

WASHINGTON — The public’s idea of a war in space is almost entirely a product of Hollywood fantasy: Interstellar empires battling to conquer the cosmos, spaceships going head to head in pitched dogfights.

The reality of how nations will fight in space is much duller and blander. And some of the key players in these conflicts will be hackers and lawyers.

Savvy space warriors like Russia’s military already are giving us a taste of the future. They are jamming GPS navigation signals, electronically disrupting satellite communications links and sensors in space. Not quite star wars. [The Most Dangerous Space Weapons Concepts Ever].

Continue reading “Sorry Sci-Fi Fans, Real Wars in Space Not the Stuff of Hollywood” »