Russia is testing “kamikaze drones,” or unmanned aircraft that are essentially flying artillery shells.
Factory testing of the KYB-BLA and Lancet weapons have been completed, Alexander Zakharov, chief designer at ZALA Aero, told Russian news agency TASS during a Russian defense trade show last year. ZALA Aero is part of famed small arms maker Kalashnikov, which is now delving into drones.
The U.S. military doesn’t like the term “kamikaze drone,” preferring to call these weapons “loitering munitions.” Whatever the name, they are small battlefield drones that are launched by an infantry platoon. Equipped with a camera, the drone can orbit the battlefield while relaying imagery to the troops on the ground. When the troops see a promising target, they can order the drone to dive into the target and detonate its warhead.
Hypersonics and Autonomy: How Russian Tanks are Going Futuristic
There are reports that a new tank will be armed with lasers, hypersonic weapons and “vertical take-off homing missiles with an operating range of up to 12 km.”
Here s What You Need To Remember: This means lethality and weapons functionality can be managed by humans performing command and control at safe standoff distances while armored combat vehicles surge forward into combat. The concern with such a technical possibility, which is already possible, is that Russia’s military may not follow any ethical guidelines and enable the weapon to fire upon targets without human intervention.
Red Storm is a tactical simulation of a hypothetical Warsaw Pact invasion of West Germany in 1989.
God favors the side with the bigger battalions, says the old military proverb. The Soviet Union didn’t believe in God, but heaven knows, it did swear by the bigger battalions. So what if some of those numerous battalions had obsolete equipment, or soldiers and officers who didn’t speak the same language? As proclaimed by Stalin, himself a former Communist deity, “quantity has a quality all its own.”
While the Soviets worshiped quantity, NATO had a different theology. Their god was quality (the same as Hitler’s armies, the Soviets could rightly point out). According to NATO dogma, if the Soviets had invaded Western Europe during the Cold War, their superior numbers were supposed to be offset by superior Western flexibility and initiative. Quality was a jealous god that brooked no rivals. NATO’s alternatives were either to raise massive armies to match the Red Army, or have
Ultimately PLA overseers hope to “command” the China seas and a protective belt of the Pacific, wresting complete, permanent control from the U.S. Navy and allied fleets such as the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force or Taiwan Navy.
Stimulus Checks Every Month Until You Die? Some Democrats Say Yes.
The coronavirus stimulus checks have opened the door for policymakers to serious consider making Universal Basic Income a reality.
Here s What You Need To Remember: The idea was pushed by Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang in the 2020 presidential campaign, although it’s a much older idea than that.
The American Rescue Plan is currently distributing stimulus checks of around $1,400 to most eligible Americans, and along with the two other stimulus packages that passed in 2020, the direct payments have proven very popular.
There is interest in the passage of a fourth stimulus package, although it’s unlikely to pass in the immediate future. But in the meantime, the proposal has been made to make stimulus payments permanent.