Octopus Overlords

With support from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Dr. Binoy Ravindran, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech, has designed a system that could revolutionize how military and commercial computing systems perform.

It's called Popcorn Linux—an operating system that can compile different programming languages into a single cyber tongue.

"By applying Popcorn Linux to longtime, legacy Navy and Marine Corps computer systems, we can improve software without requiring thousands of man-hours to rewrite millions of lines of code," said Dr. Wen Masters, head of ONR's C4ISR Department. "This could yield significant savings in maintenance costs."

Crunching huge amounts of data for complex applications like battlespace awareness and artificial intelligence requires extremely powerful processing. Unfortunately, many of the processors capable of this speak their own specialized software programming languages—and must be programmed to interact with each other.

To increase computing speed, microchip manufacturers in recent years have placed multiple processing units on individual chips. Take the iPhone 7, for example, which has four processors—two high-power (think of a Ford Mustang) and two low-power (think of a Toyota Prius)—to simultaneously dial phone numbers, open web pages, check text messages and take photos and videos.

That involves designating specialized "heterogeneous" processors to carry out specific tasks, like displaying graphics or web browsing. Each processor can be devoted to one specialty, rather than divided among several functions, resulting in much better, faster performance.

"Before, each processor was like one handyman re-modeling your entire bathroom," said Dr. Sukarno Mertoguno, the ONR program officer sponsoring Ravindran's research. "Heterogeneous processors, by contrast, represent an actual plumber installing the pipes and an actual painter painting the walls. Each processor has a specialty."

tjg_marantz wrote:F35 demo

Canadian sniper obliterates confirmed kill sniper shot. Oof.

An Army release noted that the service has also tested lasers on the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck in April 2016 and the Stryker this past February and March. In both cases, the lasers downed a number of unmanned aerial vehicles. The Navy has a laser on board USS Ponce (AFSB(I) 15, formerly LPD 15), which is currently operating in the Persian Gulf.

Lasers offer a number of advantages over artillery and missiles. Notably, they are invisible, and the power of the weapon can be adjusted to handle a specific material, like steel plating or Kevlar. HELs can even be set for non-lethal effects on people.

Daehawk wrote:One thing lasers are not useful for....over the horizon warfare. They go straight and thats it. Arty no problem with horizon or a mountain.

Holman wrote:Does the laser punch through instantaneously, or must it be held on target?

Holman wrote:Does the laser punch through instantaneously, or must it be held on target?

Daehawk wrote:One thing lasers are not useful for....over the horizon warfare. They go straight and thats it. Arty no problem with horizon or a mountain.

Grifman wrote:

Holman wrote:Does the laser punch through instantaneously, or must it be held on target?

Like anything, it depends on the power of the laser and thickness, strength and composition of the target material

On Monday, Raytheon said that it had bolted a laser to a U.S. Army Apache AH-64 helicopter and zapped an unmanned target at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The weapons test marked the first time a “fully integrated laser system” had successfully located and shot a target from a rotary-wing aircraft “over a wide variety of flight regimes, altitudes and air speeds,” the company said in a statement.

Raytheon didn’t specify what the target was but said the helicopter’s laser “directed energy” on it from nearly a mile away. Unlike the computer rendering of the weapon provided by the company, the laser’s beam is invisible in real life.

The US military's experiments shooting lasers from vehicles continue with another important milestone: Laser-equipped attack helicopter fired at targets for the first time. The US Army keeps getting better at nailing UAV targets with ground-based truck lasers, but it's harder to fire accurately from helicopters. Not only does their position fluctuate with airborne conditions, but their whole frame vibrates as their rotors spin fast enough to keep the whole vehicle aloft. Hitting a target almost a mile away from the air, as the Army just accomplished in a New Mexico tests series, is a big deal.

Daehawk wrote:Drone wouldn't have the power.

Daehawk wrote:Drone wouldn't have the power.

The U.S. Navy has released the first formal requirements for a proposed new frigate design, which it is now referring to as Guided Missile Frigate Replacement Program or FFG(X). The plan leaves open the possibility the service will buy a clean-sheet design in lieu of an “up-gunned” variant of the much maligned Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Whatever happens, the new ships will finally include a robust area air defense capability.
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In order to meet these mission requirements, there are 11 “desired” systems prospective vendors will want to assure make it into their proposals. The most important by far is the inclusion of an undefined “self defense launcher” in the final design. The Navy specifically said it was interested in available “trade space” for a system that could potentially launch the RIM-162 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM) and the Standard Missile-2 (SM-2). The most obvious choice would be an array of Mk 41 vertical launch system (VLS) cells somewhere on the ship. These can accommodate single SM-2s or quad-packed ESSMs. This would be a major capability upgrade over the existing LCS. Even the up-gunned LCS concept, also known as the Small Surface Combatant (SSC), lacked any real air defense capability, making it effectively a sitting duck in almost any real combat scenario, despite adding $70 million to the ship's price tag.

Punisher wrote:not impressed until they mount them on sharks.... or cats...

xwraith wrote:LA Speed Check

Technically categorized as “flyable storage,” the remaining single-seat, twin-engine aircraft in the Air Force inventory are tucked away at test and training ranges in Tonopah, Nevada.

But in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017, passed Dec. 23, the Air Force will remove four F-117s every year to fully divest them — a process known as demilitarizing aircraft, a service official told Military.com on Monday.

“Flyable storage” aircraft are not considered classified, said the official, who requested anonymity to free discuss the program. This is why aviation enthusiasts may have spotted the stealth aircraft flying in 2014 and again in 2016 and again as they were taken out for training flights.

“We had to keep all the F-117s in flyable storage until the fiscal ’17 NDAA gave us permission to dispose of them,” the official said. “Once we have it, [Congress] doesn’t let us to get rid of anything, but do it in phases, like keep it in backup inventory, primary aircraft assigned, or flyable storage.”
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“We’re supposed to dispose of one [Nighthawk] in 2017 and approximately four every year thereafter,” the official said.

Article wrote:Furthermore, once the aircraft is declared as “excess after deactivation,” sometimes the aircraft can be sold off to other federal agencies in need, if it applies.

Daehawk wrote:Hard to believe it was developed over 30 years ago and retired nearly 10 years ago. So much money and secrecy was poured into it.

I remember a fly over of one at the 1990/91 air show I went to . Pretty cool even though I never cared for it. Times fly by so to speak.

Holman wrote:

Daehawk wrote:Hard to believe it was developed over 30 years ago and retired nearly 10 years ago. So much money and secrecy was poured into it.

I remember a fly over of one at the 1990/91 air show I went to . Pretty cool even though I never cared for it. Times fly by so to speak.

Wasn't the F-117 basically just a tech demo for stealth technology anyway?

IIRC there was debate about whether it really had a role it could fill, and then the Serbs (the Serbs!) managed to shoot one down.