The Pentagon’s research and development arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is out with a list of its 10 most popular stories from 2014.
Here at DefenseTech, we want to see more of all of these stories in the New Year. Indeed, we hope to interview the managers, engineers and tinkerers who are working on some of these projects to better understand their potential defense applications.
The following five are the ones we’re particularly excited about in the realm of weapons technology and plan to keep an eye on in 2015: [Continue reading…]
December 30th, 2014 | Future Wars | 9 Comments
Tagged as: DARPA
North Korea denied being behind the recent Sony hack, and now some cyber security experts say the country’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jung-un has been made a fall guy.
“It’s clear to us, based on both forensic and other evidence we’ve collected, that unequivocally they are not responsible for orchestrating or initiating the attack on Sony,” Sam Glines, founder and chief executive officer of the cybersecurity company Norse, told CNN in an interview.
Kim Zetter, who covers cybercrime and security issues for Wired magazine, has also been skeptical, calling the evidence previously touted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation “flimsy.” [Continue reading…]
December 29th, 2014 | Cyber | 24 Comments
Tagged as: North Korea, Sony
If your kids enjoyed the balloon-like robot Baymax of “Big Hero 6” over the holidays you can thank, in part, the brain-trust that is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for helping fund the inspiration.
DARPA has been funding research into “soft” robots under its Maximum Mobility Manipulation – MP3 – program, and it was an inflatable robotic arm spied by one of the Disney film’s directors that inspired Baymax, the healthcare companion, defense officials said.
Don Hall told Moviefone in July that he was visiting the robotics lab at Carnegie Mellon University in 2011 when he saw the inflatable vinyl arm being developed as a nurse’s or doctor’s assistant. [Continue reading…]
December 26th, 2014 | News | 2 Comments
Tagged as: DARPA
A helicopter drone developed by Northrop Grumman Corp. has made its first flight from a U.S. Navy destroyer, the company announced.
The MQ-8C Fire Scout on Dec. 16 completed 22 autonomous takeoffs and landings aboard the guided-missile destroyer, USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109), off the coast of Norfolk, Virginia, according to a Dec. 23 release from the Falls Church, Virginia-based defense contractor.
“This is the first sea-based flight of the MQ-8C and the first time an unmanned helicopter has operated from a destroyer,” Capt. Jeff Dodge, who manages the program for Naval Air Systems Command, said in the release. The technology offers greater endurance, he added, allowing “ship commanders and pilots to have a longer on station presence.” [Continue reading…]
December 24th, 2014 | Drones, The Defense Biz | 74 Comments
Tagged as: Fire Scout, MQ-8C, Navy, Northrop Grumman
President Obama described the hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s computer network as an act of “cybervandalism,” not war, and an expert said the malware likely came from the black market.
“I don’t think it was an act of war,” Obama said during an interview with Candy Crowley on CNN’s “State of the Union” that aired Sunday. “I think it was an act of cybervandalism that was very costly, very expensive. We take it very seriously. We will respond proportionately.”
North Korea’s Internet reportedly crashed on Monday in one of the country’s worst network outages ever. An attack was suspected but not confirmed.
The high-profile cyber-attack against Sony was linked to the government of North Korea and exposed sensitive personal e-mails, salaries and the health records of tens of thousands of employees. [Continue reading…]
December 22nd, 2014 | Cyber, The Defense Biz | 19 Comments
Tagged as: North Korea, Sony
