darpa

DARPA this morning launched a rocket carrying what's hoped to be an unbelievably fast unmanned plane that can fly at 13,000 mph, an unprecedented speed that would take it from New York to Los Angeles in less than 12 minutes and potentially deliver a military strike anywhere in the world in under an hour.

Designed to explore long-duration hypersonic flight, the Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) was launched aboard a Minotaur IV Lite rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

It's expected to glide through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific at up to Mach … Read more

The U.S. is creating a virtual version of the Internet--this one designed as a testbed to help the nation hone its defenses against cyberattacks, according to Reuters and other sources.

Known as the National Cyber Range, the virtual testbed would be set up by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the same agency that kicked off the Internet itself more than 40 years ago. The new simulated mini-Internet would give Washington the opportunity to carry out virtual cyberwarfare games as a way of testing different scenarios and technologies in response to cyberattacks.

To work on the initial development … Read more

DARPA wants to go to the stars.

Yesterday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency issued a call for concepts for a 100-year starship study program. The idea? To motivate research that could potentially "develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make interstellar space travel practicable and feasible."

This, one can imagine, is the kind of feasibility study that would have been necessary decades ahead of time if the starships at the center of shows like "Star Trek," "Babylon 5," and "Deep Space … Read more

It's National Star Wars Day and we celebrate with someone who loves space, Brian Cooley! Spotify sets its sights on iTunes, but its still only available in Europe. The Department of Justice is taking a deeper look at the AT&T/T-Mobile merger deal, and DO NOT rent a laptop from Aaron's unless you want someone spying on you. Plus, how can you not love the Paint for Cats App!

The phrase "fill 'er up" is being redefined for the age of robotic aircraft.

Northrop Grumman said yesterday that in a flight test earlier this year, it took a big step closer to an eventual autonomous aerial refueling between unmanned aerial vehicles as part of the $33 million DARPA KQ-X program.

In the "risk reduction flight test," which took place January 21, a Global Hawk UAV from NASA played the role of the aerial tanker, and Northrop Grumman's Proteus test aircraft--a manned UAV surrogate, we should point out--was the one in search of the refueling … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--If you're going to spend the cash to charter a private jet, shouldn't it be easy to book the plane?

You would think the industry would simplify things for the wealthy, but that's not the case, according to start-up FlyRuby, which unveiled its service at the Demo Spring conference here today. Indeed, company CEO Michael Leek says that it can often take hours to figure out a suitable private plane charter between two cities. And that's just not efficient.

That's where FlyRuby comes in, Leek said. A former U.S. Marine with … Read more

Don't believe in Skynet? Well, the U.S. military has reportedly commissioned the production of bipedal soldiers and quadruped robots that can outrun human beings.

Boston Dynamics, known for its BigDog canine bot, is working to develop a humanoid robot called Atlas and an animal-like running robot called Cheetah. The robo-cat is due to arrive in 20 months.

The company's efforts are part of multimillion-dollar contracts with DARPA over a four-year period, according to a Boston Herald report.

Initially, Cheetah is supposed to achieve speeds of up to 30 mph. Presumably it will be a lot stealthier than the noisy BigDog, seen in the vid below. No word yet on whether it will fold into a cassette tape like the old-school Decepticon Ravage of Transformers fame.

"There's no fundamental reason why it can't go as fast as the animals (60 to 70 mph), but it will take a while to get there," Boston Dynamics President Marc Raibert was quoted as saying in Boston Herald report. … Read more

Maxwell Technologies has won a $1.7 million contract from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to develop an ultracapacity energy-storage device for powering portable electronics for the military, the company announced today.

Under the DARPA contract, Maxwell will work with researchers from the University of Massachusetts and the U.S. Navy to create a hybrid ultracap, a device that can act as a "capacity module, advanced battery pack and power management electronics" tool yet be light and small enough to be easily transported by soldiers in the field.

The device also must be extremely long-lasting, … Read more

Boeing has won an $89 million government contract to build and fly an unmanned solar-powered plane that can--eventually--stay aloft continuously for up to five years. Yes, that's five years.

The defense contractor will develop the SolarEagle aircraft for the Vulture II program run by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA. Scheduled to get off the ground for its first demo flight in 2014, the plane will likely serve as an electronic sensor and military communications platform. But it could eventually turn into a less expensive alternative to communications and reconnaissance satellites.

"SolarEagle … Read more