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wired
The Pentagon this week edged closer to mounting missile-destroying lasers on unmanned and manned aircraft, awarding $26 million to defense contractors to develop the technology.
Under the name Project Endurance, DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research agency, awarded Northrop Grumman $14.6 million and Lockheed Martin $11.4 million in contracts for the effort, according to Military & Aerospace Electronics. Called “Project Endurance,” the research will “develop technology for pod-mounted lasers to protect a variety of airborne platforms from emerging and legacy electro-optical IR guided surface-to-air missiles,” according to DARPA’s 2014 budget request.
The project focuses on “miniaturizing component technologies, developing high-precision target tracking, identification, and lightweight agile beam control to support target engagement,” as well as “the phenomenology of laser-target interactions and associated threat vulnerabilities.”
Those vulnerabilities have been a particular concern when it comes to slow-moving drones, whose job it is to loiter more than it is to evade, making them a potential easy target to be shot out of the sky.
overratedpatriotism
How long before they start filling the things with anthrax or some other bio-chem agent.
"Shoot one down we dare you."
smurfy
reply to post by Zaphod58
Quite frankly, any drone hovering above me I would have a go at it, I would be quite happy to dispatch it. A mere $26m for R&D..That's pathetic, and more so, why the need for R&D or rather somthing that has been around for long time.
Zaphod58
reply to post by smurfy
Because they are miniaturizing them to a degree that they haven't been in the past. They are making the small enough to fit on a Predator or Reaper sized aircraft, which means they are going to be very small.
Zaphod58
reply to post by luxordelphi
Why would it be "combat illegal"? There's nothing against using lasers in any way shape or form.
What was "a robot too" the laser system or the FedEx plane it was tested on? If it's the FedEx, then no, it wasn't.
As for hackers, not once they encrypt the GPS. That's all anyone has done to bring down a UAV, is spoof the GPS.
Zaphod58
reply to post by luxordelphi
It still is automatic. No human can react fast enough to a surface to air missile being launched at a plane. I don't care who you are, you can not detect, see, target, and fire a laser or anything else for that matter in the time it takes a SAM to lock on, fire, and hit if the system is under human control. For one thing a human can't monitor the entire airspace around the aircraft well enough to detect anything.
Oh, you could hack a UAV, with enough computing power, and time, you can hack anything. Good luck with that though. It won't happen any time soon. It's been tried, a lot, and no one has succeeded.
Zaphod58
reply to post by luxordelphi
People have been trying for YEARS to hack a UAV (beyond just the GPS). No one has succeeded, but yet again, you seem to think it will be easy.
A base has fixed access points to its internet. A UAV has limited frequency communications, usually bounced off a satellite. A base sits there for decades with those ports open. A UAV only receives signals when it's going to be flying. A base never moves. A UAV can go for days without ever flying, and flies at random times.
Gee, see any kind of a problem with hacking a UAV over a base here? Because I sure as hell do.