Lifeboat Foundation

Dashing around a battlefield in the bulky robo-armor Tom Cruise wore in Edge of Tomorrow won’t cut it in the real world. For starters, it’s way too big. And the energy required to power something that size—via a gas engine strapped to your back in some early inventor iterations—is noisy and a giveaway to the enemy that you’re approaching.

But a raft of newly developed exoskeletons is starting to meet the slimmed-down, stealth requirements of today’s troop commanders, who see these power-assisting suits as vital to the future combat missions. Among the most promising, and weird-looking, is the “third arm” that the U.S. Army Research Laboratory developed to help soldiers carry and support their weapons on the battlefield. The lightweight device, which weighs less than four pounds and hangs at a soldier’s side, stabilizes rifles and machine guns, which can weigh up to 27 pounds. This improves shooting accuracy and also minimizes fatigue. It can even be used while scrambling into position on the ground.

The kind of fatigue that the third arm aims to negate is a killer on the battlefield, and most of the new suits are similarly meant to help troops minimize the energy they use to carry enormous supply packs, weapons and other battlefield gear. In May, Lockheed Martin unveiled its lightest weight powered exo for lower body support. Dubbed ONYX, the form-fitting suit, which resembles an unobtrusive web of athletic braces, reduce the effort soldier’s need for walking, running, and climbing over varied terrain while carrying a heavy loads of up to 100 pounds.

Continue reading “Power-multiplying exoskeletons are slimming down for use on the battlefield” »

Chemical innovation plays a key role in developing cutting-edge technologies for the military. Research chemists design and synthesize new molecules that could enable a slew of next-generation military products, such as novel propellants for spacecraft engines; new pharmaceuticals and medicines for troops in the field; lighter and longer-lasting batteries and fuel cells; advanced adhesives, coatings and paints; and less expensive explosives that are safer to handle. The problem, however, is that existing molecule design and production methods rely primarily on experts’ intuition in a laborious, trial-and-error research process.

DARPA’s Make-It program, currently in year three of a four-year effort, is developing software tools based on machine learning and expert-encoded rules to recommend synthetic routes (i.e., the “recipe” to make a particular molecule) optimized for factors such as cost, time, safety, or waste reduction. The program seeks to free chemists so that they may focus their energy on chemical innovation, rather than testing various molecular synthesis pathways. The program also is developing automated devices that uniformly and reproducibly create the desired chemical based on the software-generated recipe – this one-device, many-molecules concept is a departure from the traditional dedicated reactors in chemical production. Make-It research teams have recently demonstrated significant progress toward fully automated rapid molecule production, which could speed the pace of chemical discovery for a range of defense products and applications.

“A seasoned research chemist may spend dozens of hours designing synthetic routes to a new molecule and months implementing and optimizing the synthesis in a lab,” said Anne Fischer, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “Make-It is not only freeing chemists to expend brain power in other areas such as molecular discovery and innovation, it is opening chemical synthesis and discovery to a much broader community of scientific researchers who will benefit from faster development of new molecules.”

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China’s hypersonic progress ranges from increasing scramjet testing and cheaper drones, to keeping its lead in railguns.

The functional military bases that protect the national security of our country could be under water in just a few years.

In an effort to move away from today’s giant, heavy battle tanks, DARPA’s GXV-T program has been investigating new technologies for fast, agile and smart ground transport. Here are six of the fascinating ideas that were demonstrated last month at Aberdeen Test Center outside Baltimore, Maryland.

I dont see it as a threat. Honestly, some of the US scientific community was getting really cocky, and really lazy, which is never a good combination. The US scientific community wanted to lock Crispr in a closet for 50 years. 30 years ago they could of gotten away with it. With China as it is now, they are forced to do research they would of rather hidden away.

China’s “Thousand Talents” program to tap into its citizens educated or employed in the U.S. is a key part of multi-pronged efforts to transfer, replicate and eventually overtake U.S. military and commercial technology, according to American intelligence officials.

The program, begun in 2008, is far from secret. But its unadvertised goal is “to facilitate the legal and illicit transfer of U.S. technology, intellectual property and know-how” to China, according to an unclassified analysis by the National Intelligence Council, the branch of U.S. intelligence that assesses long-term trends.

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He formerly headed the U.S. federal safety agency responsible for overseeing all energy & hazmat transportation by air, land, sea, rail and pipelines as the head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT). He also served as the federal government&s;s top trucking, bus, and moving industry attorney as the Chief Counsel of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), also at the USDOT.

A retired a commissioned officer and naval aviator, his military service included tours of duty in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. During his time he participated in military combat and humanitarian relief operations around the globe.

An avid traveler and student of history, he spends his time covering public policy impact issues for Forbes and other publications and provides legal and advisory services to public and private sector clients interested in matters pertaining to defense, energy, transportation, homeland security, and the environment.

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