Possible Look At Future Battlefield Evac Ambulances

As the Korean and Vietnam conflicts showed, Helicopter extraction of wounded was great for the infantryman but could be extraordinarily dangerous to the pilots transporting the wounded. 

An Israeli aeronautic company has quite literally put a new spin on the medivac  of the future.   The AirMule, developed by Urban Aeronautics, is a VTOL UAV measuring 20 feet long, over 6 feet wide, and weighing one ton. It is powered by a Turbomeca Ariel jet engine driving a pair of ducted fans.  Flight dynamics is accomplished by 200 directional air flaps, while transporting well over 800 pounds of cargo.




Read more in the Gizmodo article HERE

Meet the Marine's LS3

Remember that walking monstrosity from Boston Dynamics called Big Dog.  The unit with an engine that sounded like an angry wasp's nest and along with a weird gait made for more than just a little humor.  Well not to be caught sleeping, BD has developed a unit for the Marines with the designation LS3.  It is much larger than the earlier prototype, quieter, capable of carrying 400 lbs., can move autonomously but also takes voice commands.  However it looks for all the world like a headless cow, a headless robo-cow.

 
Testing will continue on through 2014.....wanna bet how long it will be before we see films of this thing with either horns or a cow tail...  Not long I suspect.  Or hey, does this mean the end of cow tipping?

Soldier of the Brell on Amazon & free for a limited time!

David Scholes just dropped me a note that I thought might be interesting to those who have enjoyed his fiction on BMU in the past:

• I've scheduled my "Soldier of the Brell" novella to be available as a free download from Amazon for the 3 days from 12.01am Friday 16 November (US Pacific Time) : http://www.amazon.com/Soldier-of-the-Brell-ebook/dp/B00A1TR85K/ref=tmm_kin_title_0

I really can not say enough about this book.  Scholes has masterfully created an alternate universe where the Norse gods were not legends of old but a race of warriors with almost godlike technology.  The names are different, but you many of the legendary Norse gods in the ancient race called Brell who are long lived and have developed defensive and offensive weapons that make the wearer all but invincible.  With this armament, The Brell's last warrior fights true evil in unimaginable numbers.  

The Soldier of the Brell is certainly worth taking a look at and if you enjoy military science fiction and conflict  spread out over the millennia then you are in for a treat.  Plus the fact that for a limited time you can obtain the tale for free!

Military Tests Advanced Hypersonic Weapon

See what happens?! I thought when they said after the last hypersonic test that it was the last one...well you see, I was foolish enough to believe that it really was, so when I was told that there was a successful test, I was under the impression that they were talking about the last one you know, the HyperMach SonicStar which even though they lost contact, was deemed some sort of weird success. But no, this was not THAT hyper sonic but the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon (AHW)!

You see, as the article in "The Nation" says:

• the AHW is a first-of-its-kind glide vehicle, designed to fly long range within the earth’s atmosphere at hypersonic speed.

oooooooooooooh I see the difference.....

• The hypersonic flying missile travels five times the speed of sound and is rumoured to gain up to mach 20 speeds. More impressively, it can strike a target in any location on Earth in just 30 minutes.

The HyperMach SonicStar was traveling at a pedestrian 2 hours anywhere on the globe.... ANYWAY.... check these specs out:

• The test flight was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii to the Reagan Test Site, US Army Kwajalein Atoll. It completed the apx. 2,500 mile journey in just 20 minutes.

The Nation article

Unidentified Objects a Threat?

Barry sends in a thought provoking piece from the op/ed section of the New York Times. First it brings up what could be massive holes in the U.S.' terrorist barrier and the dichotomy of the system at identifying a threat! From the Times:

• ON the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several witnesses?

It's fine to have a healthy skepticism concerning U.F.O.s Many have easily explained as mis-identifications of stars and planets, aircraft lights, satellites and meteors, but some cases have raised national security or air safety issues. On Dec. 26, 1980, for instance, several witnesses at two American Air Force bases in England reported seeing a U.F.O. land and on 2 occasions shine bright lights into sensitive areas on the base, a obvious breach of security. Under any other circumstances an incursion of a base would bring an immediate and massive response, but any hint of UFO and the incident is completely ignored. Again, near misses with commercial or military craft are thoroughly investigated unless of course they are reported as a close encounter with a UFO.

It would almost seem that for a terrorist to be successful he doesn't need to engage in subterfuge but merely to have himself identified as a UFO to gain access to some of the most sensitive areas on the Earth.

<- Times op/ed ->

Sarah Connor Has Failed -- the British Just Built Skynet

Skynet just went online. No lie! Remember a few weeks ago I reported that the British were deploying a military satellite program that beyond all comprehension they named Skynet? Well guess what.... The final satellite in the system was launched this week, and will allow high-bandwidth telecommunications between British forces located anywhere in the world. In addition to voice communications, it will allow data transfer and the remote control of robot airplanes, one of which is called "The Reaper." One of the manufacturers was quoted by BBC News as saying:

So, computers can talk directly to computers.

Hey if your feeling a discomfort in your abdomen right now - that's your bowels letting go.....

complete IO9 article

Pentagon watchdog group worried about possible new terrorist abilities

Shaun Saunders points us towards a Wired 'Danger Room' blog entry concerning a Pentagon advisory committee that is worried that terrorist organizations may be raising the threat level by gaining new abilities. The Pentagon's most prestigious scientific advisory panel, JASON, are the ones worried about the enemy's activities in sleep research, neuro-pharmaceutical performance enhancement, and "brain-computer interfaces." They are also concerned about our adversaries' ability "to exploit advances in Human Performance Modification, and thus create a threat to national security." (it's true, idiotic paranoia is not the exclusive play ground of "military intelligence" pac)

Secrecy News unearthed a recent report by the JASONs who are recommending that the American military speed up its own research -- and monitor foreign studies -- to make sure that the U.S.' enemies don't suddenly become smarter, faster, or better able to endure the harsh realities of war than American troops.

click the article title to go to the complete wired article....it really is stranger than you expect...

Electronic Sherlock Holmes under development

Neo-Moriarties look out: the University of Washington will lead a multi-institutional group pushing the limits of computers' ability to interpret data and ultimately predict the behavior of complex systems. "A complex monitoring system has far too many pieces of information for any one person to look at," said principal investigator Pedro Domingos, a UW associate professor of computer science and engineering.

The basic approach is the same as that of fictional detective Sherlock Holmes: using the powers of reasoning to discover the best explanation for a set of clues. But today's reasoning can't be done by a single, pipe-smoking sleuth. The modern military has millions of possible clues, including sensors on soldiers, satellite maps, road monitors, aerial drones and written observations from reconnaissance missions. The Army Research Office that provided the grant wants to make sense of this information in order to make decisions and predict an adversary's next moves. About the designer

Robot warriors possible within 10 years says experts

Shaun Saunders sends in a piece from The Daily Mail online that suggest that far from being the realm of Science Fiction, the robot warrior could be a real possibility on the battlefield within ten years according to robotics experts. We are not talking about the present crop of remotely controlled machines. No, as the experts suggest, "Robot soldiers that can decide who to attack" and more to the point when to take action on an autonomous basis. How close are we now? Closer than you think. The article reports that "Over 4,000 robots are currently deployed on the ground in Iraq and by October 2006 unmanned aircraft had flown 400,000 flight hours". And that was over a year ago. The point being made : At the moment, humans can make the decision whether to attack or not but a recent policy shift in the U.S means that 'intelligent' autonomous attack robots .... that can make the decision to apply lethal force, when to apply it and who to apply it to are becoming a very real possibility. With the drop in cost of development and manufacture, these weapons need not be the sole territory of the military either.

Get the inside scoop on the Pentagon's Sat killer

As you have heard, the Pentagon has a dead satellite that is coming down. In an effort to insure that no parts of the dead spy satellite come down on populated areas, the Pentagon is going to try and hit it with a missile when the craft is low enough in orbit to insure that the debris does not become a hazard.

Shaun Saunders sends in this article and graphic if your interested in learning more.

more

Israel eyes thinking machines to fight "Doomsday" missile strikes

From Wired via Boing Boing

What word am I thinking of right now kiddies....I'll wait:

Israeli military leaders have begun early planning for a new, robotic defense system, armed with enough artificial intelligence that it "could take over completely" from flesh-and-blood operators. Israeli military says "It will be designed for... autonomous operations and in the event of a "doomsday" strike, the system could handle "attacks that exceed physiological limits of human command.

I echo the sage words of the Boing Boing crew " How do you say "Skynet" in Hebrew?"