Separatist activities are doomed to failure, Wei said at the opening of the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing, which China styles as its answer to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security forum in Singapore.
Tensions between China and Taiwan have ratcheted up ahead of the self-ruled island’s presidential election in January. Taiwan is China’s most sensitive territorial issue.
“China is the only major country in the world that is yet to be completely reunified,” Wei said.
“Resolving the Taiwan question so as to realise China’s full reunification is the irresistible trend of the times, China’s greatest national interest, the righteous path to follow and the longing of all Chinese people.”
RQ-180:
Aviation Week has a surprisingly detailed article about the RQ-180. This is the unmanned aircraft which may have been spotted last August. 6th Generation Fighters:
The USAF's NGAD has been redirected to promote the 'Digital Industrial Revolution' for manufacturing.
The USAF's NGAD has a PEO and has set up the program office in general.
The USAF's advanced engine plans have hit a funding snag.
The RAF's chief of staff has endorsed the American 'Digital Century series' fighter program.
The FCAS companies are urging their governments to move forward with the program.
France and German signed a deal regarding weapon exports. The FCAS is probably one of the weapons covered.
China's reported plan to put a ISR drone on its carriers makes sense to some.
China's Sharp Sword carrier based UAV is claimed to be entering service by the end of the year. It may be the aircraft may NOT be carrier based, but in service already. It did get displayed at the October 1st military parade.
The USAF tweeted a photo of the B-2 stating it would be the last thing Area 51 Raiders would see if they had actually tried. The USAF later apologized.
NASA has taken the next steps toward building Space Launch System (SLS) rocket core stages to support as many as 10 Artemis missions, including the mission that will carry the first woman and next man to the Moon by 2024.
NASA finished assembling the main structural components for the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket core stage on Sept. 19. Engineers at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans fully integrated the last piece of the 212-foot-tall core stage by adding the engine section to the rest of the previously assembled structure.Credits: NASA/Steven SeipelView Image Feature
The agency intends to work with Boeing, the current lead contractor for the core stages of the rockets that will fly on the first two Artemis missions, for the production of SLS rockets through the next decade. The core stage is the center part of the rocket that contains the two giant liquid fuel tanks. Towering 212 feet with a diameter of 27.6 feet, it will store cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen and all the systems that will feed the stage’s four RS-25 engines. It also houses the flight computers and much of the avionics needed to control the rocket’s flight.
NASA has provided initial funding and authorization to Boeing to begin work toward the production of the third core stage and to order targeted long-lead materials and cost-efficient bulk purchases to support future builds of core stages. This action allows Boeing to manufacture the third core stage in time for the 2024 mission, Artemis III, while NASA and Boeing work on negotiations to finalize the details of the full contract within the next year. The full contract is expected to support up to 10 core stages and up to eight Exploration Upper Stages (EUS).
Lawmakers and Federal Reserve officials are so concerned about Facebook’s plans to launch a new digital currency that they’re contemplating a novel response — having the central bank create a competitor.
Momentum is building for an idea that was once considered outlandish — a U.S. government-run virtual currency that would replace physical cash, a dramatic move that could discourage major companies like Facebook from creating their own digital coins.
Russian biologist Denis Rebrikov has started gene editing in eggs donated by women who can hear to learn how to allow some deaf couples to give birth to children without the genetic mutation that impairs hearing. The news, detailed in an e-mail he sent to Nature on 17 October, is the latest in a saga that kicked off in June, when Rebrikov told Nature of his controversial intention to create gene-edited babies resistant to HIV using the popular CRISPR tool.
Rebrikov’s latest e-mail follows a September report in Russian magazine N+1 that one deaf couple had started procedures to procure eggs that would be used to create a gene-edited baby — but the eggs that Rebrikov has edited are from women without the genetic mutation that can impair hearing. He says the goal of the experiments is to better understand potentially harmful ‘off-target’ mutations, which are a known challenge of using CRISR–Cas9 to edit embryos.
Cyber-espionage operations from Cozy Bear, a threat actor believed to work for the Russian government, continued undetected for the past years by using malware families previously unknown to security researchers.
Relying on stealthy communication techniques between infected systems and the command and control (C2) servers, the group managed to keep their activity under the radar for a long time.
Cyber-espionage campaigns that likely started in 2013, collectively named "Operation Ghost," have been attributed to this group, and continued through 2019.
A senior South Korean lawmaker has said the country should reconsider proposals for acquiring either light or medium aircraft carriers with Catapult Assisted Take-Off Barrier Arrested Recovery, or CATOBAR, configurations to respond to growing regional security threats. These were alternatives to South Korea's reported decision to purchase a number of large amphibious assault ships capable of supporting fixed-wing short takeoff and vertical landing combat jets, namely the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. This call for reassessing that choice comes as the South Korean Ministry of Defense may be leaning toward acquiring 20 more conventional F-35A models rather than B variants, further deferring plans to develop a fixed-wing naval aviation capability.
Boeing expects to carry out a pad abort test for its CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle in early November, followed by an uncrewed orbital flight test in mid-December, a company executive said Oct. 8.
During a panel session of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) here, John Mulholland, vice president and program manager for commercial programs for Boeing’s space exploration business unit, said the company was targeting a Dec. 17 launch of its Starliner vehicle on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 from Cape Canaveral.
That mission, called the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) by Boeing, will send the Starliner to the International Space Station, docking with the station and remaining there for about a week before undocking and landing at one of several locations in the western United States. Mulholland said that if the mission launches as currently scheduled, the landing would most likely be at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
Boeing had planned to fly OFT earlier this year, but announced in April it was delaying the launch, then scheduled for May, until later in the summer because of a tight schedule and a conflict with another Atlas 5 launch.
Russia's Hmeymim airbase in Syria currently hosts about 30 warplanes and helicopters but will be able to accommodate more aircraft after the reconstruction, a base official said. This reported by Sputnik.
"The second runway is being reconstructed, which will increase its capabilities. New hangars have been built, in which aircraft are kept. These structures protect against possible attacks of combat drones, as well as from rain and direct sunlight", the official said.
According to the officer, there are currently about 30 aircraft at the airbase, including Su-35S fighter jets, Su-34 fighter-bombers and Su-24 attack aircraft, as well as Mi-35 attack helicopters and Mi-8AMTSh assault transport helicopters.
China appears to have accidentally revealed the existence of a new high-speed ground-launched missile. A brief glimpse of what looks to be a test launch of this previously unseen weapon emerged earlier this week in an official video released in the run-up to the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Communist State on Oct. 1. There have already been indications that a number of new or otherwise previously unseen aircraft, missiles, and other systems will be present at a major parade in Beijing to mark the occasion next week.
The People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, or PLARF, posted the full video on social media on Sept. 25, 2019. Sometime afterward, the original one-minute long montage was replaced with one that omitted the launch of the unknown weapon and replaced it with unrelated footage of known missiles, according to the South China Morning Post.
DARPA's Gremlins project has been delayed due to the earthquake damage at China Lake.
The NGA may be interested in an ISR version of the MQ-25 for maritime surveillance.
The US military is interested in small hard kill interceptor drones to kill drones.
The USAF's Reapers will test out SRC's Agile Condor pod.
A USAF drone strike killed 30 pine nut workers in Afghanistan.
The USAF's XQ-58A Valkyrie can be armed with 2 air to air missiles and the USAF is looking to tailor the airworthiness process for attritable aircraft like the Valk.
The US Army tested using a Gray Eagle with a Chinook.
The US Army is seeking an American made quadcopter.
Britain signed a £100 million contract for its Protector UAV.
Britain's Protector is getting closer to civilian airspace approval.
China appears to be ready to unveil the Malan triangle UAV at the upcoming military parade. And they did! This is the WZ-8, a high speed recon UAV. It appears to be in service.
China and Serbia are deepening their UAV cooperation. China is giving Serbia nine Wing Loong UAVs.
China's Sharp Sword carrier based UAV is claimed to be entering service by the end of the year. It may be the aircraft may NOT be carrier based, but in service already. It did get displayed at the October 1st military parade.
China's reported plan to put a ISR drone on its carriers makes sense to some.
Hezbollah in Lebanon claims to have shot down an Israeli drone.
Houthi drones attacked crude oil sources at two Aramco plants in Saudi Arabia and have disrupted the supply, at least for a short time. An estimated ten drones made the attack. The Houthi attack knocked out half the Saudi crude oil supply. One senior US administration official stated the attacks didn't come from the Houthi. The Houthis state the refineries are still targets. Saudi Arabia presented evidence of the origin of the drones that attacked.
How DID drones take out 5% of the world's oil supply?
An interstellar comet C/2019 Q4 was discovered on August 30 by an amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov at MARGOT observatory (Crimea). One of the obvious questions is where does this object come from. Taking an orbit obtained by Nakano and published by MPC in CBET 4670 we numerically integrated the motion of C/2019 Q4, the sun and 647 stars or stellar systems from our list of potential stellar perturbers of cometary motion. As a result we obtained that 1 Myr ago C/2019 Q4 passed double star Kruger 60 at a small distance of 1.74 pc having an extremely small relative velocity of 3.43 km/s. Almost the same results were obtained from our own orbital solutions.
