Saturday, December 08, 2018

Terminator Times #52

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Drones):

DARPA has tested the ability to have UAVs autonomously conduct missions in degraded environments.

Completion of the USAF drone base in Niger will be delayed.

The US Army is setting up the first stages of procuring micro UAVs for its infantry.

The USMC is taking deliveries of the InstantEye Mk-3 GEN5-D1 SUAS.

The US Navy is offering its Nomad drone tech to private companies for adaption for civilian applications.

The US Navy is conducting a cargo carrying drone demonstration in March.

Australia is buying the MQ-9 Reaper for its MALE UAV fleet.  The competition was between the IAI Heron TP and potential variants of the Reaper.

Belgium ordered the Sky Guardian MQ-9B.

The British are looking into fully autonomous hunter-killer drones.

The British are also looking at trialling a rescue UAV from ships.

One of the UAVs (Tiang Ying) shown off at the Zhuhai airshow in China may be intended for use aboard aircraft carriers.

China has UAV derived from an in service aircraft being marketed for export as a long range recon bird.

Egypt bought some 'stealthy' recon drones called the Scarab from Teledyne Ryan in the 1980s, but may have never used many of them...or might still he.

The European Union is having a demonstration of the Falco Evo UAV for maritime partolling.

Houthi UAVs are increasingly a threat.

Japan has ordered 3 RQ-4 block 30 Global Hawks.

Poland has ordered 40 Orlik UAVs.

Russia's EW UAV can jam cell phones 60 miles away.

Russia's Hunter-B UCAV is supposed to have entered taxi testing.

Turkey is procuring hundreds of micro VTOL UAVs.

China's CASIC has quietly rolled out a new missile for drones.

Jane's noticed the Divine Eagle HALE UAV was at the Malan air base.

Sweden has ordered the MQM-178 target drone.

Aurora Flight Sciences' Odysseus long endurance, solar powered drone will take flight in 2019.

General Atomics is looking at industrial collaborations with Japan.

General Atomics has opened an office in India.

General Atomics got a $27M contract to support the French Reapers.

Kratos has doubled its tactical UAV development projects and its Valkyrie UAV is expected to fly by the end of January 2019 with orders expected by the end of 2019 by the USAF.

Some think the Naval Vertical Landing Jet Drone could be what the navies of the world are seeking.

Piaggo Aerospace has gone bankrupt.  What went wrong?

Zala has unveiled its new ICE variant of the ZALA-421-16E5 UAV.

Unmanned Ground Vehicles (Bolos & Ogres):

To become effective squad members, UGVs will need to earn soldiers' trust.

The US Army's TARDEC is examining Israeli UGVs.

The US Army is far more interested in UGVs and other robopocalyptic systems for logistics than combat.

The US Army is buying 3,000 Scorpion UGVs for $400M.

The USMC is seeking a robot capable of carrying a Marine's full load for use at the squad level.

Belarus has a new UGV for export, the Beserk.

Chinese UGVs are closing in on American and Russian UGVs.

British Aerospace's Ironclad UGV gets profiled.

Endeavor Robotics is seeking to produce common chassis for the US Army's robots.

Rheinmetall is testing the Mission Master UGV.

The Russians are looking at creating remotely operated derived T-72B UGVs.

Sand-x has developed an unmanned version of its ATV.

Ukraine has been developing its own UGVs for combat.

Unmanned Surface Vehicles (Roboats):

Aquabotix just added 3 new models of its Swarmdiver submersible USV.

The Chinese showed a very edited video of tests of a new USV armed with missiles.

Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (Robo subs):

The US Navy wants the Virginia Mission Module to be able to launch UUVs from the Virginia class submarines equipped with it.

China is looking to build an unmanned, underwater base for UUVs in the South China Sea.

Japan is considering using UUVs to hunt subs.

3d Printing:

Lockheed is using 3d printing the manufacture of the F-35 simulators.

Norwegian researchers compared the production quality of items 3d printed in a factory vs those printed in a military shipping container.

Software bots:

If the enemy knows the data set your software bots trained on, they can figure out how to fake out your bots.

DARPA wants to use machine learning to improve its understanding of the RF spectrum.

The US Army isn't seeking terminators for the future of AI in warfare.

The US Army's AI task force has set up office at CMU.  They really ought to have done so in Silicon Valley.

Sandia National Labs produced a software bot that can detect drones.

META:

The US Navy is ramping up development of unmanned systems.

The Virginia Class' Payload Module will be able to launch both UUVs and UAVs.

The British are undertaking a massive testing exercise with robots and drones.

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