Lifeboat Foundation

They could open up a ton of new tactical possibilities.

Circa 2017

Someday, it could carry supplies to soldiers on the battlefield.

• Russia is said to have built a new 100-megaton underwater nuclear doomsday device, and it has threatened the US with it.
• The device goes beyond traditional ideas of nuclear warfighting and poses a direct threat to the future of humanity or life on Earth.
• Nobody has ever built a weapon like this before, because there’s almost no military utility in so badly destroying the world.
• But an expert on nuclear strategy told Business Insider the weapon might have a larger role in helping Russian President Vladimir Putin break down NATO with the threat of nuclear destruction.

Since 2015, when images of a Russian nuclear torpedo first leaked on state television, the world has asked itself why Moscow would build a weapon that could end all life on Earth.

While all nuclear weapons can kill thousands in the blink of an eye and leave radiation poisoning the environment for years to come, Russia’s new doomsday device, called “Poseidon,” takes steps to maximize this effect.

The Pentagon is funding brain-implant research aimed at creating neurally “enhanced” soldiers.

• By John Horgan on February 9, 2019
• 3

WASHINGTON — A new U.S. intelligence report warns that both China and Russia are investing in weapons that could attack U.S. satellites and assets in space, and that both nations are now preparing to use space as a battlefield.

Last month, the Defense Intelligence Agency released a report about China’s military capabilities, warning that the Asian country was making advances in counterspace technology that could threaten U.S. satellites responsible for communications, reconnaissance, GPS and early warnings of missile launches.

But a new DIA report, “Challenges to Security in Space,” warns that both China and Russia are making advances in space technology, and that both are likely to turn to space early on in any major military conflict to cripple their adversaries.

Continue reading “Report: Space will likely be a battlefield in any U.S. conflict with China, Russia” »

Dr. David Sandwell, a geophysicist at Scripps, has been awarded American Geophysical Union’s Charles A. Whitten Medal for creating the world’s first comprehensive, high-resolution map of the ocean floor.

In a long-running project sponsored by the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research, Sandwell combined satellite data with sonar measurements to develop a global depth chart of unprecedented detail. His work has charted thousands of previously unidentified mountains, trenches, and other features in the deepest and least explored parts of the ocean. The work is not only of academic interest: it provides crucial intelligence and scientific information for the Navy.

“Dr. Sandwell’s groundbreaking work provides the first high-resolution map of the ocean floor,” said Dr. Tom Drake, head of ONR’s Ocean Battlespace and Expeditionary Access Department. “This has opened new research areas for oceanography, marine geology and geophysics — critical topics for the U.S. Navy.”

Continue reading “Navy-Funded Scientist Wins Award for Groundbreaking Seafloor Map” »

Circa 2018

China’s quantum radar makes more progress, and China plans to put it high up in the stratosphere, to spy on ballistic missiles and stealth aircraft.

Magnetic north is not where it used to be.

Since 2015, the place to which a compass points has been sprinting toward Siberia at a pace of more than 30 miles (48 kilometres) a year. And this week, after a delay caused by the month-long partial government shutdown in the United States, humans have finally caught up.

Scientists on Monday released an emergency update to the World Magnetic Model, which cellphone GPS systems and military navigators use to orient themselves.

Continue reading “Earth’s Magnetic North Pole Has Shifted So Much We’ve Had to Update GPS” »

A U.S. Army engineer’s idea to turn the standard M4 rifle into an electromagnetic pulse gun recently got the nod from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

James E. Burke, electronics engineer at the U.S. Army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center, received U.S. patent 10,180,309 on Tuesday, giving the Army intellectual property protections on Burke’s “Electromagnetic Pulse Transmitter Muzzle Adapter.”

This invention would enable a single soldier in a ground unit to destroy enemy electronics, such as small drones or improvised explosive devices, by attaching a special blank-firing adapter to their rifle’s muzzle, then firing a shot.

Continue reading “Here’s the Army’s now-patented EMP rifle attachment for taking out small drones” »