The United States Air Force (USAF) has successfully tested its first prototype hypersonic missile. Space.com reports: The service's new AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon, or ARRW ("Arrow") is expected to be the United States military's first hypersonic weapon to reach operational status. The exact speed of the AGM-183A isn't known, although the Lockheed Martin-designed weapon is said to be based on previous test vehicles built by DARPA that have an alleged maximum speed of Mach 20, or 15,000 mph (24,000 kph). The successful ARRW test was conducted on Friday (Dec. 9) in a training range off the coast of California, according to a USAF statement released Monday (Dec. 12). "This test was the first launch of a full prototype operational missile," officials wrote in the statement. "Following the ARRW's separation from the aircraft, it reached hypersonic speeds greater than five times the speed of sound, completed its flight path and detonated in the terminal area. Indications show that all objectives were met."

According to the U.S. Air Force, the missile is designed to "hold fixed, high-value, time-sensitive targets at risk in contested environments," meaning it will be used to target pre-determined assets on the ground such as fixed missile sites, radar stations, air defense installations, infrastructure facilities or even adversary headquarters buildings -- basically anything important in a battlefield environment that can't be moved and needs to be destroyed quickly. [...] Now that the ARRW has successfully flown, it's likely the service could reevaluate its plans to scrap planned purchases of the AGM-183A. The AGM-183A is what is known as a boost-glide vehicle, which refers to warheads or projectiles that glide toward their targets after being lofted by a rocket booster.

Japan and the Netherlands have agreed in principle to join the US in tightening controls over the export of advanced chipmaking machinery to China, Bloomberg News reported according to people familiar with the matter, a potentially debilitating blow to Beijing's technology ambitions. From the report: The two countries are likely to announce in the coming weeks that they'll adopt at least some of the sweeping measures the US rolled out in October to restrict the sale of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, according to the people, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The Biden administration has said the measures are aimed at preventing Beijing's military from obtaining advanced semiconductors.

The three-country alliance would represent a near-total blockade of China's ability to buy the equipment necessary to make leading-edge chips. The US rules restricted the supply from American gear suppliers Applied Materials, Lam Research and KLA. Japan's Tokyo Electron and Dutch lithography specialist ASML Holding are the two other critical suppliers that the US needed to make the sanctions effective, making their governments' adoption of the export curbs a significant milestone. "There's no way China can build a leading-edge industry on their own. No chance," said Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon.

Google, Oracle, Microsoft and Amazon will share in the Pentagon's $9 billion contract to build its cloud computing network, a year after accusations of politicization over the previously announced contract and a protracted legal battle resulted in the military starting over in its award process. The Associated Press reports: The Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability is envisioned to provide access to unclassified, secret and top-secret data to military personnel all over the globe. It is anticipated to serve as a backbone for the Pentagon's modern war operations, which will rely heavily on unmanned aircraft and space communications satellites, but will still need a way to quickly get the intelligence from those platforms to troops on the ground. The contract will be awarded in parts, with a total estimated completion date of June 2028, the Pentagon said in a statement.

Last July, the Pentagon announced it was cancelling its previous cloud computing award, then named JEDI. At the time, the Pentagon said that due to delays in proceeding with the contract, technology had changed to the extent that the old contract, which was awarded to Microsoft, no longer met DOD's needs. It did not mention the legal challenges behind those delays, which had come from Amazon, the losing bidder. Amazon had questioned whether former President Donald Trump's administration had steered the contract toward Microsoft due to Trump's adversarial relationship with Amazon's chief executive officer at the time, Jeff Bezos. A report by the Pentagon's inspector general did not find evidence of improper influence, but it said it could not determine the extent of administration interactions with Pentagon decision-makers because the White House would not allow unfettered access to witnesses. "It's the most important cloud deal to come out of the Beltway," said analyst Daniel Ives, who monitors the cloud industry for Wedbush Securities. "It's about the Pentagon as a reference customer. It says significant accolades about what they think about that vendor, and that's the best reference customer you could have in that world."

Elon Musk's SpaceX is expanding its Starlink satellite technology into military applications with a new business line called Starshield. CNBC reports: "While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use," the company wrote on its website. Few details are available about the intended scope and capabilities of Starshield. The company hasn't previously announced tests or work on Starshield technology.

On its website, SpaceX said the system will have "an initial focus" on three areas: Imagery, communications and "hosted payloads" -- the third of which effectively offers government customers the company's satellite bus (the body of the spacecraft) as a flexible platform. The company also markets Starshield as the center of an "end-to-end" offering for national security: SpaceX would build everything from the ground antennas to the satellites, launch the latter with its rockets, and operate the network in space.

SpaceX notes that Starshield uses "additional high-assurance cryptographic capability to host classified payloads and process data securely," building upon the data encryption it uses with its Starlink system. Another key feature: the "inter-satellite laser communications" links, which the company currently has connecting its Starlink spacecraft. It notes that the terminals can be added to "partner satellites," so as to connect other companies' government systems "into the Starshield network."

You can read the news in Military Times magazine. "Coming just after the 25th anniversary of the release of the cult classic Starship Troopers (November 1997), Offworld Industries and Sony Pictures Consumer Projects are bringing the fight against the Arachnids to a computer near you."

An official announcement and gameplay teaser were released for the upcoming game this week. "Starship Troopers: Extermination is a co-op FPS that puts you on the far-off front lines of an all-out battle against the Bugs!" explains its page on Steam. "Squad up, grab your rifle, and do your part as an elite Deep Space Vanguard Trooper set to take back planets claimed by the Arachnid threat!"

The page says an "Early Access" launch is planned for 2023: In Starship Troopers: Extermination, our vision is to show a galactic war between the Federation and the Arachnid Empire. After our initial launch and throughout the course of Early Access development, players will get to engage with exciting new updates that expand upon the in-game universe, and provide feedback through the Steam Community Hub that our developers can take into consideration.... [W]e will be sharing an exciting and robust roadmap with content already planned for 2023. Throughout Early Access we will provide players with more weapons, an updated class leveling system as well as progression achievements and unlockable skins for both weapons and armor. Additionally we will be adding vehicles special call in attacks including massive Orbital Strikes to help during missions. On the enemy side we will be adding more bugs, flying enemies, and boss battles that require complex player coordination to accomplish.

As we progress in development, our goal is to then begin ongoing planetary battles where the player can explore new items and enemies introduced in previous updates as an epic war breaks out. This transition adds a new world as we head to the completion of Early Access. The intent throughout Early Access is to convey that this part of our development cycle is the beginning of the war and the battle will only increase in complexity and ferocity as we move to full release.

Starship Troopers: Extermination is expected to be in Early Access for approximately 1 year. The full version of Starship Troopers: Extermination will span multiple worlds to liberate them from the Arachnid Threat. This will include additional weapons, enemies types, class progression upgrades, community events, and encounters. The player will have a more diverse roster of customization options allowing them to tailor their Troopers to fit their playstyle and experience." Starship Troopers: Extermination will launch with a massive map on Planet Valaka. Up to twelve players can team up to complete side and main missions before escaping to the extraction zone. We'll have more to share closer to the Early Access launch in 2023!

We plan to work closely with the community on Steam's Community Hub and in the official Starship Troopers: Extermination Discord as we add features, tune gameplay, and develop new content.
"Starship Troopers is in a league of its own when it comes to 90s science fiction films," writes Boing Boing's Devin Nealy. "Despite serving as an adaptation of the Robert A. Heinlein book, Starship Troopers forges a unique identity through its striking visuals and deft use of satire."

Noting the two "pretty weak" straight-to-video sequels (and two more CGI-animated films), Nealy argues that "Until the franchise finds a creative team that can properly capture the essence of the first film, a video game might be the best option for the series."

The U.S. Army allocated millions of dollars to sponsor a wide range of esports tournaments, individual high profile Call of Duty streamers, and Twitch events in the last year to specifically grow its audience with Gen-Z viewers, and especially women and Black and Hispanic people, according to internal Army documents obtained by Motherboard. From the report: In many cases the sponsorships ultimately did not happen -- the Army ordered a stop of all spending with Call of Duty's publisher Activision after the company faced a wave of sexual harrassment complaints. But the documents provide much greater insight into the Army's goals and intentions behind its planned integrations with Call of Duty and other massive entertainment franchises.

"Audience: Gen-Z Prospects (A18-24)," one section of the documents read. "Focus on the growth of females, Black & Hispanics." Motherboard obtained the documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A table included in the documents lists the funds the Army planned to spend on various platforms, events, and streamers. At the top, is Twitch and its HBCU [Historically Black Colleges and Universities] Showdown. Previous seasons of this esports league had players compete in Madden and NBA games. The Army planned to spend $1 million on sponsoring the event. The documents show that the U.S. military considered gaming and, in particular, Call of Duty, as a potentially useful branding and recruiting tool.

America's newest nuclear stealth bomber is making its public debut after years of secret development and as part of the Pentagon's answer to rising concerns over a future conflict with China. From a report: The B-21 Raider is the first new American bomber aircraft in more than 30 years. Almost every aspect of the program is classified. Ahead of its unveiling Friday at an Air Force facility in Palmdale, California, only artists' renderings of the warplane have been released. Those few images reveal that the Raider resembles the black nuclear stealth bomber it will eventually replace, the B-2 Spirit.

The bomber is part of the Pentagon's efforts to modernize all three legs of its nuclear triad, which includes silo-launched nuclear ballistic missiles and submarine-launched warheads, as it shifts from the counterterrorism campaigns of recent decades to meet China's rapid military modernization. China is on track to have 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, and its gains in hypersonics, cyber warfare, space capabilities and other areas present "the most consequential and systemic challenge to U.S. national security and the free and open international system," the Pentagon said this week in its annual China report.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Washington Post: Major web browsers moved Wednesday to stop using a mysterious software company that certified websites were secure, three weeks after The Washington Post reported its connections to a U.S. military contractor. Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Edge said they would stop trusting new certificates from TrustCor Systems that vouched for the legitimacy of sites reached by their users, capping weeks of online arguments among their technology experts, outside researchers and TrustCor, which said it had no ongoing ties of concern. Other tech companies are expected to follow suit.

The Post reported on Nov. 8 that TrustCor's Panamanian registration records showed the same slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware-maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade. One of those contracts listed the "place of performance" as Fort Meade, Md., the home of the National Security Agency and the Pentagon's Cyber Command. The case has put a new spotlight on the obscure systems of trust and checks that allow people to rely on the internet for most purposes. Browsers typically have more than a hundred authorities approved by default, including government-owned ones and small companies, to seamlessly attest that secure websites are what they purport to be."Certificate Authorities have highly trusted roles in the internet ecosystem and it is unacceptable for a CA to be closely tied, through ownership and operation, to a company engaged in the distribution of malware," Mozilla's Kathleen Wilson wrote to a mailing list for browser security experts. "Trustcor's responses via their Vice President of CA operations further substantiates the factual basis for Mozilla's concerns."

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 Tuesday night to approve a controversial policy that would allow police to deploy robots capable of using lethal force in extraordinary circumstances, according to multiple reports. From a report: The Washington Post reports the vote came after a heated debate on a policy that would allow officers to use ground-based robots to kill "when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and officers cannot subdue the threat after using alternative force options or de-escalation tactics." The Post says the measure still requires a second vote next week and the mayor's approval.

"There could be an extraordinary circumstance where, in a virtually unimaginable emergency, they might want to deploy lethal force to render, in some horrific situation, somebody from being able to cause further harm," Supervisor Aaron Peskin said at the board meeting, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. But Supervisors Dean Preston, Hillary Ronen and Shamann Walton voted against the policy, the Chronicle reported. "There is serious potential for misuse and abuse of this military-grade technology, and zero showing of necessity," Preston said at the meeting. Ultimately, the board adopted an amendment requiring one of two high-ranking San Francisco Police Department leaders to authorize any use of a robot for lethal force, according to the Chronicle.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Bohemia Interactive, the Czech Republic based developer of the military simulator game Arma 3, has published a blog and a video it hopes will help it with a unique problem. Footage from the video game known for its realism has gone viral several times since the game's release in 2013 as people have tried to pass off clips of the military simulation as footage of real war. This happens a lot, so often that there are multiple debunking stories on Reuters and the Associated Press specifically about debunking viral clips of war footage. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, the problem has gotten much worse. The invasion is the largest ground war in Europe in a generation and people around the world gobble up every scrap of information they can. Pranksters and fraudsters have taken to uploading clips from Arma 3 to capitalize on that need for information.

Arma 3 is a hyper realistic military simulation and sandbox. It's meant to be a realistic modeling of real world conflict. It's even teamed up with the International Committee of the Red Cross to release DLC that details the after effects of armed conflict. A sister studio, Bohemia Interactive Simulations, broke from the company in 2013 and makes simulations for the Pentagon using similar technology. The game is also a sandbox with a vibrant modding scene (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds began its life as an Arma 3 mod) that allows players to customize the game however they want. That devotion to realism and open platform has made Arma 3 the perfect platform to use to create fake war footage. "While it's flattering that Arma 3 simulates modern war conflicts in such a realistic way, we are certainly not pleased that it can be mistaken for real-life combat footage and used as war propaganda," Pavel Krizka, PR Manager of Bohemia Interactive, said in a November 28 press release. "It has happened in the past (Arma 3 videos allegedly depicted conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine, and even between India and Pakistan), but nowadays this content has gained traction in regard to the current conflict in Ukraine."

The life cycle is almost always the same. An Arma 3 nerd uploads something to YouTube and other people pull the video, edit it to make it look more realistic, then pass it off as actual footage of the conflict. The footage goes viral then the fact-checkers come in and tell everyone it's a video game. Bohemia Interactive issues a statement and then everyone waits for the next fake to come along. "We've been trying to fight against such content by flagging these videos to platform providers (FB, YT, TW, IG etc.), but it's very ineffective," Krizka said in the press release. "With every video taken down, ten more are uploaded each day. We found the best way to tackle this is to actively cooperate with leading media outlets and fact-checkers (such as AFP, Reuters, and others), who have better reach and the capacity to fight the spreading of fake news footage effectively." Some of the tells of fake footage include a low resolution, a shaky camera, and/or a night setting. "They're often without sound, don't feature people in motion, and sometimes still include the HUD elements from the video game," adds Motherboard. "There's typically unnatural particle effects, unrealistic vehicles, uniforms, and equipment."

"We have seen many Arma players pointing out mistakenly identified footage, which helps viewers understand what they're seeing," said Bohemia Interactive. "Thank you for helping!"

From the BBC: "Individuals associated with the U.S. military" are linked to an online propaganda campaign, Meta's latest adversarial-threat report says....

On Facebook, 39 accounts, 16 pages, and two groups were removed, as well as 26 accounts on Instagram, for violating the platforms' policy against "coordinated inauthentic behaviour". "This network originated in the United States," Meta wrote. It focused on countries including Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Yemen — and mirrored tactics commonly used in propaganda campaigns against the West...

Some of those supporting the U.S. had posed as independent media outlets and some had tried to pass off content from legitimate outlets, such as BBC News Russian, as their own. The operation ran across many internet services, including Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, according to Meta. "Although the people behind this operation attempted to conceal their identities and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with the US military," its report says.
The article adds that experts believe the campaign "was largely ineffective."

The U.S. Navy was found guilty of piracy and is ordered to pay a software company $154,400 for a lawsuit filed back in 2016. Gizmodo reports: The company, Bitmanagement Software GmbH, filed a complaint against the Navy, accusing the military branch of copyright infringement. GmbH claimed they had issued 38 copies of their 3D virtual reality software, BS Contact Geo, but while they were still in negotiations for additional licenses, the Navy installed the software onto at least 558,466 machines between 2013 and 2015. In the court filing (PDF), GmbH claimed, "Without Bitmanagement's advance knowledge or consent, the Navy installed BS Contact Go onto hundreds of thousands of computers. Bitmanagement did not license or otherwise authorize these uses of its software, and the Navy has never compensated Bitmanagement for these uses of Bitmanagement's software."

The company sued the Navy for nearly $600 million for "willful copyright infringement" of the software which, according to the vendor's website, is a 3D viewer that "enables you to visualize and interact with state of the art 2D/3D content," and is based on digital data captured from "various sources (land surveys, CAD, satellite imagery, airborne laser scanning, etc)." The court filings stated that after GmbH filed the lawsuit in July 2016, the Navy uninstalled the BS Contact Geo software from all of its computers and "subsequently reinstalled the software on 34 seats, for inventory purposes." GmbH wrote in the court filing, "The government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license for copying Bitmanagement software onto each of the devices that had Bitmanagement software installed. The government nonetheless failed to obtain such licenses."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The San Francisco Police Department is currently petitioning the city's Board of Supervisors for permission to deploy robots to kill suspects that law enforcement deems a sufficient threat that the "risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD." The draft policy, which was written by the SFPD itself, also seeks to exclude "hundreds of assault rifles from its inventory of military-style weapons and for not include personnel costs in the price of its weapons," according to a report from Mission Local.

As Mission Local notes, this proposal has already seen significant opposition from both within and without the Board. Supervisor Aaron Peskin, initially pushed back against the use of force requirements, inserting "Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person," into the policy language. The SFPD removed that wording in a subsequent draft, which I as a lifelong San Francisco resident did not know was something that they could just do. The three-member Rules Committee, which Peskin chairs, then unanimously approved that draft and advanced it to the full Board of Supervisors for a vote on November 29th. Peskin excused his decision by claiming that "there could be scenarios where deployment of lethal force was the only option."

The police force currently maintains a dozen fully-functional remote-controlled robots, which are typically used for area inspections and bomb disposal. However, as the Dallas PD showed in 2016, they make excellent bomb delivery platforms as well. Bomb disposal units are often equipped with blank shotgun shells used to forcibly disrupt an explosive device's internal workings, though there is nothing stopping police from using live rounds if they needed, as Oakland police recently acknowledged to that city's civilian oversight board.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plans to bring its most advanced technology to Arizona, the founder of the chip giant said Monday. From a report: TSMC's plans come as tensions between Washington and Beijing are rising over chips, with President Joe Biden imposing a sweeping set of controls on the sale of advanced chips and chip-making equipment to Chinese firms. Taiwan, a self-governing democracy that the Chinese Communist Party claims as its own territory despite having never controlled it, has also faced growing military aggression from Beijing in recent months -- throwing a spotlight on the critical role the island plays in the global chipmaking industry. TSMC accounts for an estimated 90% of the world's super-advanced computer chips, supplying tech giants including Apple and Qualcomm.

"Chips are very important products," TSMC's founder Morris Chang said Monday at a press briefing in Taipei. "It seems that people are only starting to realize this recently, and as a result, lots of people out there are envious of Taiwan's chip manufacturing." Chang has retired but remains an influential force within the industry. [...] Advances in chip manufacturing require etching ever-smaller transistors on to silicon wafers. Chang said its plant in Arizona will produce 3-nanometer chips, TSMC's most advanced technology. In 2020, the company had already committed at least $12 billion to build its first facility in Arizona. At the time, the tech giant had said that the facility will "utilize TSMC's 5-nanometer technology for semiconductor wafer fabrication" and "create over 1,600 high-tech professional jobs directly." Production is expected to begin in 2024.

According to documents recently declassified by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), former President Donald Trump posted a classified satellite image of a failed rocket launch in Iran on Twitter in 2019. NPR reports: Now, three years after Trump's tweet, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has formally declassified the original image. The declassification, which came as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by NPR, followed a grueling Pentagon-wide review to determine whether the briefing slide it came from could be shared with the public. Many details on the original image remain redacted -- a clear sign that Trump was sharing some of the U.S. government's most prized intelligence on social media, says Steven Aftergood, specialist in secrecy and classification at the Federation of American Scientists. "He was getting literally a bird's eye view of some of the most sensitive US intelligence on Iran," he says. "And the first thing he seemed to want to do was to blurt it out over Twitter." "[A]erospace experts determined the photo was taken by a classified spacecraft called USA 224, believed to be a multibillion-dollar KH-11 reconnaissance aircraft," adds Gizmodo. "The spacecraft is similar to the Hubble Telescope, but instead of getting a closer look at the stars, it views the Earth's surface."

Earlier this month, agents from both the FBI and the U.S. Air Force raided multiple homes belonging to a man who runs a little-known blog about Area 51. Gizmodo reports: That man, Joerg Arnu, said the swarm of federal agents in riot gear busted into his primary residence, handcuffed him, then marched him outside to wait in the freezing cold while they rifled through his apartment and took pretty much every piece of electronic equipment that he owned. So far, the government has been pretty tight-lipped about the whole thing, but officials did verify that it happened. In a statement provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Lt. Col. Bryon McGarry confirmed the raid. He did not elaborate on its purpose, saying only: "This is an open and ongoing law enforcement investigation between the Las Vegas FBI and Air Force OSI."

What did cops want? It's not exactly clear. Since 1999, Arnu has run Dreamland Resort, a website that covers activities in and around Area 51, the notoriously secretive government facility located in Groom Lake, Nevada. Long the subject of speculation and curiosity, the highly classified facility is the site of myriad UFO sightings. Coincidentally (or not), it is also the location where the Air Force reportedly tests and develops some of its most sensitive and experimental new projects and aircraft (see: the U-2 spy plane in the 1950s, for instance). Among other things, Arnu's site features pictures and writing about the Air Force's so-called "black projects" -- opaque, classified operations carried out behind a veil of government secrecy. Arnu claims that the agents confiscated his "laptops, phones, backup drives, camera gear, and my drone were seized." He describes the situation in detail in a blog post on his website.

What happens when old atomic bombs are retired? Last month, the Biden administration announced its intention to withdraw the nation's most powerful weapon from the U.S. nuclear arsenal. From a report: The bomb is called the B83. It is a hydrogen bomb that debuted in 1983 -- a time when President Reagan was denouncing Russia as "an evil empire." The government made 660 of the deadly weapons, which were to be delivered by fast bombers. The B83 was 12 feet long, had fins and packed an explosive force roughly 80 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb. Its job was to obliterate hardened military sites and command bunkers, including Moscow's.

What now for the B83? How many still exist is a federal secret, but not the weapon's likely fate, which may surprise anyone who assumes that getting rid of a nuclear weapon means that it vanishes from the face of the earth. Typically, nuclear arms retired from the U.S. arsenal are not melted down, pulverized, crushed, buried or otherwise destroyed. Instead, they are painstakingly disassembled, and their parts, including their deadly plutonium cores, are kept in a maze of bunkers and warehouses across the United States. Any individual facility within this gargantuan complex can act as a kind of used-parts superstore from which new weapons can -- and do -- emerge.

After 908 days in orbit, the U.S. military's X-37B space plane finally touched down today in Florida, reports Space.com.

And "the Boeing-built space plane also carried a service module on the newly completed mission, a first for the U.S. Space Force's X-37B program." "With the service module added, this was the most we've ever carried to orbit on the X-37B, and we're proud to have been able to prove out this new and flexible capability for the government and its industry partners," Jim Chilton, senior vice president at Boeing Space and Launch, said in a statement today.

The X-37B resembles NASA's now-retired space shuttle but is much smaller, measuring just 29 feet (8.8 meters) from nose to tail. The space shuttle was 122 feet (37 m) long and was piloted — another key difference, as the X-37B is autonomous.

The U.S. Space Force is thought to own two X-37B vehicles, both of which were provided by Boeing. To date, the duo has flown six orbital missions, each of which is known by the signifier OTV ("Orbital Test Vehicle"):

OTV-1: Launched on April 22, 2010 and landed on Dec. 3, 2010 (duration 224 days).
OTV-2: March 5, 2011 to June 16, 2012 (468 days).
OTV-3: Dec. 11, 2012 to Oct. 17, 2014 (674 days).
OTV-4: May 20, 2015 to May 7, 2015 (718 days).
OTV-5: Sept. 7, 2017 to Oct. 27, 2019 (780 days).
OTV-6: May 17, 2020 to Nov. 12, 2022 (908 days).

Modern airliner designs date from the 1950s: a metal tube and swept-back wings with jet engines slung underneath. They get you where you're going and back. But after decades of research, something very different could be flying you on vacation by the late 2030s. From a report: Unconventional designs such as "blended-wing" shapes now used for some military jets, which combine the cabin and wings in one piece, have been floated for years as possibilities for passenger aircraft. Now the rise of climate-change concerns and emergence of new manufacturing materials have brought a rethink a step closer to reality, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration say. Just about every fuel-saving aerodynamic efficiency has been wrung out of existing aircraft. The next generation will need bolder designs to meet new environmental standards and airline economics, and that's forcing plane makers back to the drawing board.

The designs now exist mainly as artists' renderings, models and small-scale prototypes. That could be set to finally change. NASA in June launched a competition for U.S. companies to design and build a full-scale demonstrator. The rules require entrants to target planes around the size of a Boeing Co. 737 that can carry 150 passengers. The agency wants a prototype that could fly as early as 2027 and be ready for mass production in the next decade. The agency won't comment on the proposals submitted by the September deadline, but points to the recent history of alternative designs by researchers and aircraft makers. These include plane bodies that look like flying wings with passengers seated 10 or more across, compared with rows of six on a Boeing 737. Others have long, thin wings that would have to fold to fit into airport gates. In some designs, jets under the wing are replaced by rear-facing propellers mounted on the back of the plane.

NASA held a similar competition 10 years ago that focused more on the efficiency of the designs than the ability to make them commercially feasible. Now, it is focused on aircraft that are more efficient and can enter the fleet to make a difference to aviation industry emissions. "We've been working on advanced configurations for 20 years, but last time I went to the airport I didn't see any of them flying around," says Brent Cobleigh, NASA's flight demonstrations and capabilities project manager. Aircraft designers have coalesced around three main designs, which people involved in the latest contest said are expected to feature prominently in the entries. They carry exotic names -- such as transonic truss-braced wings, blended-wing bodies and double bubbles -- that reflect how far removed they are from most of the conventional planes that now carry commercial passengers worldwide. NASA earmarked only around $1 billion of its $26 billion fiscal 2023 budget request for aircraft-related activities, in line with past years, but officials say its work has influenced every part of planes now flying.

whoever57 writes: Would you trust your communications to a company that has links to a spyware company and claims that its address is a UPS store in Toronto? You probably already do. Washington Post reports: An offshore company that is trusted by the major web browsers and other tech companies to vouch for the legitimacy of websites has connections to contractors for U.S. intelligence agencies and law enforcement, according to security researchers, documents and interviews. Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari, nonprofit Firefox and others allow the company, TrustCor Systems, to act as what's known as a root certificate authority, a powerful spot in the internet's infrastructure that guarantees websites are not fake, guiding users to them seamlessly.

The company's Panamanian registration records show that it has the identical slate of officers, agents and partners as a spyware maker identified this year as an affiliate of Arizona-based Packet Forensics, which public contracting records and company documents show has sold communication interception services to U.S. government agencies for more than a decade. One of those TrustCor partners has the same name as a holding company managed by Raymond Saulino, who was quoted in a 2010 Wired article as a spokesman for Packet Forensics. Saulino also surfaced in 2021 as a contact for another company, Global Resource Systems, that caused speculation in the tech world when it briefly activated and ran more than 100 million previously dormant IP addresses assigned decades earlier to the Pentagon. The Pentagon reclaimed the digital territory months later, and it remains unclear what the brief transfer was about, but researchers said the activation of those IP addresses could have given the military access to a huge amount of internet traffic without revealing that the government was receiving it. whoever57 has also shared a unpaywalled link to the story.