A team at MIT can now build small drones that fly around with bug-like agility and elasticity because of a new type of artificial muscle. Kevin Chen, senior author of the paper, states that “This opens up a lot of opportunity in the future for us to transition to putting power electronics on the microrobot,".
On Monday, China decided to impose new sanctions on U.S. defence contractors Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin due to their arms sales to Taiwan, stepping up a feud with Washington over security and Beijing’s strategic ambitions. It is the third time China has announced punishments against U.S. companies.
In today’s age of social media and Generation Z (Gen Z) "taking over" the world, there is a new modern approach to military defence. Ordinary citizens record military activities on their phones and post videos on social media. The social media app TikTok, which is often associated with dance trends, is currently being used to watch a very different kind of choreography: the movement of military forces that could be on the brink of a new severe conflict on European soil (Britton and Mulligan, 2022). The app has recently come into the spotlight as tensions between Russia and Ukraine have led to what could be called "the first TikTok conflict" (Bowman, 2022). Videos of Russian troops gathering at the borders of Ukraine are widely distributed on TikTok (Sonne et al., 2022).
During the Unmanned Systems Exhibition, Halcon, a subsidiary of United Arab Emirates’ Edge Group, introduced a novel tube-launched swarming drone system called Hunter 2-S. This swarming drone system belongs to the Hunter 2 series of unmanned aerial vehicles. The purpose of these drones is to share information with one another for tracking and position purposes and to engage with the correct target.
Smart Shooter, the Israel based high-tech arms manufacturer, has reported this week that the Dutch military has decided to purchase and make use of the company' SMASH AD system “immediately”. The SMASH AD system, a Counter Unmanned Aircraft System (C-UAS), is part of a “wider family of Smart Shooter solutions, with some additional enhancements made for counter-drone capabilities.” The decision to buy Smart Shooter' SMASH AD system comes after a series of successful tests conducted by the Dutch military since 2020. Moreover, the Dutch army has already previously placed orders with the Israeli company.
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