Why The Military Wants Robots With Legs (Not To Run Faster Than Usain Bolt)

Why is the military’s elite research arm so interested in robots with legs? It isn’t speed. Boston Dynamics’ Cheetah robot, funded by DARPA, made headlines after it broke its own speed record yesterday and became the first robot to run on legs faster than the fastest human, track star Usain Bolt. Cheetah got up to…

US Foreign Military Sales Top $65 Billion

WASHINGTON: US foreign military sales are growing so fast the Pentagon can’t keep its PowerPoint slides updated — and they may well grow still more if a Defense Department policy easing exports of unmanned aircraft to 66 countries gets interagency and Congressional approval. When Defense Security Cooperation Agency staff put together a briefing for DSCA…

Too Many Screens: Why Drones Are So Hard To Fly, So Easy To Crash

LAS VEGAS: The US military depends on drones. But amidst the justifiable excitement over the rise of the robots, it’s easy to overlook that today’s unmanned systems are not truly autonomous but rather require a lot of human guidance by remote control — and bad design often makes the human’s job needlessly awkward, to the…

Air Force Ices MQ-X; Spends On Better Data Management

WASHINGTON: The Air Force is holding off on filling the skies the next generation of the Reaper UAV. Instead of putting more aircraft into the air that gather more data, the service plans to focus on how to better manage the flood of raw intelligence already streaming in, says one top service officer. The Air…

‘Killer Drone’ Demo Marks HASC Chair McKeon’s Speech

WASHINGTON: Defense conferences rarely attract much notice from the American public but we saw a spark today as a demonstrator leapt onto the stage while Rep. Buck McKeon spoke in favor of a strong defense and robust funding for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. “These drones are playing God,” the slight, middle-aged woman shouted, trying to unfurl…

Predator Maker Redesigns UAV To Boost Exports

Each generation has military platforms which define it. Inter-continental ballistic missiles, stealth bombers, and nuclear propulsion submarines assumed that mantle during the Cold War. In the post-Cold War period, few military platforms have captivated the War on Terror generation like the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Despite great success on the battlefield, American defense firms have…

Computer Virus Infects Predator Ground Stations

Washington: Air Force officials are struggling to wipe out a computer virus that has infected the ground control systems that guide Predator unmanned aerial vehicles and their successors. The control systems are based at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The famous Predators used by the CIA to kill terrorists are controlled from a different…