Tag: DARPA

That Bullet Had His Name On It

The weekend and I am being lazy…..I have 30 drafts and I will attempt to clean the folder out….a little history and a little FYI….

How many times have you heard that statement in TV and the movies?

Well DARPA may have just made that prediction a possibility.

One of the most challenging roles in ground units is that of a military sniper. Military snipers must take long distance shots with precision rifles, often doing a fair amount of math in their heads to make a bullet reach its target. A new guided-bullet technology, however, promises to make longer distance shots a little easier by installing guidance systems in bullets.

The mission of the sniper is to take out targets at ranges farther than your typical rifleman, from five hundred yards out to two thousand yards. Snipers rely on specialized training, accurized, high power rifles and quality optics to reliably hit targets that are often mere specks on the horizon. These targets typically include anything from specialized enemy troops (engineers, heavy weapon operators) to command, control, and communications targets (radio operators, officers.) Snipers may also engage material targets, such as antennas, aircraft and light vehicles.

In addition to mere distance, snipers must contend with the technical limitations of their weapons and physics to make long range shots. Once they exit the barrel, bullets immediately start slowing down as gravity begins to exert an influence. This causes bullets to travel in a gradual downward arc. Bullets are also vulnerable to weather conditions, particularly wind, and are increasingly vulnerable to environmental conditions as they lose velocity.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/military-snipers-could-soon-be-using-guided-bullets-169616

I believe back years ago Tom Sellack did a movie where the bad guy had a DNA bullet…..program it to kill only the person intended to die.

But this is not new…DARPA had a bullet in 2015……

You know the phrase “dodging a bullet”? Forget about it. Probably not going to happen anymore.

The U.S. military said this week it has made great progress in its effort to develop a self-steering bullet.
In February, the “smart bullets” — .50-caliber projectiles equipped with optical sensors — passed their most successful round of live-fire tests to date, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.
 
 
In the tests, an experienced marksman “repeatedly hit moving and evading targets,” a DARPA statement said.
“Additionally,” the statement said, “a novice shooter using the system for the first time hit a moving target.” In other words, now you don’t even have to be a good shot to hit the mark.
 
Making killing easier……better death through science.
 
I Read, I Write, You Know
 
“lego ergo scribo”

DARPA!

Do you know where those taxpayer bucks go?

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

This is where all those special weapons are researched….those secret weapons……some even sound like science fiction…..lab grown blood….or plant eating robots…..etc…….

For every one of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s wild successes, there seem to be a plethora of wild failures – projects like mechanical elephants or telepathy research. What makes DARPA so unique is its ability to go outside the red tape of bureaucracy to innovate. DARPA isn’t subject to the same acquisition rules as other agencies, which means it has fewer restrictions on the scientists and innovators it can hire and the salaries it can offer.

The agency also has fewer financial limitations, enabling it to invest in longshot projects with the hopes they’ll pay off – they’re basically the military’s innovative venture capitalists.

Here are some of the more interesting projects to come out of DARPA’s “high-risk, high-reward” environment.

https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2020/09/04/8-weird-darpa-projects-make-science-fiction-seem-like-real-life/

Now this brings me to the interview that Trump gave Woodward…..while the media is focusing on his pandemic comments there are others that should be just as important……like his disclosure of secret weapons systems…..

President Trump bragged about a supposedly secret nuclear weapons system in an interview with Bob Woodward, according to excerpts from the veteran journalist’s new book.

Trump discussed the weapons system while reflecting on how close the United States and North Korea came to nuclear war in 2017, according to excerpts from “Rage” published Wednesday by The Washington Post, where Woodward is an associate editor.

“I have built a nuclear — a weapons system that nobody’s ever had in this country before. We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about,” Trump told Woodward, according to the Post.

“We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before,” Trump added, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. “There’s nobody — what we have is incredible.”

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/515700-trump-disclosed-secret-weapons-system-to-woodward-book

Could this “secret” weapon be the one that has already been reported?

The new warhead was first announced in the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review which, unveiled in February 2018, framed the weapons system as “a comparatively low-cost and near term modification to an existing capability that will help counter any mistaken perception of an exploitable ‘gap’ in U.S. regional deterrence capabilities.”

The W76-2 warhead — which, with an explosive yield of roughly five kilotons, has a smaller explosive yield than either of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — was subsequently deployed aboard the nuclear submarine USS Tennessee at the end of 2019, according to Defense News.

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/trump-nuclear-weapons-w76-2-low-yield-nuke

So is this the “secret” weapon referred to by Trump….or are there more that he will blurt out?

DARPA is the bottomless pit of DC……money goes in and no one knows where it goes from there.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Remember Top Gun?

The weekend and the search for news and thoughts that can be of interest to my readers…..

Off we go into the wild blue yonder……

The movie made about the elite and unbeatable Air Aces from the schools in the US…..I mean it was so important and influential that there is a sequel in the process.

But recently there is some sad news for this program…..there seems these “Top Guns” have been beaten……there claim to fame is no longer.

No it was not Russian that beat them…..or the Chinese…..then who could possibly be that good?

It’s official: The robots are taking over.

Not quite. But in a significant development on August 20, an artificial intelligence (AI) program managed to defeat a human F-16 pilot in simulated dogfights. The AI program, designed by tech firm Heron Systems, was pitched against the human pilot in an environment resembling an elaborate video game during the third and final event of the AlphaDogfight trials organized by U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Heron System’s website notes that the program was based on deep reinforcement learning – an AI technique that combines insights from behavioral psychology with how the human cortex is structured and functions – along with unspecified innovations. The bested human operator, publicly known only by their callsign, “Banger,” was reported to have been trained at the Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

https://thediplomat.com/2020/08/ai-defeats-human-pilot-in-darpa-organized-dogfight/

Don’t look now but this is just another step into the future and the prediction of “Skynet”.

Oh the horror!

Will that mean the cancellation of the Top Gun sequel?  (Sarcasm)

In case anyone is interested……

Heron, a small, female- and minority-owned company with offices in Maryland and Virginia, builds artificial intelligence agents, and is also a player in DARPA’s Gamebreaker effort to explore tactics for disrupting enemy strategies using real-world games as platforms. The company beat eight other teams, including one led by defense giant Lockheed Martin — which came in second in the AlphaDogfight “semi-finals” that pitted the AI pilots against each other this morning.

Congrats Ladies!  Job well done!

This ends my Saturday posts….my wife will have me designing a garden for next Spring…..at least it gets me away from the keyboard for awhile…..

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Military Tech of 2019

I write a lot about war and the need for us to find another way of dealing with international situations…..I am not naive enough to think that war will end overnight….but at least we should try to find a cessation point.

But since we still have war let’s look at the tech of 2019…

PUTTING ASIDE our personal feelings on the nature of war and what it is or isn’t good for, the fact is that it’s a terrible reality of life. It’s also, often, where technological development advances at several paces beyond every other sector even remotely like it. These are some of literature’s best (and most dystopian) ideas, fully realized. And 2019 especially boasted some of the most mind-bending military tech the world’s ever seen.

From an invisibility cloak to a sonic gun that vibrates a target’s brain, military researchers really pushed the limits of what we thought was scientifically possible this year, no doubt at least partly thanks to their sometimes astronomically high budgets — looking at you, America.

Without further ado, here is The Coolest (and Scariest) Military Tech of 2019. 

https://futurism.com/coolest-scariest-military-technology-2019

We have another year of wars and conflict to look forward to….but there is a possibility the Trump will do something about war because of the election in November…..he may need to find a whole new batch of voters to help him win.

I read, I Wrote, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What Is ‘Disinformation’?

In the era of social media and the claim that it is ‘fake news’ how can we be sure what is true and what is just manure?

Disinformation?

Disinformation is a type of untrue communication that is purposefully spread and represented as truth to elicit some response that serves the perpetrator’s purpose.

Disinformation is sometimes confused with misinformation but the two are distinguished by their intention. The purpose of disinformation is to deceive. Although misinformation is also false, it is  presented as truth only because the communicator does not have the facts straight.

The relative anonymity of the Web and the affordability of creating websites have made it easy for people to post disinformation online. Sites developed for the purposes of disinformation typically share several characteristics. For example, such a site usually either has no clearly stated purpose or has little content related to its stated purpose. The majority of content on a disinformation site is usually related to a particular agenda, is likely to be very contentious and may contain blatantly false information that is easily disproved. The most common characteristic of disinformation websites is an absence of contact information or any “About us” page. 

Sorry about boring you to slumber….but there is madness to my method…..

The department in the DoD that researches stuff has been given a task to fight ‘disinformation’…..this is almost laughable….

The US military may soon be deciding what is considered fake news on social media. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), an agency of the US Department of Defense, announced the development of a new program to combat “disinformation” on social media.

The Semantic Forensics program will “develop technologies to automatically detect, attribute, and characterize falsified, multi-modal media assets (e.g., text, audio, image, video) to defend against large-scale, automated disinformation attacks.”

DARPA is looking to develop software that can detect fakes amongst 500,000 stories, photos, videos and audio clips. The plan is to undergo four years of trials until the software is ready, so the program will not be used in the run-up to the 2020 election.

Only time will tell how accepting social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube will be of the DoD determining what is considered fake news.

The program is likely a reaction to the claim by Robert Mueller that the Russian company, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), led a social media campaign with the aim of “sowing discord” to help President Trump get elected. Although Mueller claimed the IRA was taking orders from the Kremlin, he provided no real evidence to link the IRA to the Russian government.

The actual influence of the IRA is much smaller than what Mueller alludes to in his 2018 indictment of the company. According to a Senate commissioned report by the firm New Knowledge, just “11 percent” of the IRA’s total content was election related. The IRA’s posts were “minimally about the candidates” with “roughly 6% of tweets, 18% of Instagram posts, and 7% of Facebook posts” having “mentioned Trump or Clinton by name.”

(antiwar.com)

I am all for the fight against ‘disinformation’….but I ask if the agency that puts out more such propaganda is the agency to fight it…..has anyone thought about who helped spread the Iraqi WMDs?

Answer that question then ask if they are the ones to fight it.  Or why not get the PsyOps people to develop this fight after all they generate most of the governmental ‘disinformation’.

God I love this stuff!

Learn Stuff!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

It’s Alive!

Pentagon has a R&D unit called DARPA and some news has come out about one of their projects…..

How do you detect submarines in an expanse as large as the ocean? The U.S. military hopes that common marine microorganisms might be genetically engineered into living tripwires to signal the passage of enemy subs, underwater vessels, or even divers.

It’s one of many potential military applications for so-called engineered organisms, a field that promises living camouflage that reacts to its surroundings to better avoid detection, new drugs and medicines to help deployed forces survive in harsh conditions, and more. But the research is in its very early stages, military officials said.

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/12/us-military-genetically-engineering-new-life-forms-detect-enemy-subs/153200/

This is fascinating news!  But after thinking about this situation….this is basically genetic engineering……is that ever a good thing?

Somewhere down the road this could go completely off track.

DARPA also was considering influencing people through their Twitter account…..does that sound familiar?

The activities of users of Twitter and other social media services were recorded and analysed as part of a major project funded by the US military, in a program that covers ground similar to Facebook’s controversial experiment into how to control emotions by manipulating news feeds.

Research funded directly or indirectly by the US Department of Defense’s military research department, known as Darpa, has involved users of some of the internet’s largest destinations, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Kickstarter, for studies of social connections and how messages spread.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-networks-research-twitter-influence-studies

I would like everyone’s thoughts on this thing…please.

More rest and care for my better half for the virus hit her a lot worse than it hit me…..she has been fighting it for almost a week…..she cares for me when as a man I am sick and we know how that is, huh?

I really would like a beer but I think I will wait a few more days before that happens…..

TTFN!

Biotech Gone Bad?

The weekend begins and I try to find the stuff that does not make it to the headlines…..basically I try to be an FYI post……

I read disturbing stories and reports all the time but the ones that involve our environment especially when the food supply being tampered with…. like the below report……

How about GMO insects and the possibility of them being used as a bio-weapon?

A team of scientist sounds the alarm in a new Science Policy Forum report about a mysterious US government program that is developing genetically modified viruses that would be dispersed into the environment using insects. The virus-infected or ‘Frankenstein’ insects are being developed as countermeasures against potential natural and engineered threats to the US food supply. The program is operated by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) could be viewed as an attempt to develop an entirely new class of bioweapons that would prompt other nations to seek similar weapons, they cautioned.

The researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Freiburg both in Germany, and the University of Montpellier in France suggest DARPA’s program could likely breach the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the development, production, and stockpiling of biological and toxin weapons.

https://www.technocracy.news/darpa-developing-gmo-insects-that-genetically-modify-crops/

It should be a crime to use food as a weapon.

Personally, I do not like the idea of anything GMO.  It makes veggies tasteless…..and seeds worthless….I think we would be better off without the burden of GMO anything.

I try to grow my own veggies from non-GMO seeds as much as I can these days…..

Any thoughts?

Cooler mornings, more time in the garden…..I love Autumn!

Is That A Mosquito? Or Maybe A Drone?

It is still Sunday……

A few years back I watched an episode of “Elementary” about a murder committed by drone…..and Sherlock was spied on by a drone the size of a mosquito……an excellent show but what are the chances that the drones will get that small?

I had to go to Google…..will drones get that small and could they be used against our own population for whatever reason?

The DARPA Robotics Challenge was a showcase for how very large, very expensive robots could potentially be useful in disaster recovery and high-risk environments. Humanoids are particularly capable in some very specific situations, but the rest of the time, they’re probably overkill, and using smaller, cheaper, more specialized robots is much more efficient. This is especially true when you’re concerned with data collection as opposed to manipulation—for the “search” part of “search and rescue,” for example, you’re better off with lots of very small robots covering as much ground as possible.

Yesterday, DARPA announced a new program called SHRIMP: SHort-Range Independent Microrobotic Platforms. The goal is “to develop and demonstrate multi-functional micro-to-milli robotic platforms for use in natural and critical disaster scenarios.” To enable robots that are both tiny and useful, SHRIMP will support fundamental research in the component parts that are the most difficult to engineer, including actuators, mobility systems, and power storage.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/darpa-wants-your-insect-scale-robots-for-a-micro-olympics

There is much more on this situation….it will start with the military and move to the private sector….where would this stop?

Further reading:

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-tiny-drone-the-us-military-is-testing-2015-6

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2013802/U-S-military-drones-small-look-like-insects.html

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2578439/u-s-military-unleashes-swarm-of-tiny-intelligent-micro-drones/

Closing Thought–08May17

Brain Games!

I for one think that learning is essential to life……one should continue long after leaving school….and anything that would help me learn faster and better could be a good thing.

DARPA, that super secret R&D outfit that researches weapons and other such necessities for our continuous wars,  is looking into a way to hack a human brain….that’s right…I said hack the human brain!

If the brain is just a bunch of wires and circuits, it stands to reason that those components can simply be re-wired in order to create a better, smarter us. At least, that’s the theory behind a new project from the military’s secretive DARPA research branch announced on Wednesday, which aims to enhance human cognitive ability by activating what’s known as “synaptic plasticity.”

Recent research has suggested that stimulating certain peripheral nerves—those that relay signals between the brain, the spinal cord and the rest of the body—can enhance a person’s ability to learn, by triggering the release of neurochemicals that reorganize connections in the brain. Through its new Targeted Neuroplasticity Training program, DARPA is is funding eight different research efforts that seek to enhance learning by targeting those nerves with electrical stimulation. The end goal is to translate those findings into real-world applications that boost military training regimens—allowing a soldier, to say, soak up a new language in months instead of years. Should DARPA figure out a way to do that, its efforts will likely go on to impact all of us.

Source: DARPA Wants to Hack Your Brain to Make You Learn Faster

Plus these people are using the human brain to make robots more deadly…..

Without even realizing it, soldiers could soon be training robot sharpshooters to take their jobs.

Modern sensors can see farther than humans. Electronic circuits can shoot faster than nerves and muscles can pull a trigger. Humans still outperform armed robots in knowing what to shoot at — but new research funded in part by the Army may soon narrow that gap.

Researchers from DCS Corp and the Army Research Lab fed datasets of human brain waves into a neural network — a type of artificial intelligence — which learned to recognize when a human is making a targeting decision. They presented their paper on it at the annual Intelligent User Interface conference in Cyprus in March.

Source: The Military is Using Human Brain Waves to Teach Robots How to Shoot – Defense One

While I like these ideas….I also see it as something that can and will be abused in the name of profit…..it is only a matter of time.

Any thoughts?

Today has been a bit slow on IST…I do hope it is not because I had to cut back….this is my last of the day….I have too much research to fool around……see you guys tomorrow….chuq  out.