
aye
How about adding some AI to it too? Surely that CANT go wrong can it?
A radical powered exoskeleton under development for use by the US military is to be fitted with fuel-cell power supplies which will increase its endurance from hours to days - and furnish juice for the burgeoning load of electronics carried by modern soldiers, too. Global arms behemoth Lockheed, developing the Human Universal …
Two flaws I can spot (though i'm no expert):
1. A good EMP device could cripple the forces that wear them, if one was to be developed.
2. A good shot could detonate the fuel cells, killing all in the vicinity of the poor soul that got it.
So to win tomorrow's wars, build a better electronics-buggering device. Either that or get plenty of target practice.
like most armour vs weapon races, an emp weapon comes out, emp protection comes out, vulnerable fuel cells targeted, better armour and more concelead fuel tanks. Repeat until next kind of armour comes out. Although we are yet to see a deployable emp device even though we've had planes/battletanks/warships/missiles/ccc that are probably far more scary then a battle armour clad marine.
Also normal bullets generally don't make things explode.
I can see how this could make jogging for miles with a 200lb load a breeze, but when the poor grunts gets shot at (as sometimes happens) and they hit the ground fast, how does it feel to have your body followed down by 200lb of luggage, and how the hell do they stand up again? Does the gadgetry include bionic arms?
And if you can now carry 200lb of stuff, they're going to have to dig a mighty deep foxhole to cover the massive backpack. The traditional soldier used to carry an entrenching tool (folding shovel) - does the new version include a mini-JCB?
and they call the helpdesk back in Blighty (well, forwarded to Bombay).
"Please enter your 64 digit serial number"
"If you are under attack by rocket fire, press 1"
If you are currently shot and unable to speak, gurgle blood into the microphone to acknowledge"
This is all going to go completely wrong. I can see it now, exoskeletons sprinting at 200kph with their ragged dead soldier strapped into it, fighting a war to end all wars with other exoskeletons based upon the single digit difference in their serial numbers. Disease-ridden children weeping until they are hurled into the sky as as missiles themselves by version 8 predator drones, aircraft carriers sitting up and sprouting legs and fighting herculean battles with an animated giant super norad robot.
Pass the Jamesons please.
> 1. A good EMP device could cripple the forces that wear them, if one was to be developed.
A good EMP device would be a serious hazard for *everything*. And if by 'cripple the forces' you mean 'level the playing field' you're quite correct... they're still worn by soldiers, after all.
> 2. A good shot could detonate the fuel cells, killing all in the vicinity of the poor soul that got it.
Watch less James Bond. Worst case here is that a hydrogen cell could cook off wich would be hazardous but these things can and will be engineered to not go up like grenades when dented. Well protected cells, or cells using less volatile fuel will merely be fire hazards when breached.
You may also find that soldiers don't stand shoulder to shoulder in any sort of combat situation any more. The 19th century called and asked for their tactics back.
Sorry to rain on the parade., but Lookheed wisely left out any specs re: the fuel cell type. Why? Because they are in effect claiming an energy density for it at least thirty if not fifty times that of Li-ion batteries. No such system exists ... not even close.
Hydrogen fuel cells, with the support systems for the hydrogen storage, hydrogen tanks, air handling, safety systems, and the actual fuel cell have an energy density just UNDER NiMH about 60- 80wh/kg for vehicles. I suspect even more "ruggedisation" would be needed for this, leaving us with maybe 40 wh/kg. That's in the ballpark of an ancient NiCad battery! Isn't the future just dazzling?
Other fuel cell tech, like methanol (insert history lesson re: methanol fuel and armed forces. Hint: drinking it may make you drunk, but also makes you blind), can beat Li-ion's density of around 200 wh/kg, but it doesn't come anywhere close to the at least 6000-10,000 wh/kg they are, in effect, claiming.
One word: Vaporware, doesn't mean they won't get a nice fat US taxpayer check to develop it for 10 years, or however long it takes for everyone to forget about it.
As I recall, vanilla Lithium Ion has a nice energy density, but a very crappy maximum dump current. That's why it's used in mobile phones and laptops, but not in anything that requires any real amounts of juice (I'm thinking RC models that require 30A to 100A of current.. or perhaps cyborg exoskeletons). Attempting to drag more current out of a Li-Ion than it is rated for will give you either a very expensive balloon, or a very expensive exothermic reaction.
Perhaps you mean Lithium Polymer, the technology that routinely allows a 25-30C dump rate? (That's C for capacity, so a 5Ah lipo pack with 30C maximum dump will give you 150A of juice before it either balloons or goes up in flames).
the only difference being an electrolyte suspended in a polymer or not. Both can be optimized for high power density (by optimizing the reactive area) or high energy density (by optimizing the amount of reactive chemical). Google A-123 for a company that works on the high power version of li-ion. Li-polymer cells are just another type of li-ion and can also be optimized for power or energy, but were originally marketed as being high power, like you suggest.
They've a much better version of the Exowhatnot in Avatar: the Lockheed people must have seen it and be getting worried that someone's looking at their files. Anyone reading Heinlein knew about it half a century ago. He also supplied a power system that these things would need, you twist it out of another universe using wiggling bent coat-hangers.
Mine is the lead-lined one standing over there ...
Wallace and Gromit look down.
I once sat in akind of strap-in chair in a computer arcade and realized I was trusting some dodgy program not to suddenly whip me round and break my neck.
Would you trust this exo-skeleton not to move your leg forward at 250g when you tell it to run but, say, happen to remove remove a memory stick at the same time as it's garbage collecting?
Coat... oh mine seems to have run off
What's said to be a Ukrainian-made long-range anti-drone rifle is one of the latest weapons to emerge from Russia's ongoing invasion of its neighbor.
The Antidron KVS G-6 is manufactured by Kvertus Technology, in the western Ukraine region of Ivano-Frankivsk, whose capital of the same name has twice been subjected to Russian bombings during the war. Like other drone-dropping equipment, we're told it uses radio signals to interrupt control, remotely disabling them, and it reportedly has an impressive 3.5 km (2.17 miles) range.
"We are not damaging the drone. With communication lost, it just loses coordination and doesn't know where to go. The drone lands where it is jammed, or can be carried away by the wind because it's uncontrollable," Kvertus' director of technology Yaroslav Filimonov said. Because the downed drones are unharmed, they give Ukrainian soldiers recovering them a wealth of potential intelligence, he added.
The latest drone headed to Ukraine's front lines isn't getting there by air. This one powers over rough terrain, armed with a 7.62mm tank machine gun.
The GNOM (pronounced gnome), designed and built by a company called Temerland, based in Zaporizhzhia, won't be going far either. Next week it's scheduled to begin combat trials in its home city, which sits in southeastern Ukraine and has faced periods of rocket attacks and more since the beginning of the war.
Measuring just under two feet in length, a couple inches less in width (57cm L х 60cm W x 38cm H), and weighing around 110lbs (50kg), GNOM is small like its namesake. It's also designed to operate quietly, with an all-electric motor that drives its 4x4 wheels. This particular model forgoes stealth in favor of a machine gun, but Temerland said it's quiet enough to "conduct covert surveillance using a circular survey camera on a telescopic mast."
An egghead at the Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications, writing in a peer-reviewed domestic journal, has advocated for Chinese military capability to take out Starlink satellites on the grounds of national security.
According to the South China Morning Post, lead author Ren Yuanzhen and colleagues advocated in Modern Defence Technology not only for China to develop anti-satellite capabilities, but also to have a surveillance system that could monitor and track all satellites in Starlink's constellation.
"A combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation's operating system," the Chinese boffins reportedly said, estimating that data transmission speeds of stealth fighter jets and US military drones could increase by a factor of 100 through a Musk machine connection.
A US House of Representatives subcommittee on Tuesday heard from Pentagon officials on reports of and investigations into unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) – a category that encompasses unidentified flying objects (UFO) and saves room for optical illusions, lens flare, smudges in photos, and other possibilities like meteorological events.
The US military has researched UFOs in the past through initiatives like Project Blue Book (1947-1969), and the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) (2007-2012).
Following a New York Times report in 2017 about the shutdown of the classified $22m AATIP program, public pressure and Congressional interest led the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last June to release a preliminary report on UAP [PDF] dating back to 2004.
Updated The US Army could end up wasting much as $22 billion in taxpayer cash if soldiers aren't actually interested in using, or able to use as intended, the Microsoft HoloLens headsets it said it would purchase, a government watchdog has warned.
In 2018, the American military splashed $480 million on 100,000 prototype augmented-reality goggles from Redmond to see how they could help soldiers train for and fight in combat. The Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) project was expanded when the Army decided it wanted the Windows giant to make custom, battle-ready AR headsets in a ten-year deal worth up to $22 billion.
The project was delayed and is reportedly scheduled to roll out some time this year. But the US Dept of Defense's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) cast some doubt on whether it was worth it at all.
DARPA announced a second successful test of its hypersonic cruise missile, adding that the weapon, capable of speeds in excess of Mach 5, is ready for real-world use.
DARPA has been testing hypersonic weapons for several years. The program in question, called the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC), began in 2016 with Raytheon as a partner. Raytheon's HAWC first flew in 2021, and this latest test used a design manufactured by Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne.
Hypersonic weapons are any missile that travels at Mach 5 or faster, but with an added caveat: they can be controlled. Traditional missiles often exceed Mach 5 as well, but can't be steered once they're launched.
The websites of the Ukrainian military and at least two of the nation's biggest banks were knocked offline in a cyberattack today.
Ukraine's Ministry of Defense website is still unavailable at time of publication. On social media, it reported "technical works on restoration of regular functioning" are underway after it was "probably attacked by DDoS: an excessive number of requests per second was recorded." Other military sites are also apparently suffering outages.
In what appears to have been a coordinated internet attack, Ukraine's biggest commercial banking operation PrivatBank and big-three financial institution Oschadbank were also hit around the same time, knocking out some online transactions and ATMs across the country.
Video Video footage has emerged of a British F-35B fighter jet falling off the front of aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth after a botched takeoff.
The leaked clip, seemingly from a CCTV camera on the carrier's bridge, shows the Lockheed Martin-made stealth aircraft slowly trundling down the deck before tipping over the ski-jump ramp on her bows.
As the £100m RAF jet nosed over, the pilot ejected – only for his parachute to snag on the carrier's bows as he descended back towards the ship.
Column Fans of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy know how top military secrets are extracted from the enemy. Senior figures are turned in operations run by the most secret brains in the country, bluff and double-bluff mix with incredible feats of bravery, treachery and psychological manipulation.
Not any more. If head KGB spy Karla wanted to learn intricate details of the British military today, he’d just have to check WhatsApp. He’d learn who in the special services had got an extra stripe, as well as their cover units — and that’s just one document The Reg has seen. Are there others out there on public messaging systems? If we knew, we couldn’t tell you.
Inadvertent leaks of military gen are nothing new. During the Cold War, so some ex-operatives claim, one of the least glamorous jobs in intelligence was analysing paper copies of Eastern Bloc message decodes. Not so bad? They’d been pinched from latrines outside the forest barracks where they’d been recycled as toilet paper. That's real spycraft, not just going through the motions.
The United States Airforce (USAF) has unveiled Project Kaiju, a $150m (£108m) effort to build "cognitive electronic warfare" systems capable of operating entirely autonomously – to be run under Godzilla's watchful eye.
Named for the entertainment genre, Japanese for "strange beast", Project Kaiju is not - sadly - an effort to breed giant monsters to defend US interests. Rather, it's the name given to a project which seeks to give the USAF better electronic warfare capabilities – including the ability to run autonomously, without human interaction.
"US aircraft are increasingly required to operate in hostile environments heavily defended by integrated air-defence systems (IADS)," Project Kaiju's coordinators explained in the Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) unveiling the project. "The next evolution of advanced IADS is likely to employ radars, surface-to-air (SAM), and air-to-air (AAM) threats that utilise multi-spectrum technology.
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