"A metallic NATO is starting to take shape," writes the senior metals columnist at Reuters, "though no-one is calling it that just yet." The Minerals Security Partnership is in theory open to all countries that are committed to "responsible critical mineral supply chains to support economic prosperity and climate objectives". But the coalition assembled by the United States is one of like-minded countries such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Germany with an Asian axis in the form of Japan and South Korea. [Also the European Commission, as well as Finland and Sweden.]

It is defined as much as anything by who is not on the invite list — China and Russia.

China's dominance of key enabling minerals such as lithium and rare earths is the single biggest reason why Western countries are looking to build their own supply chains. Russia, a major producer of nickel, aluminium and platinum group metals, is now also a highly problematic trading partner as its war in Ukraine that the Kremlin calls a "special military operation" grinds on. A previously highly globalised minerals supply network looks set to split into politically polarised spheres of influence, a tectonic realignment with far-reaching implications. The United States and Europe have realised that they can't build out purely domestic supply chains quickly enough to meet demand from the electric vehicle transition....

The process was already well underway before the U.S. State Department announced the formation of the Minerals Security Partnership on June 14. U.S. and Canadian officials have been working closely as Canada fleshes out a promised C$3.8 billion ($3.02 billion) package to boost production of lithium, copper and other strategic minerals. European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic has just been in Norway to seal "a strategic partnership" on battery technologies and critical raw materials.
The article points out America's Department of Defense is already investing $120 million in a new plant for heavy rare earths separation — and has chosen an Australian company as its partner.

Shortly thereafter the Defense Department noted an online disinformation campaign against its new partner (according to U.S.-based cybersecurity firm Mandiant), disinformation which Reuters describes as "a pro-China propaganda campaign" using fake social media accounts to try to stir up opposition.

A flight test of a hypersonic missile system in Hawaii ended in failure due to a problem that took place after ignition, the Department of Defense said, delivering a fresh blow to a program that has suffered stumbles. Bloomberg reports: It didn't provide further details of what took place in the Wednesday test, but said in a statement sent by email "the Department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s." [...] The trial marked the second unsuccessful test flight of the prototype weapon known as Conventional Prompt Strike. There was a booster failure in its first flight test in October, which prevented the missile from leaving the launch pad. The Conventional Prompt Strike weapon is envisioned to be installed on Zumwalt destroyers and Virginia-class submarines. "An anomaly occurred following ignition of the test asset," Pentagon spokesman Navy Lieutenant Commander Tim Gorman said in the statement. "Program officials have initiated a review to determine the cause to inform future tests." he said. "While the Department was unable to collect data on the entirety of the planned flight profile, the information gathered from this event will provide vital insights."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ProPublica: The day after Russia's February invasion of Ukraine, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner sent a letter (PDF) to Google warning it to be on alert for "exploitation of your platform by Russia and Russian-linked entities," and calling on the company to audit its advertising business's compliance with economic sanctions. But as recently as June 23, Google was sharing potentially sensitive user data with a sanctioned Russian ad tech company owned by Russia's largest state bank, according to a new report provided to ProPublica.

Google allowed RuTarget, a Russian company that helps brands and agencies buy digital ads, to access and store data about people browsing websites and apps in Ukraine and other parts of the world, according to research from digital ad analysis firm Adalytics. Adalytics identified close to 700 examples of RuTarget receiving user data from Google after the company was added to a U.S. Treasury list of sanctioned entities on Feb. 24. The data sharing between Google and RuTarget stopped four months later on June 23, the day ProPublica contacted Google about the activity.

RuTarget, which also operates under the name Segmento, is owned by Sberbank, a Russian state bank that the Treasury described as "uniquely important" to the country's economy when it hit the lender with initial sanctions. RuTarget was later listed in an April 6 Treasury announcement that imposed full blocking sanctions on Sberbank and other Russian entities and people. The sanctions mean U.S. individuals and entities are not supposed to conduct business with RuTarget or Sberbank. Of particular concern, the analysis showed that Google shared data with RuTarget about users browsing websites based in Ukraine. This means Google may have turned over such critical information as unique mobile phone IDs, IP addresses, location information and details about users' interests and online activity, data that U.S. senators and experts say could be used by Russian military and intelligence services to track people or zero in on locations of interest. Google spokesperson Michael Aciman told ProPublica that the company blocked RuTarget from using its ad products in March, and that RuTarget has not purchased ads directly via Google since then. "He acknowledged the Russian company was still receiving user and ad buying data from Google before being alerted by ProPublica and Adalytics," adds the report.

"Aciman said this action includes not only preventing RuTarget from further accessing user data, but from purchasing ads through third parties in Russia that may not be sanctioned. He declined to say whether RuTarget had purchased ads via Google systems using such third parties, and he did not comment on whether data about Ukrainians had been shared with RuTarget."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine is "the first full-scale battle in which traditional and cyberweapons have been used side by side," reports the New York Times. But the biggest surprise is that "many of the attacks were thwarted, or there was enough redundancy built into the Ukrainian networks that the efforts did little damage... more than two-thirds of them failed, echoing its poor performance on the physical battlefield."

Microsoft president Brad Smith says the ultimate result is Russia's attempted cyberatacks get underreported, according to the Times: [A study published by Microsoft Wednesday] indicated that Ukraine was well prepared to fend off cyberattacks, after having endured them for many years. That was at least in part because of a well-established system of warnings from private-sector companies, including Microsoft and Google, and preparations that included moving much of Ukraine's most important systems to the cloud, onto servers outside Ukraine....

In many instances, Russia coordinated its use of cyberweapons with conventional attacks, including taking down the computer network of a nuclear power plant before moving in its troops to take it over, Mr. Smith said. Microsoft officials declined to identify which plant Mr. Smith was referring to. While much of Russia's cyberactivity has focused on Ukraine, Microsoft has detected 128 network intrusions in 42 countries. Of the 29 percent of Russian attacks that have successfully penetrated a network, Microsoft concluded, only a quarter of those resulted in data being stolen. Outside Ukraine, Russia has concentrated its attacks on the United States, Poland and two aspiring members of NATO, Sweden and Finland...

But Microsoft, other technology companies and government officials have said that Russia has paired those infiltration attempts with a broad effort to deliver propaganda around the world. Microsoft tracked the growth in consumption of Russian propaganda in the United States in the first weeks of the year. It peaked at 82 percent right before the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, with 60 million to 80 million monthly page views. That figure, Microsoft said, rivaled page views on the biggest traditional media sites in the United States. One example Mr. Smith cited was that of Russian propaganda inside Russia pushing its citizens to get vaccinated, while its English-language messaging spread anti-vaccine content. Microsoft also tracked the rise in Russian propaganda in Canada in the weeks before a trucker convoy protesting vaccine mandates tried to shut down Ottawa, and that in New Zealand before protests there against public health measures meant to fight the pandemic.
Russians successfully "sabotaged a satellite communications network called Viasat in the opening days of the war," notes the Washington Post, "with the damage spilling over into other European countries. But Ukraine, working with private tech companies, Western intelligence and its own expert software engineers, has quickly fixed most of the damage..."

"The close partnerships that have emerged between U.S. technology companies and Western cybersecurity agencies is one of the unheralded stories of the war...." "Cyber responses must rely on greater public and private collaboration," argues Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, in a new study... published Wednesday on Microsoft's "lessons learned" from cyber conflict in Ukraine. A White House cyber official explains the new cooperative approach this way: "Where companies see destructive attacks, that has driven partnerships with the intelligence community and other government agencies to see how best we can share information to protect infrastructure around the world." The tech world's sympathies lie with the underdog, Ukraine. That applies to giant firms such as Microsoft and Google....

Ukraine's cybersecurity defense benefited from an early start. U.S. Cyber Command experts went to Ukraine months before the war started, according to its commander, Gen. Paul Nakasone. Microsoft and Google became involved even earlier. Microsoft began monitoring Russian phishing attacks against Ukrainian military networks in early 2021, and through the rest of last year observed increasingly aggressive hacks by six different attackers linked to Russia's three intelligence services, the GRU, SVR and FSB, according to a Microsoft report released in April. Microsoft has spent a total of $239 million on financial and technical assistance to Ukraine, a company official said....

Google, a part of Alphabet, has also helped Ukraine fend off threats. Back in 2014, prompted by Russia's use of DDOS ("distributed denial-of-service") malware in its seizure of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, Google began what it called "Project Shield." Software protected news sites, human rights groups and election sites against crippling DDOS floods of junk internet messages. Today, Project Shield is used by 200 sites in Ukraine and 2,300 others in 140 countries around the world, according to Jared Cohen, the chief executive of Google's Jigsaw unit.

Russia has levied dozens of cyber espionage campaigns in 42 countries since it invaded Ukraine in February, according to a new Microsoft report. From a report: The report says those efforts have targeted entities across six continents and primarily focused on NATO allies and groups supporting Ukraine. "The Russian invasion relies in part on a cyber strategy that includes at least three distinct and sometimes coordinated efforts -- destructive cyberattacks within Ukraine, network penetration and espionage outside Ukraine and cyber influence operations targeting people around the world," Microsoft President Brad Smith said in the report. The tech giant previously detailed Russian cyber operations against Ukraine itself during the invasion in April. Sixty-three percent of the observed Russian activity in the 42 countries beyond Ukraine targeted NATO members, according to the new report. The United States has been Russia's top target, but the company also noted a large amount of activity in Poland -- which borders Ukraine and has provided significant military and humanitarian assistance to the country -- as well as the Baltic states.

The Israeli Ministry of Defense plans to begin testing of a Medium Robotic Combat Vehicle (M-RCV) next year. New Atlas reports: Developed by the Ministry of Defense's Directorate of Defense Research and Development (DDR&D), the Tank and APC Directorate, and Israeli security industries, the robotic tank is based on a new robotic platform type BLR-2 made by Israeli firm BL. It features a 30-mm autonomous turret originally developed by the Tank and APC Directorate for the Eitan armored personnel carrier; the Elbit Iron Fist Active Protection System, which is a smaller, mountable version of the Iron Dome anti-projectile defense system; fire control and mission management systems; a robotic autonomous operations kit; and active and passive sensors for situational awareness.

In addition, the robotic vehicle carries a capsuled drone that it can deploy and retrieve for forward reconnaissance missions. It can also carry a variety of heavy loads, as well as an Israeli Aerospace Industries missile launcher and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Spike missiles. According to Elbit, the robot can operate in all weathers in a largely autonomous mode and can integrate with uncrewed battlefield arrays. Field tests in representative scenarios are scheduled to start in 2023. You can view the M-RCV in action here.

Unidentified operatives have been using the fitness tracking app Strava to spy on members of the Israeli military, tracking their movements across secret bases around the country and potentially observing them as they travel the world on official business. From a report: By placing fake running "segments" inside military bases, the operation -- the affiliation of which has not been uncovered -- was able to keep tabs on individuals who were exercising on the bases, even those who have applied the strongest possible account privacy settings. In one example seen by the Guardian, a user running on a top-secret base thought to have links to the Israeli nuclear programme could be tracked across other military bases and to a foreign country.

The surveillance campaign was discovered by the Israeli open-source intelligence outfit FakeReporter. The group's executive director, Achiya Schatz, said: "We contacted the Israeli security forces as soon as we became aware of this security breach. After receiving approval from the security forces to proceed, FakeReporter contacted Strava, and they formed a senior team to address the issue." Strava's tracking tools are designed to allow anyone to define and compete over "segments," short sections of a run or bike ride that may be regularly raced over, like a long uphill climb on a popular cycling route or a single circuit of a park. Users can define a segment after uploading it from the Strava app, but can also upload GPS recordings from other products or services.

Newsweek reports: Artificial intelligence has become one of Ukraine's most "effective tools" in identifying potential saboteurs amid the ongoing war with Russia, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The ministry issued a report Wednesday on law enforcement's anti-sabotage activities aimed at stopping people in Ukraine who may compromise the counteroffensive or aid Russia in its assault.

Officers have been using software on tablets to check if a person they view as "suspicious" is already listed in databases, including a police database of about 2 million people suspected of holding positions in paramilitary units from the far-right faction known as the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR)... The ministry said that Ukrainian police have been fighting against such saboteurs ever since Russia invaded Ukraine. "More than 123 counter-sabotage groups were set up, and at least 1,500 people were involved," First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Yevgeny Yenin said in a statement, according to an English translation. "And the result was not long in coming: More than 800 people suspected of sabotage and intelligence activities were detained and handed over to the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) for investigation."

The report, citing Yenin, said that the police database on people with suspected ties to the LDPR alone contains a "huge amount" of operational information that law enforcement and partners have compiled. This includes more than 10 billion photos, it said...

Russia has also reportedly contended with sabotage from supporters of Ukraine within its borders.

America's federal agents "have begun questioning U.S. technology companies on how their computer chips ended up in Russian military equipment recovered in Ukraine," reports the Washington Post: Commerce Department agents who enforce export controls are conducting the inquiries together with the FBI, paying joint visits to companies to ask about Western chips and components found in Russian radar systems, drones, tanks, ground-control equipment and littoral ships, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive investigations. "Our goal is to actually try to track that back, all the way back to the U.S. supplier" to determine "how did it find its way into that weapons system," one Commerce Department official said of the probes....

It isn't clear which specific components are being probed. But investigators from a variety of countries have identified Western electronics in Russian weaponry found in Ukraine. Many of those components appear to have been manufactured years ago, before the United States tightened export restrictions after Russia seized Crimea in 2014. But others were manufactured as recently as 2020, according to Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a research group in London that has examined some of the parts....

CAR last month sent investigators to Ukraine to examine Russian weaponry and communications equipment, and reported finding components from 70 companies based in the United States and Europe. They found the parts in military radios, airborne defense systems and in remnants of cruise missiles that the Ukrainians recovered in various towns and villages, Damien Spleeters, one of the CAR investigators, said in an interview.
An associate professor of electrical/computer engineering at Purdue tells the Post "Most of the items they are listing are available through any commercial computer parts supplier or digital parts supplier."

But the Post spoke to a lawyer representing one of the contacted technology companies. "Among the questions federal agents are asking: whether tech companies sold their products to a specific list of companies, including middlemen, that may have been involved in the supply chain."

Jakub Kaminski is a robotics engineering graduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. With some volunteers he spent two months designing the perfect tourniquet for the battlefields of Ukraine, designed meet the highest medical standards — and then uploaded it to 3DPrintingForUkraine.com.

Now in less than 8 weeks "around 120 individuals and companies worldwide with 3D printers have accessed the design," reports the Washington Post. [Alternate URL here] "Together, they have made roughly 5,000 reusable tourniquets that are bound for Ukraine, where they will be stitched and sent off to the battlefield, Kaminski said..." Using digital files, people are designing supplies such as bandages, tourniquets, splints and add-ons to AK-47 guns.... [In February, as Russia began its invasion] people in the 3D-printing community talked with Ukrainian military officials, hospital administrators and charity organizations, trying to gauge what they could print quickly that would be most helpful. Tourniquets and bandages were repeated requests. Mykhailo Shulhan, the chief operating officer of a Ukrainian 3D-printing company in Lviv, said that as soon as the invasion began, he started researching how 3D printers helped in other conflicts....

These days, his company, 3D Tech Addtive, develops and prints an array of weapons accessories: AK-47 holsters so soldiers have a way to rest their guns; bullet magazines since empty cartridges often get thrown away instead of reused; carrying bags for grenades; and most recently, anti-reflective lenses for sniper scopes to reduce glare and prevent Ukrainian snipers from being seen. (All together, they have provided over 5,000 components to the front lines, Shulhan estimated....)

While most 3D printers create supplies to stop death or ease fighting conditions, others are focusing on rehabilitating soldiers. Brett Carey, a physical therapist in Hawaii, designs 3D printed splints that can be sent to fighters... Carey has created two digital designs for splints that have been uploaded online and 3D printed over 1,500 times. If injuries are advanced, he has people send him images of their injuries using EM3D — a 3D imaging app — which allows him to make a custom made splint which is then shipped to Ukraine...
The Post also got this quote from the robotics engineering student whose team designed the tourniquets.

"It's a beautiful thing," he said. "If you make people in Ukraine feel better, and enable people to help. ... This is something really special."

Researchers have found that being outside drastically reduces the risk of developing short-sightedness. From a report: In the early 1980s Taiwan's army realised it had a problem. More and more of its conscripts seemed to be short-sighted, meaning they needed glasses to focus on distant objects. "They were worried that if the worst happened [ie, an attack by China] their troops would be fighting at a disadvantage," says Ian Morgan, who studies myopia at Australian National University, in Canberra. An island-wide study in 1983 confirmed that around 70% of Taiwanese school leavers needed glasses or contact lenses to see properly. These days, that number is above 80%. But happily for Taiwan's generals, the military disparity has disappeared. Over the past few decades myopia rates have soared across East Asia (see chart 1 in the linked story). In the 1960s around 20-30% of Chinese school-leavers were short-sighted. These days they are just as myopic as their cousins across the straits, with rates in some parts of China running at over 80%.

Elsewhere on the continent things are even worse. One study of male high-school leavers in Seoul found 97% were short-sighted. Hong Kong and Singapore are not far behind. And although the problem is worst in East Asia, it is not unique to it. Reliable numbers for America and Europe are harder to come by. But one review article, published in 2015, claimed a European rate of between 20% and 40% -- an order of magnitude higher than that which people working in the field think is the "natural," background rate. For most of those affected, myopia is a lifelong, expensive nuisance. But severe myopia can lead to untreatable vision loss, says Annegret Dahlmann-Noor, a consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital, in London. A paper published in 2019 concluded that each one-dioptre worsening in myopia was associated with a 67% increase in prevalence of myopic maculopathy, an untreatable condition that causes blindness. (A dioptre is a measure of a lens's focusing power.) In some parts of East Asia, 20% of young people have severe myopia, defined as -6 dioptres or worse (see chart 2 in linked story). "This is storing up a big problem for the coming decades," says Kathryn Rose, head of orthoptics at the University of Technology, Sydney.

In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the world appears to be at an inflection point. Foreign Affairs: Business leaders have declared the acceleration of deglobalization and sounded the alarm about a new period of stagflation. Academics have decried the return of conquest and hailed the renewal of transatlantic ties. And countries are rethinking almost every aspect of their foreign policies, including trade, defense spending, and military alliances. These dramatic shifts have overshadowed another profound transformation in the global energy system. For the last two decades, the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions has gradually reshaped the global energy order. Now, as a result of the war in Ukraine, energy security has returned to the fore, joining climate change as a top concern for policymakers. Together, these dual priorities are poised to reshape national energy planning, energy trade flows, and the broader global economy. Countries will increasingly look inward, prioritizing domestic energy production and regional cooperation even as they seek to transition to net-zero carbon emissions. If countries retreat into strategic energy blocs, a multidecade trend toward more energy interconnectedness risks giving way to an age of energy fragmentation.

But in addition to economic nationalism and deglobalization, the coming energy order will be defined by something that few analysts have fully appreciated: government intervention in the energy sector on a scale not seen in recent memory. After four decades during which they generally sought to curb their activity in energy markets, Western governments are now recognizing the need to play a more expansive role in everything from building (and retiring) fossil fuel infrastructure to influencing where private companies buy and sell energy to limiting emissions through carbon pricing, subsidies, mandates, and standards. This shift is bound to invite comparisons to the 1970s, when excessive government intervention in energy markets exacerbated repeated energy crises. The dawning era of government intervention won't be a bad thing, however, if managed correctly. Appropriately limited and tailored to address specific market failures, it can forestall the worst effects of climate change, mitigate many energy security risks, and help manage the biggest geopolitical challenges of the coming energy transition. The current energy crisis has refocused the world's attention on geopolitical energy risks, forcing a reckoning between tomorrow's climate ambitions and today's energy needs and offering a preview of the tumultuous era ahead. How governments respond to these challenges, brought into sharp relief by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, will shape the new energy order for decades to come.

"On Ukraine's battlefields, the simple act of powering up a cellphone can beckon a rain of deathly skyfall," reports the Associated Press. "Artillery radar and remote controls for unmanned aerial vehicles may also invite fiery shrapnel showers."

And the same technology can also be used to target navigation, guidance, and communications systems "to blind and deceive the enemy." This is electronic warfare, a critical but largely invisible aspect of Russia's war against Ukraine. Military commanders largely shun discussing it, fearing they'll jeopardize operations by revealing secrets.... It is used against artillery, fighter jets, cruise missiles, drones and more. Militaries also use it to protect their forces.

It's an area where Russia was thought to have a clear advantage going into the war. Yet, for reasons not entirely clear, its much-touted electronic warfare prowess was barely seen in the war's early stages in the chaotic failure to seize the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. [A former U.S. Army commander tells the AP "What we're learning now is that the Russians eventually turned it off because it was interfering with their own communications so much."] It has become far more of a factor in fierce fighting in eastern Ukraine, where shorter, easier-to-defend supply lines let Russia move electronic warfare gear closer to the battlefield.

"They are jamming everything their systems can reach," said an official of Aerorozvidka, a reconnaissance team of Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle tinkerers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of safety concerns. "We can't say they dominate, but they hinder us greatly." A Ukrainian intelligence official called the Russian threat "pretty severe" when it comes to disrupting reconnaissance efforts and commanders' communications with troops. Russian jamming of GPS receivers on drones that Ukraine uses to locate the enemy and direct artillery fire is particularly intense "on the line of contact," he said.
Later the article says Ukraine's Aerorozvidka has also modified camera-equipped drones "to pinpoint enemy positions and drop mortars and grenades. Hacking is also used to poison or disable enemy electronics and collect intelligence."

So far Ukraine has captured "captured important pieces of hardware — a significant intelligence coup — and destroyed at least two multi-vehicle mobile electronic warfare units." They've been aided by technology and intelligence from NATO members (including from satellites and surveillance aircraft). But the article also calls Elon Musk's Starlink "a proven asset." Its more than 2,200 low-orbiting satellites provide broadband internet to more than 150,000 Ukrainian ground stations. Severing those connections is a challenge for Russia. It is far more difficult to jam low-earth orbiting satellites than geostationary ones.

Musk has won plaudits from the Pentagon for at least temporarily defeating Russian jamming of Ukrainian satellite uplinks with a quick software fix. But he has warned Ukrainians to keep those terminals powered down when possible — they are vulnerable to geolocation — and recently worried on Twitter about redoubled Russian interference efforts.
The article points out that to "stay nimble," Ukraine is also using cutting-edge technologies including software-defined radio and 3D printing.

schwit1 shares a report from Task & Purpose: A fan of the popular mechanized combat simulator 'War Thunder' shared the specs of China's Type 99 Main Battle Tank online in order to win an argument over the game. [...] The latest incident, first reported by the OSINTtechnical Twitter account, involves information in Mandarin on the penetrator section of a Chinese tank round along with a technical diagram. While many of the original images have been taken down, they were essentially the schematics for a Chinese tank munition, presumably revealed to the world so a video game could more accurately depict what would happen if a Chinese tank and an American tank -- or British, French, Russian, German or Israeli tank -- met in combat. And this isn't the first time these forums have become an outlet for technical leaks. [...]

The most recent leak, the latest leak, from someone with access to the latest technical manuals from China's People's Liberation Army, occurred because a user wanted the game's Chinese battle tanks to have better in-game stats. While most of the information about the Chinese tank round was already known, it was still apparently more important for one gamer to prove another gamer wrong on a message board than it was to consider the implications of publishing the technical details of military munitions online.

The video game developer, Gaijin Entertainment, banned the user, telling Kotaku that, "Our community managers immediately banned the user and deleted his post, as the information on this particular shell is still classified in China. Publishing classified information on any vehicle of any nation at War Thunder forums is clearly prohibited, and the game developers never use it in their work."

U.S. Cyber Command Director Gen. Paul Nakasone confirmed for the first time that the U.S. had conducted offensive cyber operations in support of Ukraine. From a report: "We've conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum: offensive, defensive, [and] information operations," Nakasone said in an interview Wednesday with Sky News, a British television news channel. Although the general did not provide specifics, he said the operations were lawful and conducted with civilian oversight of the military. "My job is to provide a series of options to the secretary of Defense and the president, and so that's what I do," he told Sky News. Nakasone previously said his agency deployed a "hunt forward" team in December to help Ukraine shore up its cyber defenses and networks against active threats. But his latest remarks appear to be the first time that a U.S. official said publicly that the U.S. has been involved in offensive cyber operations in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. — a federal holiday honoring military personnel who died serving their country.

After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, 389 unidentified sailors had been interred in a volcanic crater in Honolulu officially designated as the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. After more than 70 years, the U.S government's Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began the "USS Oklahoma Project." It continued its work for five years, eventually identifying 355 of the 389 unknown sailors.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that "After more than 80 years gone, Paul Boemer finally returned from Hawaii."

"And Vince Boemer — who gently accepted the folded American flag that had covered his brother's casket — was happy to welcome him back." "He was a good man," Boemer said. "He was a good older brother."

Earlier this month, Paul Boemer was laid to rest at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery, in a ceremony scored by the playing of taps and a 21-gun salute. Family, friends, a Navy honor guard in dress whites and several dozen Freedom Rider veterans stood with reverence on a sunny, humid St. Louis day.

"It's a great honor to be part of this," said Vince Boemer, who soon will turn 98. "It's wonderful to see the U.S. government go to these lengths to honor its veterans."

To be sure, Paul Boemer did not plan to be gone so long when he enlisted in the Navy in late 1938. After growing up in south St. Louis, the eighth of 10 children, and graduating from Cleveland High School, the lanky 18-year-old decided on a stint in the military.

He completed basic training, and the Navy assigned the new coxswain — a sailor who helps steer a ship — to the USS Oklahoma. So Boemer boarded a troop transport in Norfolk, Virginia, and sailed to the ship's home port, Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

That's where Boemer was stationed in 1939 — and on Dec. 7, 1941.

On that day, Japan launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet; the USS Oklahoma was struck by two torpedoes. The battleship quickly capsized, claiming the lives of 429 crewmen.

Paul Boemer was a month shy of turning 22.

In all, 2,403 U.S. personnel died that Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor and 19 vessels were destroyed or damaged.

But because of "these lengths" taken by the U.S. government, Vince Boemer finally got to see his big brother buried in his hometown.
Thank you for your service.

"Ukrainian fighters are using electric bikes in the battle against Russia," reports the Washington Post, "mostly in support of reconnaissance missions, demining operations and medical deliveries, according to one of the Ukrainian e-bike makers involved."

"They've reportedly also been used for carrying out sniper attacks." The bikes have a top speed of 55 miles per hour and are relatively silent — helping their riders evade Russian fire.

Ukrainian e-bike firm Eleek initially gave a few bikes to the military when the war began, according to manager Roman Kulchytskyi. Soon after, they began to mass-produce bikes — kitted out in military green, with a small Ukrainian flag on the rear wheel — for Ukraine's fighters.... Working from a bomb shelter, Eleek began making a power bank based on lithium-ion battery cells it had left in stock. After struggling for parts, it turned to electronic cigarettes — launching a social media campaign to get people to send in their devices....

The company added footrests for passengers, improved the charging time, installed a battery control system and included a 220V output that allows soldiers to charge gadgets and can help power Starlink satellite Internet terminals, Kulchytskyi said.... Another advantage of the bikes is that they may not be visible on thermal imaging systems, which are used to detect differences in temperature and help militaries pinpoint potential targets. That's because the electric motor doesn't heat up like an internal combustion engine, Kulchytskyi said.

Daniel Tonkopi, founder of e-bike company Delfast, wrote on Facebook this month that his California-based firm has been donating electric bikes to the Ukrainian army since the war broke out. He included pictures of the bikes carrying antitank weapons and said he had received feedback from the military that they planned to use the bikes to target Russian armored vehicles. During one recent mission, they recounted to him that several vehicles came back with holes but that the riders were intact.... The company is donating 5 percent of all sales to fund humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
The article notes electric bikes are also being tested by Asutralia's military and New Zealand's Air Force.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: China christened a remarkable new 290-foot ship last week -- the world's first semi-autonomous drone carrier. It'll carry, launch, recover and co-ordinate the actions of more than 50 other autonomous aerial, surface and underwater vehicles. The Huangpu Wenchong Shipyard began construction on the Zhu Hai Yun last July in Guangzhou. According to the South China Morning Post, it's the first carrier of its kind, a self-contained autonomous platform that will roll out with everything necessary to perform a fully integrated operation including drone aircraft, boats and submersibles. [...] Zhu Hai Yun will run on remote control until it's out in the open water, and then its self-driving systems will take over to execute whatever mission it's running.

It's kitted out with everything it needs to deploy its own boats, subs and aircraft, communicate with them, and run co-ordinated missions, including conducting "task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional views of specific targets," according to the shipbuilding company. The aerial drones can land back on its deck, and it stands ready to retrieve the boats and subs once they've made their rounds. While it's mainly pitched as an ocean research platform, the SCMP also reports that it has "military capability to intercept and expel invasive targets," a capability at the forefront of many autonomous marine projects. "Please note that Beijing went from laying down a new class of ship to christening in less than a year," adds the reader.

The Drive's Adam Kehoe noticed something during this week's UFO hearings in the U.S. Congress. "After intense public speculation, stacks of official documents obtained via the Freedom Of Information Act, ambiguous statements from top officials, and an avalanche of media attention, it has now been made clear that the mysterious swarming of U.S. Navy ships off the Southern California coast in 2019 was caused by drones, not otherworldly UFOs or other mysterious craft.

"Raising even more questions, a similar drone swarm event has occurred off another coast, as well." These revelations came from top Department of Defense officials during a recent and much-anticipated house hearing on UFOs, which you can read all about here.

The strange series of events in question unfolded around California's Channel Islands in July of 2019. On multiple evenings, swarms of unidentified drones were spotted operating around U.S. Navy vessels. In numerous instances, the drones flew within close proximity to ships, even crossing directly over their decks. The behavior provoked defensive reactions from the ships, including the deployment of emergency security teams... Deck logs demonstrate that the Navy appears to have drilled and implemented a variety of counter-drone techniques in response to these incidents. This eventually included the deployment of Northrop Grumman's Drone Restricted Access Using Known EW (DRAKE) platform. The DRAKE system is a man-portable backpack that allows sailors to use radio frequency signals to interrupt the control links of drones. The DRAKE system appears to have been actually deployed in one of the incidents....

It is entirely unclear where the drones were operating from, how they were controlled, or who was controlling them. Still, the Navy could identify the objects as drones without those questions being fully answered at this time.... The Department of Defense's open acknowledgment of these drone swarm events just off U.S. shores shows that the threat is not theoretical. It is also not a future threat. Significant drone swarm events have occurred in the last three years, unknown to the public, and evidently unresolved by defense authorities. Judging by what is known to date about the 2019 incident, it is clear that the United States is not well-positioned to detect, identify and neutralize such threats. It remains to be seen what level of priority these issues will receive by lawmakers in relation to more speculative questions surrounding UAP.

If anything else, top confirmation that adversaries are operating swarms among America's most powerful weapons in training areas where their most sensitive capabilities are put to use should make national headlines, but because it was buried in sensationalism around UFOs, it clearly did not.

Thelasko shares a report from the BBC: Yury Borisov, the deputy prime minister in charge of military development, told Russian TV that a laser prototype called Zadira was being deployed in Ukraine and had burned up a Ukrainian drone within five seconds at a distance of 5km (three miles). [...] Little is known about the Zadira laser program, but in 2017 Russian media said state nuclear corporation Rosatom had helped develop it as part of a program to create weapons based on new physical principles, news agency Reuters reported. [...] However, an official with the US Department of Defense said he had not seen "anything to corroborate reports of lasers being used" in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mocked the Russian claim, comparing it to the so-called "wonder weapons" that Nazi Germany claimed to be developing during World War Two. "The clearer it became that they had no chance in the war, the more propaganda there was about an amazing weapon that would be so powerful as to ensure a turning point," said Zelensky in a video address. "And so we see that in the third month of a full-scale war, Russia is trying to find its 'wonder weapon'... this all clearly shows the complete failure of the mission."

There is at least one country which has developed a laser weapon though, notes the BBC. Earlier this year, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett unveiled prototype laser-based interceptors that would use lasers to super-heat incoming drones or rockets.

"Within a year already the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will bring into action a laser-based interception system, first experimentally, and later operationally, first in the south, then in other places," he said in a speech to Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies. "And this will enable us, as the years advance, to surround Israel with a wall of lasers which will protect us from missiles, rockets, UAVs and other threats."

The U.S. Navy also deployed the world's first active laser weapon in the Persona Gulf in 2017. "It operates in an invisible part of the electromagnetic spectrum so you don't see the beam, it doesn't make any sound, it's completely silent and it's incredibly effective at what it does," said Lt. Cale Hughes, laser weapons system officer, at the time.