Items tagged with Military
US Army recently banned the use of all drones built by drone maker DJI. The military warned that the drones might have unspecified "cyber vulnerabilities." The Army memo was published on August 2nd and read in part, "due to increased awareness of cyber vulnerabilities associated with DJI products, it is directed that the U.S. Army halt use of all DJI products." DJI is a Chinese company and the US government has long had fears of Chinese manufacturers installing spyware or backdoors into products, giving them access to classified and sensitive data. DJI for its part has announced that it is...
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Where information gathering is concerned, it's hard to imagine any entity on Earth that captures more data than the US military. It's a constant digital battle to fetch new data and analyze it as quickly as possible in an effort to effectively move operations forward. But an obvious problem arises: there's often just too much data to churn through. Fortunately, computer hardware and software continually evolves, and it can help dramatically improve this sort of work. The same applies to our neural functions, which our computers can read and interpret. A great example of this has just been revealed...
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Building exoskeletons to aid persons or animals is nothing new, and in recent years, we've seen numerous examples of them being built with the use of 3D printing. For those who need them, they can reintroduce some lost capability back into their lives or introduce new-found capability. However, as the US Army has now proven, they can be used for other things, as well. Think Deus Ex-like augmentations. The result of mechanical engineer Dan Baechle's efforts is MAXFAS, a mechanical arm exoskeleton that's designed to improve the accuracy of a person's gun aim. It's to be used both on and off the field,...
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DARPA has a penchant for putting outlandish ideas forward, but that's sort of the point. Without far-fetched ideas, how is one's military and technological prowess to evolve? For those just catching up, DARPA is the United States miltiary's advanced tech arm, and a new filing makes clear that at least a few mad scientists within its walls are thinking about floating aircraft carriers of a different kind. Presently, floating aircraft carriers float on water, but if DARPA has its way, they'll float on air. Flying aircraft carriers seem like an idea that would take shape within a major motion picture,...
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Iron Man may be a fictional character in the land of comic books and Hollywood adaptations, but is such a suit out of the real of possibility? Apparently the U.S. Special Operations Command is determined to find out. They've teamed up with some of the brightest minds and researchers from various universities and laboratories to see if an Iron Man-like suit could be created for military applications. The goal is to build superior body armor than what's available today, as opposed to being able to fly up into the atmosphere like a tin version of Superman. Efforts to build better armor are already...
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Cue those "hand quotes", because Boeing's got the freakin' lasers. Called the 'Thin Disk Laser', Boeing's managed to deliver a product that's 30% more effective than what the US' Department of Defense required, and if used in combat, I'm not sure we'd want to know what kind of damage it could do. Let's just say, when less than 1 watt could easily blind you, it seems likely that 30,000 watts could do some ridiculous damage. Boeing's laser, also referred to as an 'Active Mirror Laser', is a solid-state type that implements a lasing material to act as an amplifier and a mirror to direct the beam....
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DARPA is known for doing some pretty outlandish things, partly in the world of technology and partly in the world of military. And often, those sectors cross paths. DARPA's Adaptable Sensor System (ADAPT) program has launched this week, aiming to transform how unattended sensors are developed for the military by using an original design manufacturer (ODM) process similar to that of the commercial smartphone industry. The goal is to develop low-cost, rapidly updatable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors in less than a year, a marked improvement to the current three-to-eight...
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GPS is a powerful navigational tool that’s changed the way we travel, but it’s not without its shortcomings. The simple chip-to-satellite communication can be disrupted far too easily, for example, such as when a user goes through a tunnel or if there’s simple interference nearby. Being that GPS was originally developed for the military, those limitations are not just inconvenient, but life- or mission-threatening. DARPA researchers at the University of Michigan have been developing a “timing & inertial measurement unit” (TIMU) that will augment GPS when needed...
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It goes without saying that where durability, stability and endurance are concerned, few organizations care quite as much about the products they deploy than the military. The term "Military-Grade" exists for a reason, after all. Rugged laptops are common there - they need to withstand dirt and an occasional bump - but what about servers? While it might seem a bit strange to picture a server being knocked to the ground or dropped from a flight - it is a very real possibility in the military. Thankfully, solutions for this do exist, with the latest coming from PC vendor NCS. Called the Bunker XRV-5241,...
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Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak was almost too fantastical a magical item (and made for a cheap and easy literary foil to allow some of the main characters in the series to move from place to place and eavesdrop) to be believable even in fantasy novels, but a company called Hyperstealth Biotech Corp claims to have a camouflage material that provides that exact capability to soldiers. Called “Quantum Stealth”, the fabric supposedly works by bending light around itself so that observers can’t see that someone is there. Unfortunately, Hyperstealth Biotech won’t divulge...
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We have heard of rugged SSDs, but this is really taking things to a new level. Emphase, which is a company providing Industrial and Military solid state storage for embedded systems, has launched a new series of rugged Military-grade storage with MIL-STD-810F compliance. But not only that; these new SSDs can "self-destruct" with the push of a button. Yeah, totally James Bond-like. They're engineered to withstand severe conditions, but should it ever fall into the wrong hands, the SLC Flash drive (2.5" SATA III) can be evaporated. Transfer rates on this drive can reach 170MB/sec (read) and 90MB/sec...
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You can hardly talk about U.S. military and defense systems without mentioning Raytheon. The same company that introduced an iPhone app for the battlefield a few months ago has just announced a huge contract win that could change the way GPS is viewed and used forever. And if you've ever wished that you could find a signal in a crowded city or have a GPS unit with more accuracy, there's a good chance you'll appreciate this.The United States Air Force has selected Raytheon for an "initial contract of $886 million to develop a new element of the Global Positioning System to improve the accuracy of...
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For many of us, GPS devices make our lives easier. They help us find the best route to a meeting, a nearby Starbucks, or even help us avoid a nasty accident that is stopping traffic on the freeway. However, as GPS devices become more widely used, the potential for danger from a GPS jammer is becoming increasingly common. For instance, some emergency networks, power stations, and airports rely upon accurate timing of GPS signals. Should one of these signals become compromised by a GPS jamming signal, there could be serious consequences. GPS jammers are used in potentially less harmful circumstances...
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If you're looking to score a rugged notebook, there's hardly a better place to look than in Panasonic's Toughbook line. For years now, the iconic series has led the way in durable computing, with its briefcase-styled rigs able to withstand an intense amount of abuse in the field, on the road and in the wild.Today, Panasonic is taking things one step further by announcing that its fully-rugged line and Toughbook U1 are he first to be certified by an independent third party test lab to meet the newer and more demanding MIL-STD-810G standard for environmental conditions, which was issued in October...
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