A shot in the right direction

The US already has thousands of military robots and unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan. As for the prospect of killer robots stalking the battlefield – Russia is catching up, with a Russian team building one too.
The US has been using unmanned drones for a number of years, and now it is testing land-based robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, which despite being in their early stages, are showing a lot of potential.
But military forces around the world are not ignoring robot technology either. A Russian team from Moscow’s Bauman Technical University has been at work to build one too.
The team's first creation was a bomb-detecting and destroying robot. First it analyses the package with sensors, and then destroys whatever explosives are inside with high-powered water jets.
Having succeeded with their first creation, they then moved on to a military spy robot. It is able to look around corners and up into first floor windows with an extendable camera. Then, if it needs to call in fire support to tackle the bad guys, it calls on a partner robot – like the MRK-27 BT, equipped with a machine-gun, two grenade launchers and two rocket launchers.
In fact, these creations are the latest in a long history of robot development in Russia, which is a good deal longer than one might think.
“In 1938, Russian robot tanks were invented. They took part in the Russian Finnish war,” Anatoly Dmitrievich, former robot developer and expert, told RT. “The person who controlled it was in a shelter pressing buttons. He was able to see the tank and control it, the tank attacked and shot on its own.”
But despite this early innovation, Russian robot development has been largely ignored since the 1970s.
The US took the lead and now has thousands of robots operating in Afghanistan.
The team at Bauman Technical University wants Russia to catch up. But will their robot meet with approval from the Russian army?
“I cannot give you a definite answer if this robot will be used in our army, but we hope so,” said robot designer Ilya Laverichev. “Maybe not this exact model, but something improved, modified and modernized.”

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Russian robotic soldier revealed

A prototype track-mounted combat platform tailored to use Russian weapons has been unveiled at an arms show in Moscow. Producers say it beats the similar American bot widely used in Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.
The bot, called MRK-27-BT, was produced by the robotics lab of the Moscow Bauman Technical University. It was shown to the public at the Interpolitex- arms exhibition.
MRK-27-BT’s standard armament includes two Shmel rocket launchers, two grenade launchers, a Pecheneg machine gun with a 100 round ammunition belt, and six smoke grenades. It is operated with a couple of joysticks and has a maximum range of 500 meters. All the weapons are standard issue used by human soldiers and can be detached in the field.

The project is similar to SWORDS, a weaponized version of Foster-Miller’s TALON platform. While the platform is extensively used by US military for disposing of explosives and other tasks, the real weapon-wielding bot was never used in actual combat.
Russian developers say their project beats the American counterpart in mobility and speed thanks to a superior track design. Its weapon mount is more flexible and can extend over a foxhole edge. It also has a built-in recoil suppressor. At the same time the Russian robot is larger, standing 1.5 meters tall with its mount raised, while SWORDS is barely knee high.
Designers hope that Russian Defense Ministry will order a trial series of the platform. However, according to RIA Novosti’s sources, top brass want a developed doctrine about the use of combat robots before committing.

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Russia revives Caspian Sea Monster

The Russian government has commissioned the renewal of the “Caspian Sea Monster,” the legendary ground effect vehicle (GEV). Only 30 such crafts were built in the Soviet Union over two decades.
The revival of GEV production was announced by the Alekseev design and construction bureau, which used to be the leading producer of such vehicles. According to its production branch director, Evgeny Meleshko, the bureau is working on a big model. It will spend two years making the new design with the first tests to be launched in 2012.
“For our company it’s a big project, and most of our specialists will be working on it,” Meleshko told Interfax news agency.

GEVs are high-speed naval vehicles that fly just over the surface thanks to a high-pressure air cushion created by its wings. The first prototype with a wingspan of 37.6 meters and a hull length of about 100 meters could travel at 250 knots and had a maximum take-off weigh of 544 tons.
The Soviet Union produced several models, including one for amphibian troops transportation and a cruise missile carrier. There was also a project for a strategic GEV armed with ballistic missiles.
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New Russian strategic bomber expected in 15-20 years

A new strategic bomber for Russia’s long-range aviation is scheduled to be ready for deployment by 2025-2030, the military branch’s head said.
The bomber will use stealth technology extensively to reach the minimal radar cross-section for an aircraft of its class, told journalists Major General Anatoly Zhikharev.
The vehicle, developed by the Tupolev design bureau, will have both nuclear and precision weapons capabilities, and systems for air defense suppression. It will also be able to use a wide range of airfields for take-off and landing, including those with unpaved runways.

The new aircraft is intended as a replacement for strategic bomber models currently in service in the Russian Air Forces, like the Tu-160, Tu-95MS and Tu-22M3.
Maksim Pyadushkin, editor in chief of aviation magazine Russia and CIS Observer, says that, since the current Russian military bombers are very old, there is an obvious need for new weaponry.
“We don’t know much about this future bomber at the moment, because, as far as I understand, the development is in its initial stage," Pyadushkin told RT. "It looks like Russian militaries are just defining their requirements for the new aircraft. So, we don’t know how it will look like. It will certainly be supersonic, will certainly have stealth technology and will carry high-precision weapons.”

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Revolutionary railroad: atomic train being developed in Russia

Russian Railways (RZhD) and the Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency (Rosatom) intend to create a nuclear-powered train, reports Interfax.
According to RZhD vice-president Valentin Gapanovich, the train, consisting of 11 carriages, will house scientific exhibits.
The estimated cost of construction is as yet unknown, as well as the safety measures for such transport.
In the middle of the 20th Century the transport industry almost fell in love with the idea of nuclear-powered vehicles.
In 1958, the Russian newspaper Gudok (The Horn) wrote that “even though a nuclear-powered locomotive is likely to weigh more than a steam or diesel one of the same power capacity, it can be sent to remote areas such as the Arctic, where it can work throughout the winter season without additional supplies.”
The newspaper also wrote that the nuclear-powered locomotive can be easily turned into a mobile power plant, supplying energy to saunas, laundries, and greenhouses.
The idea of using nuclear power in everyday life seemed very tempting for the US engineers too. Ford Motor Company developed the Ford Nucleon – a nuclear-powered concept car – in 1958.
The vehicle did not include an internal-combustion engine; it was powered by a small nuclear reactor in the rear of the car. It was a steam engine powered by uranium fission, similar to how nuclear submarines work. However, Ford Nucleon never went into production.
US media also speculated on the idea of a nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner. That project also never saw the light of day.

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US buys most expensive drones ever

With $14 trillion in the hole and a slew of wars seemingly no one wants America to be in, what better way for the United States to spend their money by putting $23 billion into spy planes?
The US will drop billions on defense spending with the purchasing of 55 Global Hawk drone planes over the next few years. Each of the four dozen-plus spy crafts comes at a price tag of $218 million apiece — ten times the price of the largest armed attack drone.
Global Hawk drones are capable of flying twice as high as commercial aircrafts and can spot insurgents up to 100 miles away. Once identified, the robotic crafts that are controlled from 24-hour command stations can then send images to intelligence centers or directly to troops.
The Global Hawk drones will replace the U-2 spy planes that the States currently deploys, which the US has relied on since the dawn of the Cold War. Sending unmanned aircrafts into warzones, while grossly expensive, comes as an attempt to limit fatalities by avoiding putting extra troops into danger. Though relying on on-board navigation, those U-2 flyers have proved effective over the last half-century, recently assisting in operations in Afghanistan
A team of 50 engineers will slave over the construction of the Global Hawk drones in a Palmdale, California warehouse.
The US Air Force will invest $12 billion towards the initiative, with the Navy offering almost as much to have their own versions of the Global Hawks.
And, in case you didn’t hear, lawmakers just spent months trying to figure out how to keep the country from defaulting. The town of Central Falls, Rhode Island (the entire town) is currently in bankruptcy court, and the most populous county in Alabama is expected to join them in the coming weeks.

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Air Force finds out about drone virus from the Internet

Some people go online for sports scores; others log on to check email. Military personnel with the US Air Force, however, recently used the Web to learn that their controversial and exuberantly expensive drone fleet had been hacked.
So did everyone else.
Wired.com’s Danger Room ran a report recently about a computer virus that had infiltrated the systems of the unmanned robotic drone aircraft fleet of the US Air Force. Sadly, some of the men and women directly responsible for overseeing the Air Force’s computer networks did not become aware of the infection until they laid their eyes on that same, publically available report.
“It was not highlighted to us,” one source involved with Air Force network operations anonymously remarked to Danger Room. “When your article came out, it was like, ‘What is this?’”
What “it” was, was a common malware that can lift log-ins and passwords from otherwise secured networks, The Associated Press reports today. That virus is so commonplace, they suggest, as it is regularly used to steal personal info from popular online gaming sites such as Mafia Wars and Internet gambling portals.
Wired reports that a key-logger virus ended up inside the systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada two weeks ago, infecting information inside the unmanned cockpits of the military’s drones. While some officials quickly became aware of the infection, cybersecurity specialists who are hired to investigate networks infiltrations like these were unaware of the problem until Danger Room’s report was published.
“Nothing was ever reported anywhere. They just didn’t think it was important enough,” a second source involved in the security division tells Danger Room. “The incentive to share weaknesses is just not there.”
Weeks after the virus first broke, now top-brass with the Air Force are downplaying the accidental download which could have had the potential of jeopardizing a very crucial component to the United States military.
Drone aircraft, which the US can use to attack insurgents and operate spy missions from high in the sky without risking the lives of American pilots, have come under attack from opponents since they became more and more common in anti-terrorism tasks carried out by Washington. Drones were responsible for the recent strikes that took the life of two American citizens in Yemen who were believed to be al-Qaeda affiliates, and only last week did demonstrators with the October 2011 movement storm the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC to protest a display showcasing drones.
On Wednesday, the Air Force finally publically acknowledged the virus but said that it was not exactly a key-logger but failed to admit what exactly it does do. In an attempt to show a lack of severity of the infection, they revealed that the bug comes from online game play and gambling, which while it does indeed expose that the virus couldn’t possibly be that catastrophic, it also reveals that those in the department responsible for overseeing the security of the largest air force on Planet Earth have been betting with virtual dollars and playing games such as Mafia Wars while logged onto Facebook on DoD computers.
The virus, says the Air Force, was “considered more of a nuisance than a threat." Whether or not that
“nuisance” applies to high blackjack scores or the security of the United States of America was not revealed.
Air Force Space Command spokeswoman Col. Kathleen Cook says in the statement that the infection was located on portable hard drive that was used to transmit data between machines on Creech, although most Defense Department computers have banned the devices.

FROM--RT

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