Development will take many years. Northrop Grumman and a host of subcontractors and engineering companies will benefit. The goals are total stealth, high speed and heavy bomb cargo capacity. The plane will ultimately replace the aging fleet of Bs and compliment the small fleet of B-2 stealth bombers. Stealthy skin on the airframe of the bomber will be made with hardened reflective material to not only avoid radar but also change colors to reflect surroundings.
The plane, as envisioned, will change to blue for daytime sky, white for cloud cover and black for night. The work on the skin is being done with Northrop and Raytheon. Melt it. If done right, it will work by simple physics, reflecting a sunbeam on the enemy satellite that will, over the course of weeks, heat the opposing satellite just enough to make it fall out of orbit and burn up on reentry into the upper stratosphere. Skip to header Skip to main content Skip to footer.
Home business. December 29, Technology business. Depending on your income, President Biden's "Build Back Better" plan could boost or cut your future tax bills if passed.
Each vendor's design is unique and fires a different version of the 6. The Army plans to select a single firm to make both the weapons and ammunition in the first quarter of fiscal Army weapons officials announced in November that the service is pursuing a longer-term effort to arm some infantry squad members with a precision, counter-defilade weapons system designed to destroy enemy hiding behind cover.
Currently, two infantrymen in each squad are armed with an M4A1 carbine with an M 40mm grenade launcher to engage counter-defilade targets, but weapons officials have long wanted something more sophisticated. During the past decade, the Army tried to field the XM25 Counter-Defilade Target Engagement System -- a semi-automatic, shoulder-fired weapon that used 25mm high-explosive, air-bursting ammunition. XM25 stirred excitement in the infantry community but, in the end, the complex system was plagued by program delays that led to its demise.
The Army is currently conducting the Platoon Arms and Ammunition Configuration PAAC study -- scheduled to be complete by -- which will look at the enemies the service will face in the future and help guide weapons officials to a new counter-defilade weapon sometime in , Army officials say. Army weapons officials also announced in early November that the service wants to eventually replace the venerable 7. But Army officials said that the decision to move forward on such a program will depend on the future performance demonstrated by the NGSW once it's fielded.
The PAAC study will also help to guide decisions on what the next-gen medium and heavy machine guns would look like, according to Army officials. The Marine Corps is working the Army on the next-gen machine gun effort but is also assessing a. In my concurrent paper, I revisit these prognostications one by one. In general, the thrust of my estimates seems to have been mostly correct, though with a number of specific imperfections in which progress that I had forecast to be high or rapid proved to be only moderate, or vice versa.
Crucially, however, putting aside robotics, I do not believe that any of the remaining 26 areas of technology did in fact undergo revolutionary change. Two lessons emerge from this previous analysis. One, the approach I developed in the book appears useful. Assessing future trends in military technology by examining a number of fairly broad, yet also fairly specific and discrete areas of defense-related technology, and then integrating these individual findings into a broader framework for predicting future war, is valuable.
This methodology discourages hyperbole based on cherry-picking areas of technology that may be most or least promising. It also helps to identify those specific technological enablers that are most likely to cause any radical change in broader military capabilities—to figure out what might drive a revolution in military affairs, should there be such a thing anytime soon.
Second, to the extent that there were flaws in my approach and my analysis, it is important to understand their origins, and attempt to take remedial action in any future prognostication. Most importantly, it was difficult to predict how military organizations would avail themselves of new technological opportunities—or, alternatively, to allow themselves to remain or become vulnerable in the face of new capabilities possessed by possible adversaries. In other words, the challenge was largely in predicting how entrepreneurial military organizations might, or might not, respond to transformational opportunities for better or worse.
In terms of robotics, U. Other military organizations around the world have also made significant progress in this arena. In regard to computers, however, modern militaries generally have not succeeded. Thus, they have potentially made the performance of future weapons less dependable than past ones had been. In other words, they may even have set themselves back, though it is impossible to know for sure at this point, since we have not seen the kind of interstate warfare among near-peer competitors that would probably be needed to assess the hypothesis accurately.
Those operating in the classified world may have a greater sense than I of the vulnerabilities and opportunities that the United States now faces due to cyber technology. But even they cannot be sure because cyber vulnerabilities are not static. They are always evolving in a game of measures and countermeasures, even faster than in other areas of military operations characterized by these kinds of dynamics, such as electronic warfare.
In addition, the ripple effects of any cyberattack often cannot be easily foreseen even when specific vulnerabilities are understood. It may look innocuous, but this aeroplane is carrying a powerful laser weapon. We went from swords to machine guns and nuclear bombs, but what are the next weapons on the horizon? New Scientist rounds up ten of the most promising technologies. These are robotic vehicles, under development, that search and destroy enemy troops and equipment on the ground or in the air, without risk to friendly troops — theoretically.
Systems that check with human controllers are vulnerable to communication failures. Malfunctioning robots could fire wildly at anything. These are powerful energy beams that travel through air or space in straight lines.
They travel at the speed of light and can strike over distances of thousands of kilometres. The heat produced burns through the surface of the target, disrupting flight, disabling warheads, or igniting fuels or explosives.
Powerful lasers need fuel or electrical power and are also very bulky the US Airborne Laser fills a Boeing Travelling through air and turbulence can disperse the energy of the beam. Space is the ultimate high ground, so weapons in orbit would have the ability to see and zap anything on the ground, in the air, or nearby in space.
Fleets of interceptors or battle stations would be stationed in orbit, poised to fire at any attacking missiles. The leading approach now is solid projectiles — such as tungsten rods — that would impact missiles. But laser battle stations are also under consideration.
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