Tag: military

  • Why the US Military Can’t Just Shoot Down the Mystery Drones

    Why the US Military Can’t Just Shoot Down the Mystery Drones

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    “By all indications, [small unmanned aerial systems] will present a safety and security risk to military installations and other critical infrastructure for the foreseeable future,” NORTHCOM boss Air Force general Gregory Guillo told reporters at the time. “Mitigating those risks requires a dedicated effort across all federal departments and agencies, state, local, tribal and territorial communities, and Congress to further develop the capabilities, coordination and legal authorities necessary for detecting, tracking and addressing potential sUAS threats in the homeland.”

    But US military officials also indicated to reporters that the types of counter-drone capabilities the Pentagon may be able to bring to bear for domestic defense may be limited to non-kinetic “soft kill” means like RF and GPS signal jamming and other relatively low-tech interception techniques like nets and “string streamers” due to legal constraints on the US military’s ability to engage with drones over American soil.

    “The threat, and the need to counter these threats, is growing faster than the policies and procedures that [are] in place can keep up with,” as Guillot told reporters during the counter-drone experiment. “A lot of the tasks we have in the homeland, it’s a very sophisticated environment in that it’s complicated from a regulatory perspective. It’s a very civilianized environment. It’s not a war zone.”

    Defense officials echoed this sentiment during the unveiling of the Pentagon’s new counter-drone strategy in early December.

    “The homeland is a very different environment in that we have a lot of hobbyist drones here that are no threat at all, that are sort of congesting the environment,” a senior US official told reporters at the time. “At the same time, we have, from a statutory perspective and from an intelligence perspective, quite rightly, [a] more constrained environment in terms of our ability to act.”

    The statute in question, according to defense officials, is a specific subsection of Title 10 of the US Code, which governs the US armed forces. The section, known as 130(i), encompasses military authorities regarding the “protection of certain facilities and assets from unmanned aircraft.” It gives US forces the authority to take “action” to defend against drones, including with measures to “disrupt control of the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft, without prior consent, including by disabling the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft by intercepting, interfering, or causing interference with wire, oral, electronic, or radio communications used to control the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft” and to “use reasonable force to disable, damage, or destroy the unmanned aircraft system or unmanned aircraft.”

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  • The US Navy wants to use quantum computers for war games and much more

    The US Navy wants to use quantum computers for war games and much more

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    The US Navy’s Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Hampton

    MC2 Chase Stephens/U.S. Navy/Alamy

    The US Navy has a long wish list of applications for quantum computers, ranging from basic science – understanding corrosion, a fleet’s constant enemy – to more intriguing uses like war game simulations. Although quantum computers have rapidly improved in recent years, they are not yet capable of all these tasks, but that hasn’t stopped the military from dreaming up ways to use them.

    “We are committed to the axiom that whatever legacy model is now successful will lead to [our] demise if it does not…

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  • What are the mystery drones flying over the US?

    What are the mystery drones flying over the US?

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    Unidentified drones have been flying over US military sites

    U.S. Navy/Ensign Drew Verbis

    Mysterious drones have been swarming the night skies above New Jersey and other nearby states for a month. They have been spotted over several US military sites. They have been videoed over houses and apartment buildings. A swarm was seen following a US Coast Guard rescue boat at the same time that New Jersey police reported 50 drones arriving on land from the ocean. But no one seems to know who is piloting them, or whether it is a coordinated effort.

    The incidents have drawn the attention of state governors and legislators, as well as members of the US Congress, and the FBI has launched an investigation, asking for the public to report sightings.

    Witnesses describe the drones as being as loud as lawnmowers, with some approaching the size of a small car – significantly larger than a typical quadcopter or multirotor drone that anyone can purchase. “These are not necessarily just small, hobbyist unmanned aerial systems that you can buy for $2000,” says Daniel Gerstein at the RAND Corporation, a think tank in California. “These feel like they have longer range and are more sophisticated than what you can get at a hobby shop.”

    Blurry nighttime videos have popped up all over social media sharing drone sightings in states such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York, including one video showing drones over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. The Federal Aviation Administration issued drone flight restrictions over the Trump National Golf Club and the Picatinny Arsenal Military Base in New Jersey after reports of drone activity over both. The sightings coincide with other drone swarms recently appearing near UK military bases where US Air Force squadrons operate.

    On 10 December, the House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing on drone threats with officials from the FBI, US Customs and Border Protection and US Department of Justice. The officials described the recent sightings as involving a possible mix of both rotor drones and fixed-wing drones but had little information to offer about what the drones are doing and who may be operating them. However, they said the drones do not yet represent a serious threat. In a separate briefing from the US Department of Homeland Security, the agency told lawmakers that some of the sightings may have mistaken aircraft for drones.

    Ryan Herd, a town mayor from New Jersey, told ABC News Live that officials confirmed that these are not US military drones and that they are not operated by a US tech company.

    Meanwhile in the UK, Vernon Coaker, a defence minister, told Parliament last month that authorities are investigating multiple drone incursions that occurred near several UK military bases starting on 20 November. Those bases support US Air Force squadrons that fly fighter jets, bombers and support aircraft.

    “The common theme across all of these cases is that nobody has fully cracked the code on how to find, track and, if need be, take down small drones,” says Arthur Holland Michel, a journalist and author who writes about drones. “The second common theme is that if the person flying the drone is actively trying to avoid being identified, the challenges of countering that drone go through the roof.”

    Radar and other sensors can track drones, but it is “still not practical to cover every inch of the country with detection and tracking systems”, which often leaves authorities “totally blind to drones in most of our airspace”, says Michel. “As a general rule, once a citizen has spotted a drone and reports it or films it with their phone, it’s too late [to take early action],” he says.

    Gerstein says there is some uncertainty about who has the main authority and responsibility among local law enforcement and state and federal agencies to take action against such drones. And even if that is cleared up, it isn’t simple to figure out the best way to address them.

    Many counter-drone measures exist for either shooting down drones directly – using missiles, lasers,  bullets and even other drones – or taking over control of suspicious drones and forcing them to land by using electronic warfare signals, says Gerstein. Such technologies have been commonly used during the drone-heavy war in Ukraine, while US Navy warships and other navy vessels have shot down dozens of drones threatening shipping in the Red Sea region.

    “When it comes to shooting drones down, the most effective measures are often the most dangerous,” says Michel. “We simply can’t have law enforcement departments firing high-powered projectiles into the air, or activating military-grade signal jammers, every time a drone is spotted flying over [New Jersey].”

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  • The US Army’s Vision of Soldiers in Exoskeletons Lives On

    The US Army’s Vision of Soldiers in Exoskeletons Lives On

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    This newfound push appears to have yielded several fresh experiments with exoskeleton technology in recent years. In 2018, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $6.9 million contract to “enhance” its ONYX exosuit for future Army demonstrations (Accetta, the DEVCOM spokesman, tells WIRED that initiative was ended due to a “number of technical issues” and lack of funding). Similarly, the service has been testing the Dephy ExoBoot for at least the last several years. In August 2022, the Army unveiled an (unpowered) exoskeleton dubbed the Soldier Assistive Bionic Exosuit for Resupply (SABER) to reduce lower back pain and physical stress among service members in the field; according to a 2023 study, 90 percent of soldiers who used the exosuit during field artillery training exercises reported an increased ability to perform their assigned tasks. And the Army isn’t the only branch exploring exoskeletons: Later in 2022, the Air Force announced that the service was testing its own pneumatically powered exosuit developed by ROAM Robotics to help aerial porters load up cargo aircraft like the C-17 Globemaster III.

    The Fort Sill exoskeleton trial isn’t just the latest installment in a seven-decade push to meld man and machine; it’s also representative of the service’s cautious, restrained approach to the technology. Although US military planners may have long aspired to build an army of those so-called servo soldiers to dominate the future battlefield, current exoskeleton research efforts appear laser focused on more modest and potentially attainable applications like logistics and resupply rather than combat engagements. Slowly but surely, the Pentagon is carefully examining whether a robotic assist will help service members carry more for longer downrange.

    But the Pentagon doesn’t appear to have totally given up on its dream of a powered exoskeleton as the basis for an armored battlesuit just yet. The 2017 Army RAS strategy, despite its emphasis on lightening soldier loads, also posited the long-term goal of building a “warrior suit” with “integrated displays that aggregates a common operating picture, provides intelligence updates, and integrates indirect and direct fire weapons systems”—capabilities not unlike those imagined with a notional Starship Troopers mobile infantry or Iron Man suit-clad operator and explored with the TALOS initiative. As of a few years ago, at least one Army official was still talking about such a suit as a long-term effort that could potentially become a reality sometime in the 2040s.

    Today, however, that idea appears to be in hibernation, if not fully dead. When asked about the “warrior suit” effort, DEVCOM officials threw cold water on the entire concept as “the professional vision of one person” and “not to be considered (even at the time) as an official Army position,” despite its explicit mention in the 2017 RAS document.

    “The ‘warrior suit’ never existed as such, it was never considered a ‘warrior suit’—at least not by the Army—but a proof of concept, meaning, ‘Would something like this help manage load while on the move?’’ Accetta says. “The number of technical, integration, design, power, ergonomic, and so on concerns were not trivial.”

    “The project is not abandoned, it’s simply inactive,” he adds. “And if it ever were to become active, we doubt highly it would be called a ‘warrior suit.’”

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  • Anyone Can Buy Data Tracking US Soldiers and Spies to Nuclear Vaults and Brothels in Germany

    Anyone Can Buy Data Tracking US Soldiers and Spies to Nuclear Vaults and Brothels in Germany

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    Nearly every weekday morning, a device leaves a two-story home near Wiesbaden, Germany, and makes a 15-minute commute along a major autobahn. By around 7 am, it arrives at Lucius D. Clay Kaserne—the US Army’s European headquarters and a key hub for US intelligence operations.

    The device stops near a restaurant before heading to an office near the base that belongs to a major government contractor responsible for outfitting and securing some of the nation’s most sensitive facilities.

    For roughly two months in 2023, this device followed a predictable routine: stops at the contractor’s office, visits to a discreet hangar on base, and a lunchtime trip to the base’s dining facility. Twice in November of last year, it made a 30-minute drive to the Dagger Complex, a former intelligence and NSA signals processing facility. On weekends, the device could be traced to restaurants and shops in Wiesbaden.

    The individual carrying this device likely isn’t a spy or high-ranking intelligence official. Instead, experts believe, they’re a contractor who works on critical systems—HVAC, computing infrastructure, or possibly securing the newly built Consolidated Intelligence Center, a state-of-the-art facility suspected to be used by the National Security Agency.

    Whoever they are, the device they’re carrying with them everywhere is putting US national security at risk.

    A joint investigation by WIRED, Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), and Netzpolitik.org reveals that US companies legally collecting digital advertising data are also providing the world a cheap and reliable way to track the movements of American military and intelligence personnel overseas, from their homes and their children’s schools to hardened aircraft shelters within an airbase where US nuclear weapons are believed to be stored.

    A collaborative analysis of billions of location coordinates obtained from a US-based data broker provides extraordinary insight into the daily routines of US service members. The findings also provide a vivid example of the significant risks the unregulated sale of mobile location data poses to the integrity of the US military and the safety of its service members and their families overseas.

    We tracked hundreds of thousands of signals from devices inside sensitive US installations in Germany. That includes scores of devices within suspected NSA monitoring or signals-analysis facilities, more than a thousand devices at a sprawling US compound where Ukrainian troops were being being trained in 2023, and nearly 2,000 others at an air force base that has crucially supported American drone operations.

    A device likely tied to an NSA or intelligence employee broadcast coordinates from inside a windowless building with a metal exterior known as the “Tin Can,” which is reportedly used for NSA surveillance, according to agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Another device transmitted signals from within a restricted weapons testing facility, revealing its zig-zagging movements across a high-security zone used for tank maneuvers and live munitions drills.

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  • The AI Machine Gun of the Future Is Already Here

    The AI Machine Gun of the Future Is Already Here

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    Amid a rising tide of low-cost weaponized adversary drones menacing American troops abroad, the US military is pulling out all the stops to protect its forces from the ever-present threat of death from above. But between expensive munitions, futuristic but complicated directed energy weapons, and its own growing drone arsenal, the Pentagon is increasingly eyeing an elegantly simple solution to its growing drone problem: reinventing the gun.

    At the Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) event in August, the US Defense Department tested an artificial intelligence-enabled autonomous robotic gun system developed by fledgling defense contractor Allen Control Systems dubbed the “Bullfrog.”

    Consisting of a 7.62-mm M240 machine gun mounted on a specially designed rotating turret outfitted with an electro-optical sensor, proprietary AI, and computer vision software, the Bullfrog was designed to deliver small arms fire on drone targets with far more precision than the average US service member can achieve with a standard-issue weapon like the M4 carbine or next-generation XM7 rifle. Indeed, footage of the Bullfrog in action published by ACS shows the truck-mounted system locking onto small drones and knocking them out of the sky with just a few shots.

    The Bullfrog appears effective enough against drone targets to impress DOD officials: According to Defense Daily, Alex Lovett, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for prototyping and experimentation within the Pentagon’s Research and Engineering office, told reporters at a demonstration event in August that the testing of the “low-cost” Bullfrog solution had “gone really well.” Should the Pentagon adopt the system, it would represent the first publicly known lethal autonomous weapon in the US military’s arsenal, according to the Congressional Research Service. (The Office of the Secretary of Defense did not yet respond to WIRED’s request for comment.)

    Shooting down small, fast-moving drones with conventional firearms is a significant challenge to even the most talented marksman, and the US military has been pursuing various ways to make its small arms more effective against unmanned airborne threats. Those efforts include the procurement of small- to medium-caliber munitions and “buckshot-like” ammo that can replicate the effects of the shotguns that have proven effective counter-drone measures amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; rifle-mounted radio frequency and GPS jammers to disorient incoming drones so troops don’t have to carry separate, bulky counter-drone weapons like the Dronebuster or NightFighter; and “smart” optics from companies like SmartShooter and ZeroMark that purportedly only allow a weapon to fire when it locks on target. The Army has even started integrating counter-drone exercises into its basic training regimen, part of a broader effort to make such schooling as “routine” as conventional marksmanship training.

    For ACS cofounder and CEO Steve Simoni, a former Navy nuclear engineer, the best way to optimize a firearm for drone threats isn’t through novel accessories or enhanced training, but a combination of advanced robotics and a sophisticated AI that can take the guesswork out of target acquisition and tracking.

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  • Tesla’s Cybertruck Goes, Inevitably, to War

    Tesla’s Cybertruck Goes, Inevitably, to War

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    “They are cool because they look like something out of a video game and portray Kadyrov as a sort of futuristic warlord,” Cancian tells WIRED in an email. “They are useless because they don’t provide a new capability, except perhaps a bit of stealth.”

    Indeed, the Cybertruck is not totally suited for hostile and chaotic environments like the front lines of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. First, the EV’s exoskeleton actually consists of steel panels attached to a standard “unibody” frame that’s more akin to the chassis of a conventional car rather than the “body-on-frame” design of most pickup trucks like the Hilux. This design, according to Motor Trend, makes the former a weaker and less resilient vehicle. Second, while the Cybertruck is certainly off-road capable, it’s still significantly heavier than Hilux, which can make maneuverability and traction on rough terrain a challenge. Third, while its armor portends to offer at least some additional coverage compared to the conventional pickup truck-based technical, the vehicle’s bulletproofing only appears to work with subsonic rounds like the .45 ACP ammo used in Tesla’s tests and not the ubiquitous NATO-standard 5.56 mm round or, say, a shot from a .50 caliber rifle. (Though, to be fair, aftermarket armor packages for the vehicle do exist.)

    Beyond design and engineering challenges, there’s also the critical matter of maintenance and logistics, the lifeblood of any motorized conflict. As Tracy points out, the Cybertruck’s unique complexity and software-forward design (like the lack of a physical connection between steering wheel and wheels) means a distinct lack of spare parts and higher potential for catastrophic system failures, challenges that all but guarantee that the vehicle is unable to operate reliably and ensure consistent uptime—not necessarily ideal for troops whose lives may depend on them.

    “Simplicity is everything; simplicity and parts availability,” Tracy says. “If you’re driving a complex vehicle and there’s a failure of some sort and you need someone to flash it with a computer, you’re hosed if you’re in the middle of nowhere. The beauty of the Hilux is that they’re very tough, for one, but they can be repaired with simple tools and fairly ubiquitous parts. The Cybertruck does not really make a whole lot of sense in that regard.”

    “It’s great that it is safe in a crash and can take a bullet,” he adds. “But if you break a control arm and can’t get the part, it’s pretty useless.”

    Plus, the Cybertruck’s reliance on charging stations would make a fleet of armed vehicles “likely impossible to support” in any sort of protracted conflict like that taking place in Ukraine, according to CSIS’s Cancian.

    “I doubt there are garages or mechanics near the front lines who can fix these complex devices, which are so unlike the fossil fuel vehicles that the region is accustomed to,” he says. “Further, I doubt there are many recharging stations in the battle area. Unlike with fossil fuel vehicles, where the fuel can be brought to the vehicle if necessary, the Cybertrucks must go to the recharging point.”

    How the Cybertruck will actually perform in a combat situation remains to be seen. But if the Kadyrov video is any indication, it’s only a matter of time before an armed Cybertrucks makes the transition from YouTube sensation to tried-and-true, battle-tested technical.

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  • Palmer Luckey Is Bringing Anduril Smarts to Microsoft’s Military Headset

    Palmer Luckey Is Bringing Anduril Smarts to Microsoft’s Military Headset

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    When Palmer Luckey was hacking together virtual reality headsets at his startup Oculus VR in the mid-2010s, he would sometimes imagine a future in which US soldiers used the technology to sharpen their battlefield senses.

    That vision is now virtually a reality after a deal that will bring software from his defense startup, Anduril, to a US Army head-mounted display developed by Microsoft.

    “The idea is to enhance soldiers,” Luckey tells WIRED over Zoom from his home in Newport Beach, California. “Their visual perception, audible perception—basically to give them all the vision that Superman has, and then some, and make them more lethal.”

    Luckey cofounded Anduril in 2017, after selling Oculus VR to Facebook for a reported $2 billion. His new company set out to challenge incumbent defense contractors by moving swiftly and efficiently, focusing more on software, and adapting technologies from the tech industry for military use.

    While known primarily for drones and air defenses, Anduril’s core offering is Lattice, a suite of software that powers those tools and a platform that can integrate with third-party systems. With today’s announcement, Lattice will be implemented in the Integrated Visual Augmentation System headset. Developed by Microsoft for the US military in 2021 and based on the company’s Hololens system, IVAS is an augmented-reality display that blends virtual information with a user’s view of the real world.

    Lattice will surface a lot more live information—pulled from drones, ground vehicles, or aerial defense systems—for soldiers wearing IVAS. This would include data showing the movement of drones and loitering munitions, electronic warfare attacks, and the activities of autonomous systems, Anduril says. It could alert them to incoming drones beyond their visual range that have been detected by an air defense system, for instance.

    Luckey notes that he was far from the first person to envision such futuristic combat scenarios. As is often the case, he drifts between science fiction and reality without much pause. “This is a classic sci-fi concept,” Luckey says. “Robert Heinlein was the one who pioneered the application of heads-up displays as applied to infantry in the 1950s novel Starship Troopers.”

    The Anduril cofounder certainly looks like a new kind of defense tech executive, wearing his customary Hawaiian shirt and sporting a bold hairstyle combo of both a mullet and a goatee. He is, however, quite confident in his ability to shake things up. “I am one of the smartest people in the VR industry, I think,” he says. “And if that sounds arrogant, remember that it takes arrogance to start a company like Anduril.”

    At the time of Anduril’s founding, some people scoffed at the idea of Silicon Valley engineers mastering military technology. But with the Pentagon increasingly keen on low-cost, autonomous, and software-defined systems, Anduril has made a name for itself. The startup recently beat several major companies, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, to win a contract to develop an experimental “collaborative” robotic fighter jet for the US Air Force and Navy.

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  • The US Navy Is Going All In on Starlink

    The US Navy Is Going All In on Starlink

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    “Having the ability to reach out to friends or family allows our sailors the opportunity to decompress for a few minutes, and that in turn allows them to be able to operate more efficiently,” Richard Haninger, the Ford’s deployed resiliency educator, said following the installation of the SEA2 system aboard the carrier in February 2023. “It’s not just about reaching back to friends and family, the ability to pay a bill online, take an online class, or even just check the score of the game […] all of this allows our Sailors the chance to access something that lowers their stress level, then return to work after a quick break more focused and able to complete the mission.”

    But beyond morale-boosting applications, SEA2 also purportedly offers major benefits for “tactical and business applications” used by sailors on a daily basis, like, say, those used for air wing maintenance or for tracking pay and benefits. As White explained in a May release from the Navy on the initiative, most of these applications function at higher classification levels and are encrypted, but they’re still designed to operate on the commercial internet without jeopardizing information security.

    “The fact that we’re not making use of that opportunity with modern technology to allow classified tactical applications to ride the commercial internet is where we are missing out, so we built [SEA2] to be able to do that in the future,” as White put it. “We’re close to demonstrating a couple of those applications, and I am fully confident it will be game changing.” (As of June, the Navy had not authorized the use of classified data with the system)

    The Navy also expects to see broad “tangible warfighting impact” from the proliferation of SEA2 across the surface fleet, namely on “recruitment and retention, mental health, cloud services, and work stoppages due to slow and inaccessible websites,” as one service official told DefenseScoop in April.

    The Navy isn’t the only service embracing Starlink to enable faster, persistent internet for deployed service members. The US Space Force signed a $70 million contract with Starlink parent company SpaceX in October 2023 to provide “a best effort and global subscription for various land, maritime, stationary and mobility platforms and users” using Starshield, the company’s name for its military products. The US Army currently remains reliant on Starlink, but the service has been casting about for fresh commercial satellite constellations to tap into for advanced command and control functions, according to Defense News. And SpaceX is actively building a network of “hundreds” of specialized Starshield spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, Reuters reported earlier this year.

    But Starlink is far from a perfect system, especially for potential military applications. According to a technical report obtained by The Debrief, Ukraine has claimed that Russia’s military intelligence agency has conducted “large-scale cyberattacks” to access data from the Starlink satellite constellations that have proven essential to the former’s military communications infrastructure since the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. Indeed, significant hardware vulnerabilities have imperiled Starlink terminals at the hands of experienced hackers, as WIRED has previously documented.

    More importantly, there’s the matter of Musk’s ownership of Starlink. The controversial SpaceX founder had previously refused to allow Ukraine to use the satellite constellation to launch a surprise attack against Russian forces in Kremlin-controlled Crimea in September 2022, prompting concerns among Pentagon decisionmakers that a private citizen with a questionable perception of geopolitics could drastically shape US military operations during a future conflict simply by switching off service branches’ Starlink access, according to an Associated Press report last year.

    “Living in the world we live in, in which Elon runs this company and it is a private business under his control, we are living off his good graces,” a Pentagon official told The New Yorker in August 2023. “That sucks.”

    Given these potential risks, it’s unlikely that Starlink will see deeper integration into the major tactical systems that govern the operation of a Navy warship at sea. But for the moment, it looks as though sailors will at least get a welcome reprieve from the stress and solitude of life on the high seas.

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  • Why is the US military getting ready to launch new spy balloons?

    Why is the US military getting ready to launch new spy balloons?

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    A high-altitude balloon launched by the US Army Pacific in the Philippines in 2022 as part of an exercise to strenghten their cooperation

    A high-altitude balloon launched by the US Army Pacific in the Philippines in 2022 as part of an exercise to strengthen cooperation between the two nations

    The US military is planning to launch balloons that are capable of providing high-altitude surveillance. It comes after the nation scrambled fighter jets to shoot down a Chinese balloon as it drifted through North American airspace last year.

    Modern balloons can use artificial intelligence to predict and ride wind currents while operating at altitudes around 18 kilometres, or even higher, in Earth’s stratosphere for commercial and military purposes. Those heights make them hard to…

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