threatlevel

The Navy's electromagnetic railgun launcher uses the Lorentz force to hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7.

Building satellites in the future could be as easy as sending robots packed with hardware into orbit, if a new project from Darpa takes off.

As the Pentagon continues to build a lighter, faster and stronger soldier of the future, new technology that could provide night vision without bulky goggles has caught the Army's eye.

With UAVs crowding navigable airspace and plans underway to put giant mega-satellites into orbit, it was just a matter of time before a drone-satellite hybrid was developed to fit between the two spaces. StratoBus, a new project out of France, is conceptualized to do just that. Designed to be about the length of a football field […]

The Pentagon learned in August 2013 -- when the U.S. came close to striking Syria over the Assad regime's use of sarin gas -- that it was woefully unprepared to face chemical or biological weapons on the battlefield. Now Darpa thinks it has a solution, called the Laser UV Sources for Tactical Efficient Raman program, or LUSTER. The Defense Department's research arm announced this week it would begin developing a small-scale, portable and budget-conscious detection system that will rely on high power and efficient ultraviolet lasers.

Israel is finally ready to combat shoulder-launched missiles and they're going to do it with lasers.

The Navy is developing a five-pound, 25-inch mini-munition that it's calling "the world's smallest guided missile."

Darpa has taken on a new role in military procurement: quality control. The military's research agency is developing a device to detect used and counterfeit electronic components in the Pentagon's supply chain, hoping to get a handle on a problem the agency says could lead to system failures that put soldiers' lives and missions at risk.

In Silicon Valley, walking around with an augmented reality display on your face makes you a glasshole. But on the battlefield, similar technology will soon turn U.S. soldiers into a lethal cross between the Terminator and Iron Man.

The U.S. may be forced to withdraw troops completely from Afghanistan by the end of the year. That's bad news if you're the CIA, and your lethal drone flights over neighboring Pakistan rely on the close proximity of Afghan airstrips. Not surprisingly, the defense industry has already produced a solution: a new jet-powered drone that can range 1,800 miles from the nearest base.

U.S. Army convoys will soon be able to roll into even the roughest of unfriendly foreign urban areas and combat zones without the worry of loss of life, thanks to new technology that will make large vehicles fully autonomous.

If the Army is going to keep up with military readiness pressures while also seeing a reduction in troop size and stagnant budgets, then it's going to need more cutting-edge videogames.

The Pentagon has seen the future of communications, and it is ... inflatable.

An effort by President Obama to transfer America's lethal, highly classified drone program from the CIA to the Pentagon appears to have been thwarted by lawmakers wielding a secret weapon of their own.

A new drone with the mammoth wingspan of a Boeing 757 is set to give the U.S. Navy some serious surveillance power.

In a robotic twist on American Gladiator, 17 robots and their teams will descend upon Florida this week to see which ones have the greatest superhero potential.

After more than 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon's research group has announced a new system that could help U.S. troops and multinational forces communicate — a problem that frequently plagued the countries' cooperation in the field.

When Laurie Rush, an army archaeologist and anthropologist, heard that the military had built a helipad directly on top of ancient Babylon, she realized she needed to do more to educate US soldiers about historic places.

The Navy may have a new line of defense against a changing threat environment after the successful missile firing from a new multi-role launcher in development. In a recent round of tests announced Tuesday, Chemring Countermeasures and Raytheon Missile Systems say they have successfully fired a Raytheon-Lockheed Martin Javelin missile from a prototype multi-role Centurion […]

Online gamers may be what saves the U.S. from cyberattacks, if the Pentagon's research group can enlist enough volunteers.

Spying could become much easier if a new lightweight, folding satellite concept gets off the ground.

The latest top secret unmanned spy plane to be uncovered isn’t just a design idea, it’s already flying at the Air Force’s famed Area 51. Unlike the recently announced SR-72, the new RQ-180 from Northrop Grumman is believed to be currently in flight testing according to Aviation Week and Space Technology. The RQ-180 is a […]

After more tests completed last month, the Navy and Marines decided that the RQ-21A Blackjack drone is worth the gamble. They're putting money on the program that could provide them with a dedicated multi-intelligence drone in a matter of months.

The United Nations has turned to spy drones for the first time in its history in an effort to increase pressure in militias in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, marking both a major technological advancement in the organization's peacekeeping arsenal as well as a shift in how it views the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.

The big problem with drones is they look like, well, drones. It makes them easy to spot, and easy to target. The Army has a solution to this problem: make them look like birds.

Meet Atlas, the Pentagon’s 6'2", 330-pound humanitarian robot. He was designed to save lives in disaster zones.

Small, tactical drones may have a new role in military strikes after Northrop Grumman's catapult-launched Bat demonstrated an electronic attack capability for the first time in new tests.

The future of military drones isn't surveillance and dropping bombs. It's transformation: a single unmanned vehicle that can fly, swim, drive and even hop like a frog across a variety of terrains and obstacles.

The secret diaries of the Guantanamo Bay detainee known as Abu Zubaydah, which the Bush administration heavily relied upon in its justification for many elements of the "War on Terror," are no longer solely in government custody.  

The U.S. Navy has decided it's finally time to get sailors new shipboard coveralls that won't burst into flames and melt with a touch of a single match.

The Pentagon this week edged closer to mounting missile-destroying lasers on unmanned and manned aircraft, awarding $26 million to defense contractors to develop the technology.

Warfare technology has come a long way since the days of throwing stones, but that won't keep the military from incorporating rocks into their arsenal of weapons.

Two prominent human rights groups today blasted America's drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen, painting a grim picture of massive civilian deaths and potentially grave violations of international law.

The U.S. Army's carbon fiber exoskeleton foot has allowed soldiers with badly injured legs get back on their feet. Now it's coming to the rest of us.

Researchers have created a mapping system data scientists can mine to produce forecasts, based on short- and long-term trends, that could help aid agencies prepare for crises.

Robots armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank missiles and even grenade launchers are marching, er, rolling ever closer to the battlefield now that they've shown they can actually hit what they're supposed to.

Army researchers are developing an advanced military uniform that would turn a special ops commando into Iron Man.

Last year when DARPA released video of its new robot designed to replicate the movements (and, eventually, speed) of a cheetah, some of us were creeped out by the machine’s ability to “chase and evade” at the rate of nearly 30 mph. The only thing reassuring was that the Cheetah was tethered by an electronic leash of cables. Now MIT spinoff Boston Dynamics has released WildCat, the sequel to Cheetah, which can only move at 16 mph at the moment, but can do so while untethered.

The commandant of the Marine Corps took an extraordinary course of action in effectively firing two generals Monday for their failure to protect a massive base in Afghanistan that Taliban fighters attacked last year, resulting in the deaths of two Marines and the destruction of six Marine AV-8B Harrier jets, causing hundreds of millions of […]

After nearly 40 years as the cornerstone of the U.S. Air Force’s fighter fleet, the F-16 tried out a a new role last week:  robotic flying bull’s-eye. A modified F-16 took flight from Tindall Air Force Base in Florida without a pilot so it could be blown to smithereens. The Boeing retrofit of retired Lockheed […]