Chinese media have reported that a prototype laser weapon is being tested by the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).
An article published on 5 April on the Sina news website contains several screengrabs taken from footage broadcast by China Central Television (CCTV) showing a trainable optical device mounted on a mobile chassis with a large main lens.
Commercial satellite images have provided the first photographs of a secret Chinese anti-satellite laser base in western Xinjiang province, along with other high-technology weapons facilities.
The laser facility is located near a lake and is about 145 miles south of the Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.
The facility was discovered by retired Indian Army Col. Vinayak Bhat, a satellite imagery analyst who specializes on China.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on April 9 bluntly asserted that China’s PLA is “deploying directed energy (DE) weapons,” adding that “Russia is doing many of the same things.” In perhaps the strongest rhetoric yet from a Trump administration official about counterspace threats to US satellite systems, Shanahan said: “Both China and Russia have weaponized space with the intent to hold American space capabilities at risk.”
Shanahan’s comments about the state of Chinese and Russian DE counterspace weapons development go a step beyond the February-released assessment of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). That characterized both countries as pursuing DE counterspace weapons but stopped short of definitively finding that they had deployed such weapons.
“China likely (emphasis added) is pursuing laser weapons to disrupt, degrade, or damage satellites and their sensors and possibly already has a limited capability to employ laser systems against satellite sensors,” the DIA said in its first ever assessment of threats to US space assets.
The DIA and Shanahan do agree on the view that China likely will field a ground-based laser weapon that can counter low-orbit space-based sensors by next year.
US Navy's unmanned ships may be the key to defeating China and Russia.
A panel stated USVs will be a major part of a future US Navy.
The Chinese Sea Lizard is making progress, more than what the Jane's article states in public.
Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (robo subs):
The program for the USN/Boeing Orca gets fleshed out and is getting serious money.
The British have started development on their own XLUUV like the Orca.
The Russians have launched the Poseidon wielding mothership SSN, the Belgorod. She is derived from the Oscar line of classes, but is 100 ft (30m) longer.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the agency’s approach to moving up a human lunar landing from 2028 to 2024 will focus first on speed and then on sustainability.
In a plenary speech at the 35th Space Symposium here April 9, Bridenstine said the new approach the agency is developing in response to the goal of a human lunar landing in five years announced by Vice President Mike Pence two weeks ago will involve many of the same elements of NASA’s original plans, but in a revised order.
“All of those elements that were necessary to getting humans to the surface of the moon in 2028, all those elements still exist. The plan is still the same,” he said. That includes, he said, development of the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, a lunar Gateway in orbit around the moon, and lunar landers.
What will change, he said, is the schedule for developing some of those elements, which will be split into two phases. “The first phase is speed. We want to get those boots on the moon as soon as possible,” he said. “Anything that is a distraction from making that happen we’re getting rid of.”
That emphasis on speed includes launching Exploration Mission (EM) 1, an uncrewed Orion test flight, on the first flight of the SLS in 2020, to be followed by the first crewed Orion mission, EM-2, “as soon as possible thereafter.”
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is looking for information on a 1,000 kW-class electrically-pumped laser for defending the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends against all ranges of enemy ballistic missiles in all phases of flight.
The post on the federal business opportunities website is asking industry for information on a capability to demonstrate a 1,000 kW-class electrically-pumped laser in the 2025-26 timeframe.
Missile Defense Agency does not provide a specific platform or strategic mission at this time. The proposed ground demonstrator laser system would be designed to have technology maturation and lightweight engineering paths to potential future platforms.
How were banded iron formations created in Egypt from the NeoProterozoic?
Was the Cambrian Explosion really that big a deal? Or did it really originate in the Ediacaran?
First record of carbonates with spherulites and cone-in-cone structures from the Ediacaran of Norway has been found.
MesoProterozoic:
The Yili Block was likely located in the NW margin of the supercontinent Rodinia.
PaleoProterozoic:
The apparent cyclical deposition of the Dales Gorge Member banded iron formation appears to be related to sea level rise and fall or tectonic activity.
The Vempalle Formation dolomites of India appear to have more in common with Phanerozoic carbonates than Proterozoic ones.
There's a sedimentation record from 2.27 BYA to 1.96 BYA in West Africa with evidence of volcanic ash and activity in the layers.
The first drillings into the Temagami Anomaly have uncovered potential links to the Sudbury Impact.
The Francevillian Biota of Rhyacian Gabon seems to have had something able to move. Scientists have found evidence of trackways from shallow, oxygenated waters.
Archean:
Evidence from Mauritania suggests the Archean geophysics were as complicated as today.
Evidence of a breakup of a continent from the Archean.
There appears to be evidence of major crustal growth circa 2.6 BYA and 3.2 BYA.
There is evidence plate tectonics were active, despite prior theory, during the Archean.
MesoArchean:
There is evidence of a continental margin at the tail end of the MesoArchean in North China.
A subduction zone has been found from the MesoArchean/NeoArchean boundary.
Evidence of a continental rift was found in Hainan, China from the MesoArchean.
There is evidence of ephemeral oxygen oases in the Mesoarchean Ocean.
PaleoArchean:
South African barite deposits were not laid down in a marine environment, but from a spring.
Life was thriving during the paleoarchean 3.5 billion years ago.
NASA and Boeing have agreed to extend the duration of the company’s first crewed flight test to the International Space Station after completing an in-depth technical assessment of the CST-100 Starliner systems. NASA found the long-duration flight to be technically feasible and in the best interest of the agency’s needs to ensure continued access and better utilization of the orbiting laboratory.
The extended duration test flight offers NASA the opportunity to complete additional microgravity research, maintenance, and other activities while the company’s Starliner is docked to station. The mission duration will be determined at a later date.
“NASA’s assessment of extending the mission was found to be technically achievable without compromising the safety of the crew,” said Phil McAlister, director of the commercial spaceflight division at NASA Headquarters. “Commercial crew flight tests, along with the additional Soyuz opportunities, help us transition with greater flexibility to our next-generation commercial systems under the Commercial Crew Program.”
The agency and its industry partner also agreed to adjust the target launch dates for flight tests, which will demonstrate Boeing’s readiness ahead of NASA certification to fly crew regularly to the station.
Boeing is now targeting August for its uncrewed Orbital Flight Test, although this date is a working date and to be confirmed. The decision to adjust that launch date was guided by limited launch opportunities in April and May, as well as a critical U.S. Air Force national security launch – AEHF-5 – atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex-41 in June.
The company’s first flight with astronauts on board, called the Crew Flight Test, is now targeted for late 2019, again to be confirmed closer to that timeframe. Boeing also will fly a Pad Abort Test before those two orbital flights to demonstrate the company’s ability to safely carry astronauts away from a launch vehicle emergency, if necessary.
China’s bitcoin miners have long embodied a contradiction. Cryptocurrency trading is illegal in the country; initial coin offerings, used to fund new blockchain projects, are banned; and Chinese banks can hardly touch the stuff. And yet somehow the country has remained the epicenter of global cryptocurrency mining, home to more of the computing power used to mint new bitcoin than any other country.
Now the Chinese government has proposed to ban mining.
Russia has been working since 2011 to develop a next-generation on-orbit anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon, according to two new studies by U.S. nongovernmental organizations.
The Secure World Foundation’s “Global Counterspace Report,” finds that the Russian work on a space-based ASAT codenamed “Burevestnik” (also known as Project 14K168) is being undertaken in tandem with a larger effort to develop a space-based space situational awareness (SSA) capability. The SWF report, and one by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) were released today and based on open source information.
“Open source research done by analyst Bart Hendrickx suggests that the Cosmos 2491, 2499, 2504, and 2521 satellites are part of a project started in 2011 to develop space-based space situational awareness (SSA) capabilities and may play a supporting role for other counterspace weapons,” the SWF report says. “Publicly-available documents and patents suggest a link between those Cosmos satellites and procurement for a project designated Nivelir … under the control of the Central Scientific Research Institute for Chemistry and Mechanics (TsNIIKhM). Hendrickx also has uncovered evidence suggesting there is an active Russian co-orbital ASAT program codenamed Burevestnik (“Petrel”) or project 14K168, also managed by TsNIIKhM and also started in 2011.” Burevestnik “may be designed to target GEO satellites, although it may be targeted against LEO satellites instead.”
The USAF NGAD/PCA has a proposed FY20 budget of $1B. It had been predicted to be $1.2B. The AETP engine often associated with the NGAD also received a budget of $870M. The F-22 and F-35 both funded their engines internally, unlike the NGAD/PCA. However, Jane's takes the stance the NGAD is being rethought.
The US Navy's Next Generation Fighter program is shifting from $5M in FY19 to a proposed $20M in FY20.
The US Navy will finish its AOA this summer for its 6th gen fighter.
?!?! The Russians are stating the first batch of Su-57s will be delivered to a frontline unit in 2019.
The Russians are refuting the Su-57 has been redeployed to Syria.
YF-23:
Why did the YF-23 lose to the YF-22 in the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition? The only man to have flown both the F-22 and the YF-23 talks explains.
Model 401:
Scaled Composites' Model 401 is on the east coast at a Navy flight test facility. Why?
F-117:
The F-117 has been out flying about (with a plexiglass canopy, btw).
The Drive noted the interesting bit of the choice of emblem on the F-117.
Poland is considering the F-35 for its Harpia program. In fact, they want to outright buy 32 of them.
The first two F-35As for South Korea have arrived in country.
Switzerland will evaluate the F-35 for its new fighter requirement this summer.
Turkey's F-35 deliveries may get paused. Strikethat: the deliveries have stopped of parts. The US has stated buying the F-35 and the S-400 missile system are not compatible. In the mean time, the US military continues to train Turkish F-35 pilots. Congress again has warned Turkey they cannot have the F-35 and the S-400 missile.
If Turkey gets cut, the F-35 program can progress just fine. Or will it? How problematic is it for Lockheed? What next?
The Trump administration wants to put Americans back on the moon by 2024, Vice President Mike Pence announced Tuesday at a meeting of the National Space Council in Huntsville, Alabama.
“The first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts launched by American rockets from American soil,” he pledged. It’s an audacious pledge, given NASA’s current capabilities, and especially in light of recent setbacks to the Space Launch System (SLS), the agency’s long-delayed and over-budget heavy lift rocket. If NASA faces difficulties with that timeline, Pence said, “We need to change the organization, not the mission.” How this will affect NASA’s wide host of other goals, from astrophysics to education, remains unknown.
NASA doesn't have a plan for getting back to the moon quick though.
NASA is studying how to accelerate the SLS. Boeing's reaction. SLS might be doomed: the budget hinted as much. Lawmakers and industry went to bat for the SLS though.
The SLS team has been advertising its progress. SLS engine section has reached a milestone. The SLS core went through structural tests. Lockheed has begun assembling structures for the second SLS flight.
It’s only natural that Beijing might show an interest in a tourism development that aims to lure big-spending Chinese tourists to the shores of Cambodia with the promise of casinos, golf courses and luxury resorts.
After all, Cambodia granted 45,000 hectares of its prime real estate in Koh Kong province – and 20 per cent of its coastline – to private Chinese company Union Development Group, just so it could build this supposed tourism Mecca, and all for a peppercorn rent that will start at just US$1 million per year.
At least, that’s the official version. But sceptics who say the terms of this deal are too good to be true think there’s another reason for China’s interest: they believe the development is as much about welcoming the Chinese military as it is about Chinese tourists.
