AI to Track Hypersonic Missiles

Next Big Future  February 21, 2024 The startup EpiSci will use AI software to leverage infrared satellite data from the Space Development Agency (SDA) future constellation of hundreds of satellites. The satellites will have overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) sensors. EpiSci’s modular Tactical AI is positioned to solve emerging challenges by delivering AI/ML enhanced algorithms for rapid, low-latency detection, classification, and predictive tracking at the edge. These emerging systems will be able to intelligently focus resources on objects of interest and adapt to never-before-seen targets. It is partnering with Raytheon Missile Systems to provide representative training and evaluation datasets of hypersonic […]

Temperature, humidity may drive future transmission of parasitic worm infections

Phys.org  February 26, 2024 Free-living stages of soil-transmitted helminths are highly susceptible to climatic drivers; however, how multiple climatic variables affect helminth species, and the long-term consequences of these interactions, is poorly understood. An international team of researchers (USA – Pennsylvania State University, Italy) used experiments on nine trichostrongylid species of herbivores to develop a temperature- and humidity-dependent model of infection hazard. Intestinal and stomach helminths exhibited contrasting climatic responses, with the former group strongly affected by temperature while the latter primarily impacted by humidity. According to the specific climatic responses of the two groups, climate change is expected to […]

Surface to Air Missiles Are Too Slow and Weak To Catch SpaceX Starship

Next Big Future February 19, 2024 A SpaceX Starship will be much harder to shootdown than an ICBM. It is like an ICBM with massive course change capabilities. A SAM-5 surface to air missile is a larger missile with a top speed of Mach 4 and reaches an altitude up to 19 miles. Passenger airplanes have a cruising altitude of 33,000 to 40,000 feet (6-8 miles). The Russian S-200 SAM has a maximum altitude of 180,000 feet (55 km or 34 miles). It is generally expected that it will take four interceptors to have high probability of taking out an […]

US Air Force readies to award collaborative combat aircraft deals

Defense News  February 13. 2024 Air Force plans to award contracts for the next round of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) — drones loaded with autonomous software that would fly themselves into battle alongside crewed fighters — in fiscal 2025. On the first increment of CCAs, the Air Force has contracts with five companies: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics and Anduril. The Air Force plans to field several different types of CCAs, with different capabilities and levels of survivability, to carry out a wide range of missions including strikes, surveillance, jamming, and serving as decoys to draw enemy fire. […]

Missile Defense Agency Sees Megawatt Anti-ICBM Lasers by 2026

Next Big Future  September 5, 2023 The Pentagon has been spending about $1 billion per year researching directed energy weapons like lasers and microwave weapons for decades. They have bought a few demonstration systems for Navy ships and mounted on trucks. In July 2023 Lockheed Martin announced they will scale its laser technology to a new benchmark: a 500 kW-class laser. This is the second phase of the High Energy Laser Scaling Initiative. After spending tens of billions on combat laser research over the past few decades, they are finally seeing some real progress to usable combat lasers in the […]

China Digging 10,000 Meter Superdeep Hole

Next Big Future  June 11, 2023 China has been exploring the deep Earth for many years. China has started drilling a 6.2 mile (10,000 meters) superdeep borehole into the Earth’s crust in China’s large oil-bearing basin – the Tarim Basin of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In May 2023 they completed building a 12,000-tonne offshore drilling rig to mine the geological reserves of natural gas. In the deep hole drilling will penetrate over 10 continental strata or layers of rock formation, go beyond the Cretaceous system, a series of layered rocks below the oldest tertiary deposits and above the […]

U.S. unprepared for dangers posed by zoonotic diseases, new analysis concludes

Science Daily  February 16, 2023 In October, the Biden administration released its National Biodefense Strategy (NBS-22), the first update since the COVID-19 pandemic began. According to a team of researcher in the US (Harvard University, New York University) although the document notes that one of the lessons of the pandemic is that threats originating anywhere are threats everywhere, it frames threats as largely external to the United States. NBS-22 focuses primarily on bioterrorism and laboratory accidents, neglecting threats posed by routine practices of animal use and production inside the United States. NBS-22 references zoonotic disease but assures readers that no […]

US intelligence services see security threat in climate change

Phys.org  October 22, 2021 According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence more extreme weather will increasingly exacerbate a number of risks to US national security interests, from physical impacts that could cascade into security challenges, to how countries respond to the climate challenge. It is driving increased geopolitical tension as countries argue over who should be doing more, cross-border “flashpoints” as countries respond to climate change impact by trying to secure their own interests, and fallout from climate on national stability in some countries. With more than 85 percent of global emissions coming from beyond US borders […]

Number of people suffering extreme droughts will double

Science Daily  January 11, 2021 Using ensemble hydrological simulations, an international team of researchers (USA – Michigan State University, Japan, Austria, Germany, UK, Greece, Switzerland, China, Belgium, the Netherlands) shows that climate change could reduce TWS (Terrestrial water storage ) in many regions, especially those in the Southern Hemisphere. Strong inter-ensemble agreement indicates high confidence in the projected changes that are driven primarily by climate forcing rather than land and water management activities. Declines in TWS translate to increases in future droughts. By the late twenty-first century, the global land area and population in extreme-to-exceptional TWS drought could more than […]

New method adds and subtracts for sustainability’s true measure

Science Daily  September 17, 2020 A team of researchers in the US (State University of Michigan, UC Merced) used a new integrated framework to guide socioeconomic-environmental interactions within and across adjacent or distant systems (SDG) synergy and trade-off analysis within and across systems, as influenced by cross-boundary tourism and wildlife translocations. The world’s terrestrial protected areas alone receive approximately 8 billion visits per year. Globally, more than 5000 animal species and 29,000 plant species are traded across country borders, and the wildlife trade has arguably contributed to zoonotic disease worldwide, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. They synthesized 22 cases […]