Shoulder-fired missiles are emerging as a significant threat to both civillian and military aircraft.
Japan is reshaping its military forces as it attempts to tackle a perceived nuclear threat from North Korea and strengthen its role in multinational peacekeeping operations.
The U.S. military has grand plans for the use of unmanned ground robots in future wars but significant advances need to be made in perception sensors?for the vehicles to be able to function in complex terrain and weather?and autonomous navigation.
The United States today finds itself at greater risk of a radiological attack than at the height of the Cold War, according to government officials and independent experts. Concerns that had emerged way before the September 11 attacks have been exacerbated in recent months, as U.S. officials worry that terrorist groups may have access to radioactive materials that could be used to fabricate crude radiological dispersion devices and rudimentary nuclear bombs. But that is not the only reason for U.S. officials to fret. Of more significant concern is the wide availability of “orphaned” hardware and nuclear waste that conceivably could help a motivated terrorist or domestic separatist put together a weapon deadly enough to kill thousands of people.
One of the casualties of this fall’s terrorist attacks upon the United States may have been the latest effort to reform controls limiting exports of technologies (ex. encryption or missile guidance) that could provide a military advantage to the nation’s potential enemies.
An experimental satellite loaded with a megawatt laser could be launched into orbit some time between 2010 and 2012. Its mission would be to zap an intercontinental ballistic missile, fired from a location on Earth, hundreds of miles away.