Flying Spy Bots

The US military wants to shoot off loads of flying, spying robots using missiles to make for faster sureillance and aerial attack. The first time for military: unmanned, long-range, ultra-high speed surveillance. The military refrained from building global strike missles due to similiarity of an atomic attacker which may trigger another world war. Drones coming from missles may give a larger geographic range for surveillance, while analyzing their own video. However, analysts are not equipped to cope with loads of data and parse them in real time.

Reference: Wired

Turning Seawater into Jet Fuel

Due to climate change and oil shortage, the US Navy is experimenting with making jet fuel from seawater by the process making kerosene-based jet fuel from unsaturated short-chain hydrocarbons in seawater. Extraction of carbon dioxide in the water and combining it with hydrogen - a variant of the chemical reaction called 'Fischer-Tropsch process'. The goal is to produce as little unwanted methane through this process, the main concern. Other issues include the need to use a carbon-neutral energy source and process consumes more energy than the fuel it produces.

Reference: slashdot.org

The Guardium UGV

Video: the Guardium unmanned ground system

An all terrain autonomous surveillance vechicle capable of combat support, reaction to unexpected events, persistent navigation using impervious panoramic artificial imaging, video compression and data fusion.