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Category: military – Page 119

Drone swarms are a new concept and are linked to the development of artificial intelligence and networked military units, a futuristic battlefield application that uses the latest advances in technology.

The use of this kind of technology in conflict has raised concerns for years as human-rights groups decried the advent of “killer robots.” Evidence shows that what is actually happening is not the creation of “killer robots,” but rather the use of technology to enable drones and other autonomous or unmanned systems to work together.

Why this matters is because other countries in the region are working on new technologies as well. Iran used drones and cruise missiles to attack Saudi Arabia in September 2019. Turkey has built a drone that reportedly “hunted down” people in Libya, although much remains shrouded in mystery regarding how autonomous the drone was and whether it really hunted down adversaries using artificial intelligence.

Regardless of how Turkey’s Kargu-2 autonomous drone worked, media headlines said it may represent the first use of “AI-armed drones,” and the “new era” of robot war may be upon us.

Continue reading “Drone swarms are coming to the Middle East and Israel is leading the way” | >

What the FENCE program hopes to do is to create event-based cameras that are more intelligent thanks to the use of brain-mimicking or neuromorphic circuits. What these do is to drastically reduce the amount of data that needs to be handled by disregarding irrelevant parts of the image. Instead of dealing with an entire scene, the event-based camera focuses only on the pixels that have changed.

DARPA has announced the start of the Fast Event-based Neuromorphic Camera and Electronics (FENCE) program, which is designed to make computer vision cameras more efficient by mimicking how the human brain processes information. Three teams of scientists led by Raytheon, BAE Systems, and Northrop Grumman, are tasked with developing an infrared (IR) camera system that needs to process less data, operates faster, and uses less power.

Modern imaging cameras are growing increasingly sophisticated, but they are also becoming victims of their own success. While state-of-the-art cameras can capture high-resolution images and track objects with great precision, they do so by processing large amounts of data, which takes time and power.

According to DARPA, this is fine when the task is something like tracking an airplane in a clear blue sky, but if the background becomes cluttered or starts to change, as is often the case in military operations, these cameras can soon be overwhelmed.

Continue reading “DARPA program seeks to develop camera tech that mimics the human brain” | >

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has selected three teams of researchers led by Raytheon, BAE Systems, and Northrop Grumman to develop event-based infrared (IR) camera technologies under the Fast Event-based Neuromorphic Camera and Electronics (FENCE) program. It is designed to make computer vision cameras more efficient by mimicking how the human brain processes information. DARPA’s FENCE program aims to develop a new class of low-latency, low-power, event-based infrared focal plane array (FPA) and digital signal processing (DSP) and machine learning (ML) algorithms. The development of these neuromorphic camera technologies will enable intelligent sensors that can handle more dynamic scenes and aid future military applications.

New intelligent event-based — or neuromorphic — cameras can handle more dynamic scenes.

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U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the organization that administers America’s Spec Ops forces, says it will soon start clinical trials of an “anti-aging pill” that could halt some naturally degenerative effects of aging.

“We have completed pre-clinical safety and dosing studies in anticipation of follow-on performance testing in fiscal year 2022,” Navy Commander Tim Hawkins, a SOCOM spokesperson, told Breaking Defense.

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After the program was first revealed in 2019, the Air Force’s then-Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper stated he wanted to see operational demonstrations within two years. The latest test flight of the Skyborg-equipped Avenger shows the service has clearly hit that benchmark.

The General Atomics Avenger was used in experiments with another autonomy system in 2020, developed as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program that sought to develop drones that could demonstrate “collaborative autonomy,” or the ability to work cooperatively.

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Starting next year, the US military’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM) will start to test out an experimental pill that it says can actually stave off the effects of aging on soldiers.

The experiment, Breaking Defense reports, is part of a push to augment human ability and keep combatants healthy and operating at peak performance for longer. And, pending successful performance and clinical tests, it could make its way out into the public as a new longevity treatment for the masses as well.

“These efforts are not about creating physical traits that don’t already exist naturally,” SOCOM spokesperson and Navy Commander Tim Hawkins told Breaking Defense. “This is about enhancing the mission readiness of our forces by improving performance characteristics that typically decline with age.”

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SOCOM is using Other Transaction Authority (OTA) funds to partner with private biotech laboratory Metro International Biotech, LLC (MetroBiotech) in the pill’s development, which is based on what is called a “human performance small molecule,” he explained.

“These efforts are not about creating physical traits that don’t already exist naturally. This is about enhancing the mission readiness of our forces by improving performance characteristics that typically decline with age,” Hawkins said. “Essentially, we are working with leading industry partners and clinical research institutions to develop a nutraceutical, in the form of a pill that is suitable for a variety of uses by both civilians and military members, whose resulting benefits may include improved human performance – like increased endurance and faster recovery from injury.”

Hawkins said SOCOM “has spent $2.8 million on this effort” since its launch in 2018.

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Fortunately, automakers, suppliers and government leaders are examining things like electric vehicles and where batteries and other parts come from as they push for North American production. The Department of Energy has released a National Blueprint for Lithium Batteries, and a plan to support the domestic battery production to meet growing needs as people go back to work and school in the fall.

It is tempting to see the chip storage problem as just a technology story. But it also has real-world implications for our national security as so much of defense relies on computers and communications in the era of modern warfare.

As Americans celebrate our independence, we have to re-commit to being independent when it comes to reliance on others for goods and services that fuel our lives. We can’t make everything at home, but we can make more and ensure that disruptions abroad don’t reverberate, negatively, at home. As Congress continues to debate infrastructure and other major legislation, and the COVID-19 pandemic retreats, we will need to work together to ensure that we are prepared for whatever 2022 might bring.

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