Slitherine

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“It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out,” Mr Trump said.

“And I said - and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers ... I said what system are you going to be - ‘Sir, we’re staying with digital.’

"I said, ‘No you’re not. [You’re] going to goddamned steam,’ the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it’s no good."

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One example of such hypersonic weapon is General Atomics' Blitzer electric railgun system, which uses electromagnets to accelerate a projectile clad in a sabot at up to 60,000 Gs until it can not only reach hypersonic velocity, but carry enough energy to travel four mi (6.4 km) after penetrating a 3.2 mm steel plate. The Blitzer is made of a launcher, a high density pulsed power unit, and a weapon fire control system.

In addition to the improved electronics package, the projectile also tested a new continuous two-way data link between the in-flight projectiles and a ground station, a new lightweight composite sabot, and the ability to maintain bore structural integrity at high acceleration.

The company is currently working on a new High Energy Pulsed Power Container (HEPPC) to supply the Blitzer with twice the energy density of existing pulsed power systems, allowing for more compact version of both the land- and sea-based versions of the railgun.

"We're continuing to test at an impressive pace, building on the successes over the past year to advance both our Blitzer railgun systems and hypersonic projectile capabilities," says Nick Bucci, vice president Missile Defense and Space Systems at GA-EMS. "We are on track to conduct another series of tests using the Blitzer 10 MJ railgun system later this year. With each new firing, we continue maturing the technologies and performing risk reduction toward a multi-mission railgun weapon system that supports future operation on land and at sea.

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Anyone ready to sign up? ... I am too old

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ORIGINAL: Hongjian

http://www.guancha.cn/military-affairs/2017_05_16_408639.shtml
(In Chinese)

A report about a PLA Air Defense excercise from last year, showing multiple radar systems in service to them (YLC-6, JY-11B, YLC-2V, JYL-1A etc.). Most interestingly, this unit has been awarded for detecting and intercepting a VLO stealth target for the first time. It is unknown if the stealth target was real or simulated. It is understood that they achieved this feat by "networking" the radar systems together.

In any case, the report declares that "The era where Western invaders will be able to abuse a country at will by simply dispatching their stealth fighters is finally over".

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ORIGINAL: redcoat

Joseph Dempsey of the Military Balance has noted that North Korea's Health & Safety regulations have not kept pace with its missile development.

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Four Indonesian soldiers have been killed and eight others injured by artillery fire in an accident during training on a South China Sea island, the army said Thursday.

It took place Wednesday when an artillery cannon malfunctioned during the exercise involving an army reserve battalion on Tanjung Datuk Natuna, on the northwestern fringe of the vast Indonesian archipelago.

"The cannon became uncontrollable and hit soldiers in the vicinity," army spokesman Alfret Denny Tuejeh told AFP.

-more at link-

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-snip-

The F-35 is controlled by Lockheed's complex maintenance and support system known as ALIS, or Autonomic Logistics Information System. Experts have opined that ALIS has been given too much power and sometimes human intervention cannot overrule it.

Bratt said hackers could exploit vulnerabilities in this system and take control which will make the human pilot useless. To avoid this, it is crucial that the hardware remains functional even if a hack or defect has incapacitated its software.

To achieve this, a software alteration is not enough. From the inception of designing the hardware itself, the defences have to be thought about. Bratt mentioned that the current F-35s are being looked at for upgrading their defence system but did not divulge any details saying it is classified.

Recently, a deadly seat ejection flaw was fixed on the F-35A, almost two years after the problem was discovered. Post the recent ransomware attacks that took the world by storm, several cyber experts have warned about defence weapons being targeted by hackers in future including remote controlling of fleets like the F-35 and nuclear access codes.

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Beijing systematically dismantled CIA spying efforts in China beginning in 2010, killing or jailing more than a dozen covert sources, in a deep setback to US intelligence there, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The Times, quoting 10 current and former American officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades.

It said that even now intelligence officials are unsure whether the US was betrayed by a mole within the CIA or whether the Chinese hacked a covert system used by the CIA to communicate with foreign sources.

Of the damage inflicted on what had been one of the most productive US spy networks, however, there was no doubt: at least a dozen CIA sources were killed between late 2010 and the end of 2012, including one who was shot in front of colleagues in a clear warning to anyone else who might be spying, the Times reported.

In all, 18 to 20 CIA sources in China were either killed or imprisoned, according to two former senior American officials quoted. It was a grave setback to a network that, up to then, had been working at its highest level in years.

Those losses were comparable to the number of US assets lost in the Soviet Union and Russia because of the betrayals of two infamous spies, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, the report said.

-more at link-

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ORIGINAL: Hongjian

The ship's crest:

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ORIGINAL: Hongjian

The ship's crest:

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ORIGINAL: Supreme 2.0
Made me wonder in the first place. Thought China uses a numbers-only style for their hullnumbers.

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ORIGINAL: Dysta

These ships are naval workhorses, but definitely not as non-characteristic as 'minions'. They have insignias for crews to the ship they're servicing in multiple roles at sea; unlike missile boats, they don't have insignia or name because it's solely for combat, and no diplomatic value with it.

As for the name behind pennant numbers, It's just following the PLAN's ship naming system by the Chinese towns/cities/provinces for most of the frontliners, instead of using leader/contributor/serviceman such as USS Stark (destroyer) and USS Duncan (frigate). PLAN only use the human name for training ships and weapon research ships.

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ORIGINAL: Supreme 2.0

What I meant was that the Xiamen ship crest read "DDG-154" which made me wonder because I thought China does not use the US style of hullnumbers (placing DDG, CVN, SSN, etc. before the actual pennant number).