The Army’s V-280 Drone Helicopter Just Completed a New Test Flight

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled algorithms are starting to allow unmanned fighter jets to dogfight against piloted aircraft. This is done through generating the ability of an unmanned system to maneuver, make decisions, and perform analyses faster than a human can. But what about AI for helicopters?

For many years now, the Army’s ongoing development of its Future Vertical Lift aircraft program has prioritized the importance of engineering optionally-manned helicopters, intended to add a new mission scope to the future of rotorcraft.

With this in mind, one of the competing systems now being assessed by the Army demonstrated the ability for autonomous flight last year. It is Bell’s V-280 Valor tiltrotor aircraft now being tested by Army pilots as part of the service’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft program.

“We were sitting on the ground runway and I flipped a switch, starting the whole autonomous sequence. It started with a hover and then did a climb out and a transition to cruise mode,” Don Grove, Chief Test Pilot, V-280, Bell, said in an interview.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/army%E2%80%99s-v-280-drone-helicopter-just-completed-new-test-flight-169857

B-1B bombers fly over North Pole, join Norway's air force in training

Sept. 30 (UPI) – Two B-1B bombers flew directly over the North Pole to Greenland, part of a two-week training mission, the U.S. Air Force announced on Wednesday.

The bombers, from the 345th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, which headquartered at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, conducted interoperability training exercises with the Norwegian Air Force on Sept. 25, part of a mission that began on Sept. 10.

Operating from Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, the 16-hour, 6,100-nautical-mile trip involved air refueling support above the Arctic Circle, and a day of training with Norwegian forces over the Norwegian Sea and off the Greenland coast.

The training comes as the Arctic Ocean region has become a strategic hot spot for potential conflict, military officials have said repeatedly. The United States' 2018 National Defense Strategy reoriented the military's focus from the Middle East to near-peer concerns in Asia and Europe.

"Our corporate knowledge of Arctic operations in theB-1 is not as robust as it is for other regions of the world, and we fully intend to share our insights with the rest of the B-1 enterprise upon our return," Lt. Col. Andrew Marshall, 345th EBS operations director, said in a statement on Wednesday. "The knowledge and experience we have gained can and will be leveraged for immediate and lasting effect in this community."

Norway, a NATO member, has increased its air capabilities and its air force will have a fleet of 52 F-35 fighter planes by 2025.

https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2020/09/30/B-1B-bombers-fly-over-North-Pole-join-Norways-air-force-in-training/6371601480222/

Plano police investigated possible child sex trafficking attempt

Plano police recently investigated a viral social media photo that appeared to be an attempt to promote a child for sex trafficking, according to a spokesman.

The post shows a minor child who is wearing a red dress. It first appeared on Snapchat and then spread across other social media, including Facebook and Instagram, police said.

“One of the posts mentioned that a transaction took place in Plano,” police spokesman David Tilley said.

When the department was notified Sept. 18, detectives worked through the night and used advanced techniques to try to identify of the author of the message and the child’s mother, police said.

The post used a Plano address, but the author was traced to another city and had not lived in Plano for several months, detectives learned.

Plano police contacted the department in the other jurisdiction and were explicitly asked to not reveal the agency because the investigation is ongoing, Tilley said.

Social media posts about the sex trafficking of minors have proliferated in recent months, originating from groups such as Save Our Children that have grown rapidly in North Texas and across the country. Some of the posts are nothing more than conspiracy theories spread as part of the QAnon network — the wild and false theory that President Donald Trump is secretly fighting a massive cabal of satanic child predators and cannibals.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2020/09/30/plano-police-investigated-possible-child-sex-trafficking-attempt/

Scientists synthesize a material capable of degrading nerve agents in water

A team from the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) of the University of Valencia has succeeded in synthesizing a new porous material that enables and guides the degradation of compounds analogous to nerve agents used in chemical warfare. This material will make it possible to capture and degrade this type of compounds that until now could not be eliminated. The work has been published in magazine Chem.

Nerve agents are highly toxic chemicals that poison the body's central nervous system and prevent it from working properly. They act quickly and their effects range from dizziness to death in the most extreme cases. An example of these agents is Sarin, a synthetic compound classified as a weapon of mass destruction and used in terrorist attacks such as the Tokyo subway in 1995 or, more recently, the 2013 Ghouta massacre in the framework of the Syrian War. Currently, the reference material to capture these gases is activated carbon, which allows them to be retained, but not eliminated.

The ICMol team led by Carlos Martí-Gastaldo, FuniMAT, works with porous materials called MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks) whose versatility makes it possible to create design materials by modifying their properties. In this way, they have succeeded in synthesizing a new family of highly efficient and chemically stable MOFs (MUV-101) that are capable of degrading a Sarin gas analogue in a way that is very similar to enzymes, the biological catalysts par excellence. "On a laboratory scale, we use nerve agent analogues to avoid the problems derived from their obvious toxicity. That is why we are working with foreign defense agencies to certify that this degradation can be extrapolated to Sarin gas itself," explains Martí-Gastaldo.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-scientists-synthesise-material-capable-degrading.html

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