Red fish, blue fish.
Swarms of the sea.
They swim and they churn.
How many can there be? ;-)
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Showing posts with label Swarms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swarms. Show all posts
February 9, 2022
October 13, 2018
October 12, 2018
Why Isn't The U.S. Keeping Up Militarily?
But the U.S. spends more than the next 7-8 countries COMBINED!(See below chart from Forbes 2016)
In fact, military spending is more than half of all U.S. federal discretionary spending.
So the question is why are we spending so much more than everybody else, is the United States getting its money's worth, and most importantly are we able to defend ourselves?
The U.S. defense budget is going up and has been approved at $717B for 2019.
All the other 28 NATO countries together spend less than half ($296B) as much as the U.S. alone.
If you add NATO spending as a complement to the U.S. then the total spend on our mutual defense approaches $1 trillion!
Russia ($69B) China ($146B), North Korea ($6B), and Iran's ($16B) military spending in total pales in comparison at just $237B.
NATO as a whole is outspending Russia + China + North Korea + Iran by a factor of 4 times yet these countries are still considered major threats to us!
Therefore, again why is it that the U.S. is spending more on what others seem to get for cheaper? Is there significant fraud, waste, and abuse in the system? Are we as a rich capitalistic nation simply getting fat, lazy, and stupid?
Notwithstanding the outsized spending by the United States, incredibly from today's Wall Street Journal, there is another article about our inability to defend ourselves:
"These are admissions that the U.S. cannot proportionally and equally defend itself in space, cyber, and response to tactical and nuclear weapons except through the threat of escalation and intrusion into other domains."Some poignant examples given:
- Our stationary land-based nuclear missiles are no match for Russia and China's mobile-based ICBMs.
- Our ten busiest U.S. ports do not have an adequate defense against an underwater nuclear missile launch.
China and Russia variously are beating us out in:
- Quantum Communications
- Anti-Satellite Weapons
- Directed Energy
- Hypersonics
In fact, it was just reported that China conducted its 8th hypersonic test of a plane--with this one said to capable of Mach 10--and that it is capable of carrying nukes!
Further, our carrier group fleet and land forces are at risk with respect to Russia and China's hypersonic weapons.
Of course, EMP weapons can fry our electrical grid and a large cyber attack could disable our critical infrastructure.
Let's not even talk bioweapons--think Black Plague from the Middle Ages that wiped out 30-60% of Europe.
Yes, some of these are asymmetric warfare, but why are we still thinking and fighting so kinetic and conventionally.
If we are fighting the wars of yesteryear instead of the battles of today and the threats of tomorrow then what good is our military investments and assets.
To become a more capable fighting force that is less vulnerable, more capable of defending this country, and making better use of our large investment dollars here are 10-steps we need to take to transform our military; we need to transition as follows:
- From static land-based nuclear missiles to a fully mobile platform.
- From vulnerable fleets of large ships and planes to "unstoppable" swarms of miniaturized lethal drones.
- From a preponderance of earth-based kinetic weapons to space-based energy directed weapons.
- From having to generally choose between speed or power to using the power of speed as an "unstoppable" force of nature.
- From projecting a time and space bound visible presence to a persistent invisible existence.
- From attempting to defend limited points of presence to establishing a "impenetrable" umbrella shield of multi-layered defenses.
- From reactively identifying and stopping cyber threats to proactively hunting and destroying them.
- From knee-jerk instinctive putting of human lives in harm's way to matter-of-factly sending milbots (military robots) to the front lines.
- From relying on the heroics and genius of individual human brainpower to harnessing in realtime "the collective" augmented by artificial intelligence into a hive.
- From relying on escalation of a "bigger, badder gun" to being able to fight capably in every battle arena, win in each and dominate holistically.
Over $700B per year should buy us a lot of defense, hopefully in the future we can really use it to defend ourselves. ;-)
June 9, 2017
Drones Vs. Man
Look how close this machine is flying to his head!
Aside from the surveillance capabilities and offsetting privacy issues, these are bringing some dangerous fighting capabilities anywhere and everywhere.
Just today, I read about how the U.S. shot down an armed Syrian drone--presumably made and deployed by Iran!
I guess it's not proprietary technology anymore!
As drones and robots become better, faster, and cheaper and ubiquitous on the battlefield and on main street, who will be (relatively) safe anymore?
Unless of course, my drones are stronger than your drones!
It's going to be a war of technology and machines more than ever before.
Small ones like insects, swarms of them like engulfing locust, and large ones like Godzilla.
What was once human flesh against a steel blade, arrow, and then bullet is now going to be an superfast artificially intelligent, armed to the hilt "man of steel" (and they don't miss) against just regular everyday people.
Don't hurt your hand punching that Robot in the face. ;-)
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
March 19, 2017
Killer Bots--Massive and Nano
And then there are small nanobot weapons to worry about--which don't sound like much, but they could be the ultimate killer machines.
About 10 nanometers make up the width of a human hair, so we are talking about microscopic or bug size weaponized drones.
Nanobots can be manufactured or scarily can be self-replicating.
They can fly alone or in massive swarms.
They can surreptitiously enter/exit and carry out their missions virtually undetected.
Whether surveillance or delivering a mini-nuke or a toxin.
Nanobots could function like a biological weapon killing millions--targeted or indiscriminately.
Cambridge University forecasts a 5% chance that nanotech weapons could cause a human extinction level event by the year 2,100.
Soon wars will not be fought by people any longer--by rather by robots and nanobots.
People are too fragile for fighting and war against ruggedized and militarized bots that are designed for one purpose only...to kill, kill, kill.
Terminators are coming--from massive to nanoscale--and mere humans will be dogmeat to these killing machines.
Add in a cyber warfare component that will turn off 21st century civilization leaving us to fend as if we were back in the stone ages, and overpopulation is the last and funniest joke any of us will ever tell.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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