schwit1 shared this report from the defense news site Task & Purpose:
The computer-based logistics system of the F-35 stealth fighter jet made by Lockheed Martin, which has been plagued by delays, will be replaced by another network made by the same company, a Pentagon official said on Tuesday.

The Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) was designed to underpin the F-35 fleet's daily operations, ranging from mission planning and flight scheduling to repairs and scheduled maintenance, as well as the tracking and ordering of parts... ALIS was blamed for delaying aircraft maintenance, one of the very things it was meant to facilitate.

"One Air Force unit estimated that it spent the equivalent of more than 45,000 hours per year performing additional tasks and manual workarounds because ALIS was not functioning as needed," the GAO said in a November report.

A new living substance can transform from a wet sand mixture into a solid brick, and even help to reproduce copies of itself. From a report: Researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder, used a type of photosynthetic bacteria that absorbs carbon dioxide, sunlight, and nutrients and produces calcium carbonate -- a rigid compound found in rocks, pearls, and seashells. They grew the bacteria in a warm mixture of salt water and other nutrients and combined it with sand and gelatin. The mixture was poured into a mold, and as it cooled the gelatin set, forming a "scaffold" able to support further bacterial growth. The bacteria deposited calcium carbonate throughout the scaffold, turning the soft sludge into a harder substance after about a day. The mixture looks green initially, but the color fades as it dries. The research was published in the journal Matter and was funded by DARPA, the US military's research arm.

According to contracts posted on a federal spending database, the U.S. military is working to develop facial recognition technology that reads the pattern of heat being emitted by faces in order to identify specific people. OneZero reports: Now, the military wants to develop a facial recognition system that analyzes infrared images to identify individuals. The Army Research Lab has previously publicized research in this area, but these contracts, which started at the end of September 2019 and run until 2021, indicate the technology is now being actively developed for use in the field. "Sensors should be demonstrable in environments such as targets seen through automotive windshield glass, targets that are backlit, and targets that are obscured due to light weather (e.g., fog)," the Department of Defense indicated when requesting proposals.

The DoD is calling for the technology to be incorporated into a device that is small enough to be carried by an individual. The device should be able to operate from a distance of 10 to 500 meters and match individuals against a watchlist. According to the details of the request, the Defense Forensics and Biometrics Agency is directly overseeing work on the technology. Two companies are working on this technology on behalf of the DFBA, Cyan Systems, Inc. and Polaris Sensor Technologies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: Amazon Web Services is expecting a decision next month from a U.S. court about whether the brakes will be slammed on the Pentagon's lucrative Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract awarded to Microsoft. The filing (PDF), on January 13, sets up the schedule for key dates including February 11, when AWS and Microsoft's lawyers have agreed to expect a court to decide on AWS's motion for a temporary restraining order. A preliminary injunction is also possibly on the cards.

The significance of February -- and the reason for the sped-up negotiated schedule -- is that three days before Valentine's, the $10 billion mega-contract is supposed to begin, and, as the filing notes, "the United States has previously advised AWS and the Court [it] will begin on February 11, 2020," reiterating that "the United States' consistent position that the services to be procured under the Contract are urgently needed in support of national security." Interestingly, the U.S. -- via the Department of Defense -- said in the document that in this specific "bid protest case, it does not intend to file an answer" to AWS's complaint. Microsoft and the U.S. government have agreed to file their motions to dismiss on January 24 -- the same date AWS is flinging out its "temporary restraining order and/or preliminary injunction" to pull the JEDI light saber away from Microsoft. Amazon's initial formal appeal of the decision pointed much of the blame at President Trump, who has been a public critic of Amazon.

"Should it get the nod, AWS's injunction will 'prevent the issuance of substantive task orders under the contract' despite the U.S.'s position that the services 'are urgently needed in support of national security,'" reports The Register.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The U.S. military is spending more than $4.5 million to develop facial recognition technology that reads the pattern of heat being emitted by faces in order to identify specific people. The technology would work in the dark and across long distances, according to contracts posted on a federal spending database. Facial recognition is already employed by the military, which uses the technology to identify individuals on the battlefield. But existing facial recognition technology typically relies on images generated by standard cameras, such as those found in iPhone or CCTV networks.

Now, the military wants to develop a facial recognition system that analyzes infrared images to identify individuals. The Army Research Lab has previously publicized research in this area, but these contracts, which started at the end of September 2019 and run until 2021, indicate the technology is now being actively developed for use in the field. "Sensors should be demonstrable in environments such as targets seen through automotive windshield glass, targets that are backlit, and targets that are obscured due to light weather (e.g., fog)," the Department of Defense indicated when requesting proposals.

Brian Krebs: Sources tell KrebsOnSecurity that Microsoft is slated to release a software update on Tuesday to fix an extraordinarily serious security vulnerability in a core cryptographic component present in all versions of Windows. Those sources say Microsoft has quietly shipped a patch for the bug to branches of the U.S. military and to other high-value customers/targets that manage key Internet infrastructure, and that those organizations have been asked to sign agreements preventing them from disclosing details of the flaw prior to Jan. 14, the first Patch Tuesday of 2020. According to sources, the vulnerability in question resides in a Windows component known as crypt32.dll, a Windows module that Microsoft says handles "certificate and cryptographic messaging functions in the CryptoAPI." The Microsoft CryptoAPI provides services that enable developers to secure Windows-based applications using cryptography, and includes functionality for encrypting and decrypting data using digital certificates. NSA said on Tuesday that it spotted the vulnerability and reported it to Microsoft. NSA said Microsoft will report later today that it has seen no active exploitation of this vulnerability. NSA's Director of Cybersecurity, Anne Neuberger, says the critical cryptographic vulnerability resides in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, and that the concern about this particular flaw is that it "makes trust vulnerable."

Attorney General William P. Barr declared on Monday that a deadly shooting last month at a naval air station in Pensacola, Fla., was an act of terrorism, and he asked Apple in an unusually high-profile request to provide access to two phones used by the gunman. From a report: Mr. Barr's appeal was an escalation of an ongoing fight between the Justice Department and Apple pitting personal privacy against public safety. "This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that the public be able to get access to digital evidence," Mr. Barr said, calling on Apple and other technology companies to find a solution and complaining that Apple has provided no "substantive assistance."

Apple has given investigators materials from the iCloud account of the gunman, Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi air force training with the American military, who killed three sailors and wounded eight others on Dec. 6. But the company has refused to help the F.B.I. open the phones themselves, which would undermine its claims that its phones are secure.

"On the surface, who could disagree with quashing the idea of supposed killer robots?" writes Slashdot reader Lasrick.

"Dr. Larry Lewis, who spearheaded the first data-based approach to protecting civilians in conflict, wants us to look a bit closer."

From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: The proponents of a UN ban are in some respects raising a false alarm. I should know. As a senior advisor for the State Department on civilian protection in the Obama administration, I was a member of the US delegation in the UN deliberations on lethal autonomous weapons systems... Country representatives have met every year since 2014 to discuss the future possibility of autonomous systems that could use lethal force. And talk of killer robots aside, several nations have mentioned their interest in using artificial intelligence in weapons to better protect civilians. A so-called smart weapon -- say a ground-launched, sensor-fused munition -- could more precisely and efficiently target enemy fighters and deactivate itself if it does not detect the intended target, thereby reducing the risks inherent in more intensive attacks like a traditional air bombardment.

I've worked for over a decade to help reduce civilian casualties in conflict, an effort sorely needed given the fact that most of those killed in war are civilians. I've looked, in great detail, at the possibility that automation in weapons systems could in fact protect civilians. Analyzing over 1,000 real-world incidents in which civilians were killed, I found that humans make mistakes (no surprise there) and that there are specific ways that AI could be used to help avoid them. There were two general kinds of mistakes: either military personnel missed indicators that civilians were present, or civilians were mistaken as combatants and attacked in that belief. Based on these patterns of harm from real world incidents, artificial intelligence could be used to help avert these mistakes...

Artificial intelligence may make weapons systems and the future of war relatively less risky for civilians than it is today. It is time to talk about that possibility.

"The Trump administration will make it more difficult to export artificial intelligence software as of next week, part of a bid to keep sensitive technologies out of the hands of rival powers like China," reports Reuters.

The Verge has more details: The ban, which comes into force on Monday, is the first to be applied under a 2018 law known as the Export Control Reform Act or ECRA. This requires the government to examine how it can restrict the export of "emerging" technologies "essential to the national security of the United States" -- including AI... When ECRA was announced in 2018, some in the tech industry feared it would harm the field of artificial intelligence, which benefits greatly from the exchange of research and commercial programs across borders. Although the U.S. is generally considered to be the world leader in AI, China is a strong second place and gaining fast. But the new export ban is extremely narrow. It applies only to software that uses neural networks (a key component in machine learning) to discover "points of interest" in geospatial imagery; things like houses or vehicles...

[S]uch software is of growing importance to military intelligence, too. The U.S., for example, is developing an AI analysis tool named Sentinel, which is supposed to highlight "anomalies" in satellite imagery. It might flag troop and missile movements, for example, or suggest areas that human analysts should examine in detail.
The rule only applies in America, reports Reuters, "but U.S. authorities could later submit it to international bodies to try to create a level playing field globally."

An anonymous reader quotes Space News: The SpaceX launch of Starlink satellites scheduled for January 6 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the Florida Space Coast will be first launch of 2020 and also the 45th Space Wing's inaugural launch as part of the U.S. Space Force.

The 45th Space Wing, headquartered at Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, oversees the preparation and launching of U.S. government and commercial satellites from Cape Canaveral and operates the Eastern Range. It is one of five Air Force space wings that have been assigned to the U.S. Space Force effective December 20, when President Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act that created the U.S. Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces. "I'm excited for the 45th Space Wing to be a part of the U.S. Space Force," wing commander Brig. Gen. Doug Schiess said in a statement Jan. 3.

The 45th Space Wing will continue to do what it has been doing and the transition to the Space Force will not change that, Schiess said. The details of how the U.S. Space Force will be structured and staffed will take at least 18 months to sort out... Air Force Space Command personnel have been assigned to the Space Force but still remain airmen within the U.S. Air Force...

"The effects the new Space Force will have on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and Patrick Air Force Base has not been announced yet, but continuing to successfully accomplish the mission without interruption is our top priority," Schiess said.

"Iranian officials are likely considering a cyber-attack against the U.S. in the wake of an airstrike that killed one of its top military officials," reports Bloomberg: In a tweet after the airstrike on Thursday, Christopher Krebs, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, repeated a warning from the summer about Iranian malicious cyber-attacks, and urged the public to brush up on Iranian tactics and to pay attention to critical systems, particularly industrial control infrastructure... John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc., said Iran has largely resisted carrying out attacks in the U.S. so far. But "given the gravity of this event, we are concerned any restraint they may have demonstrated could be replaced by a resolve to strike closer to home."

Iranian cyber-attacks have included U.S. universities and companies, operators of industrial control systems and banks. Iranian hackers tried to infiltrate the Trump campaign, and they have launched attacks against current and former U.S. government officials and journalists. The U.S., meanwhile, has employed cyberweapons to attack Iran's nuclear capabilities and computer systems used to plot attacks against oil tankers, according to the New York Times....

James Lewis, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, said Iranian retaliation may include the use of force, but the government is also likely asking hackers for a list of options. "Cyber-attacks may be tempting if they can find the right American target," Lewis said. "The Iranians are pretty capable and our defenses are uneven, so they could successfully attack poorly defensed targets in the U.S. There are thousands, but they would want something dramatic."
Mother Jones shares another perspective: There's little reason to think that Iran could pull off a truly spectacular attack, such as disabling major electric grids or other big utilities, said Robert M. Lee, an expert in industrial control systems security and the CEO of Dragos. "People should not be worried about large scale attacks and impacts that they can largely think about in movies and books like an electric grid going down." Instead, Iran might choose targets that are less prominent and less secure.

"The average citizen should not be concerned," he said, "but security teams at [U.S.] companies should be on a heightened sense of awareness."

"A new intercontinental weapon that can fly 27 times the speed of sound became operational Friday, Russia's defense minister reported to President Vladimir Putin," according to the Associated Press: Putin has described the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle as a technological breakthrough comparable to the 1957 Soviet launch of the first satellite. The new Russian weapon and a similar system being developed by China have troubled the United States, which has pondered defense strategies. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu informed Putin that the first missile unit equipped with the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle entered combat duty... [Putin] noted that Avangard is designed using new composite materials to withstand temperatures of up to 2,000 Celsius (3,632 Fahrenheit) resulting from a flight through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds... It carries a nuclear weapon of up to 2 megatons.

Putin has said Russia had to develop the Avangard and other prospective weapons systems because of U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system that he claimed could erode Russia's nuclear deterrent. Moscow has scoffed at U.S. claims that its missile shield isn't intended to counter Russia's massive missile arsenals... Earlier this week, Putin emphasized that Russia is the only country armed with hypersonic weapons. He noted that for the first time Russia is leading the world in developing an entire new class of weapons, unlike in the past when it was catching up with the U.S... The Defense Ministry said last month it demonstrated the Avangard to a team of U.S. inspectors as part of transparency measures under the New Start nuclear arms treaty with the U.S.

U.S. officials have talked about putting a layer of sensors in space to more quickly detect enemy missiles, particularly the hypersonic weapons. The administration also plans to study the idea of basing interceptors in space, so the U.S. can strike incoming enemy missiles during the first minutes of flight when the booster engines are still burning.

The Pentagon also has been working on the development of hypersonic weapons in recent years, and Defense Secretary Mark Esper said in August that he believes "it's probably a matter of a couple of years" before the U.S. has one.

sciencehabit quotes a report from Science Magazine: The U.S. military thought it had cleared the decks when, on 9 July 1962, it heaved a 1.4-megaton nuclear bomb some 400 kilometers into space: Orbiting satellites were safely out of range of the blast. But in the months that followed the test, called Starfish Prime, satellites began to wink out one by one, including the world's first communications satellite, Telstar. There was an unexpected aftereffect: High-energy electrons, shed by radioactive debris and trapped by Earth's magnetic field, were fritzing out the satellites' electronics and solar panels.

Starfish Prime and similar Soviet tests might be dismissed as Cold War misadventures, never to be repeated. After all, what nuclear power would want to pollute space with particles that could take out its own satellites, critical for communication, navigation, and surveillance? But military planners fear North Korea might be an exception: It has nuclear weapons but not a single functioning satellite among the thousands now in orbit. They quietly refer to a surprise orbital blast as a potential "Pearl Harbor of space." And so, without fanfare, defense scientists are trying to devise a cure. Three space experiments -- one now in orbit and two being readied for launch in 2021 -- aim to gather data on how to drain high-energy electrons out of the radiation belts. The process, called radiation belt remediation (RBR), already happens naturally, when radio waves from deep space or from Earth -- our own radio chatter, for example, or emissions from lightning -- knock electrons trapped in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts into the upper atmosphere, where they quickly shed energy, often triggering aurorae.

schwit1 writes: [ProPublica] outlines in detail the causes behind the crash in 2017 of the USS McCain and an oil-tanker that killed ten sailors and injured many others. It is a horror story of a bankrupt Navy upper management that seemed more in love with cool computer software and automation than making sure the Navy's ships and its crews can function efficiently and effectively in any situation. Moreover, the story suggests that this same upper management made lower level officers the scapegoats for its bad decisions, while skating free with no consequences. And worst of all, that same overly complex computer navigation system remains in place, with only superficial patches imposed in both its software and its user instructions.

This story however is hardly unique. It reflects the general and systemic failures of almost any project coming out of the upper managements of the entire federal government for the past three decades, a pattern of failure that partly explains why Donald Trump was elected, and why he is hated so thoroughly by so many in that federal workforce. He more than anyone in decades has been demanding from them quality work, and firing them when they fail to provide it.

A popular messaging app billed as a secure way to chat with friends and family is actually a spying tool used by the United Arab Emirates to track the activities of those who download it, The New York Times reported Sunday. From a report: The app, which debuted only a few months ago, has been downloaded millions of times around the world. The app is a mass surveillance tool, The Times reported, capable of monitoring every conversation, movement, relationship, appointment, sound and image of its users. The majority of the app's users are in the Emirates but recently surged in popularity in the US. An analysis and interviews with computer security experts suggest the company behind ToTok, Breej Holding, is a front for DarkMatter, an Abu Dhabi-based cyberintelligence and hacking firm that employs Emirati intelligence officials, former National Security Agency employees and former Israeli military intelligence operatives, The Times reported. The app was recently removed from the Apple and Google app stores, but it's still functional until users delete it from their device.

"Retired Lt. Gen. Steven L. Kwast says fantastic technology exists that could transport a human anywhere on earth within an hour," reports The Drive, in an article shared by schwit1: As has been common as of late, Lt. Gen Kwast cites rapidly growing Chinese military and technological advances as the reason why the United States must invest heavily in new space-based technologies. "We can say today we are dominant in space but the trend lines are what you have to look at and they will pass us in the next few years if we do not do something. They will win this race and then they will put roadblocks up to space," Kwast argues, "because once you get the high ground, that strategic high ground, it's curtains for anybody trying to get to that high ground behind them." Kwast claims China is already building a "Navy in space" complete with the space-based equivalents of "battleships and destroyers" which are "able to maneuver and kill and communicate with dominance, and we [the United States] are not." Kwast's speech centers on the thesis that the United States needs a Space Force in order to counter Chinese advances and win the competition over the economy of the future and, as an extension, who sets the values of the future...

Around the 12:00 mark in the speech, Kwast makes the somewhat bizarre claim that the U.S. currently possesses revolutionary technologies that could render current aerospace capabilities obsolete... "[T]echnology can be built today with technology that is not developmental to deliver any human being from any place on planet Earth to any other place in less than an hour...."

Kwast's comment is only one of several curious comments made by military leadership lately and they do seem to claim that we could be on the precipice of a great leap in transportation technology. We also don't know exactly where he is coming from on all this as it is not necessarily the direct wheelhouse of someone who was running the Air Force's training portfolio, although it does have overlaps...

Is all this setting the stage for a new space race that will benefit mankind by furthering scientific and technological development, or is it ushering in the conditions for the first great space war?

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Earlier this week the United States Navy banned the social media app TikTok from government-issued mobile devices, saying the popular short video app represented a "cybersecurity threat."

A bulletin issued by the Navy on Tuesday showed up on a Facebook page serving military members, saying users of government issued mobile devices who had TikTok and did not remove the app would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet.

The Navy would not describe in detail what dangers the app presents, but Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Uriah Orland said in a statement the order was part of an effort to "address existing and emerging threats...." The U.S. government has opened a national security review of the app's owner Beijing ByteDance Technology Co's $1 billion acquisition of U.S. social media app Musical.ly, Reuters first reported last month. Last month, U.S army cadets were instructed not to use TikTok, after Senator Chuck Schumer raised security concerns about the army using TikTok in their recruiting.

b-dayyy shared this article from Linux Security: The United States government's respect for and acceptance of open-source development has steadily grown stronger over the past decade, and the U.S. government is increasingly using open-source software as a way to roll out advanced, highly secure technology in an economical manner. On August 8, 2016, the White House CIO released a Federal Source Code Policy that calls for new software to be built, shared, and adapted using open-source methods to capitalize on code that is "secure, reliable, and effective in furthering our national objectives."

The United States Department of Defense recognizes the key benefits associated with open-source development and trusts Linux as its operating system. In fact, the U.S. Army is the single largest installed base for Red Hat Linux and the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine fleet runs on Linux, including their sonar systems. Moreover, the Department of Defense just recently enlisted Red Hat, Inc., the world's largest provider of open-source solutions, to help improve squadron operations and flight training.
In a comment on the original submission, long-time Slashdot reader bobs666 remembers setting up Minix 30 years ago "for running email for a part of the U.S. Army. It's too bad the stupid people made me stop working on the project."

But the world may be changing. The article notes that Linux has now already been certified to meet the three different security certifications required by the United States Department of Defense.

pgmrdlm tipped us off to an unprecedented scientific phenomenon. Forbes writes: Earth's magnetic north pole has been moving East at an unusually fast pace, heading from the Canadian Arctic toward Russia. The rapid change of the magnetic poles has caused concern over navigation, GPS systems, military operations, etc. The northern magnetic pole has been drifting toward Russia at a speed of 34 miles per year (55 kilometers per year) but has slowed recently to 25 miles per year (40 kilometers per year).
Popular Mechanics writes: The magnetic poles have drifted and entirely changed places dozens of times in Earth's history, but this time it seems to be happening very fast, and within a shorter overall time interval than it did in prehistory... [S]witches happened thousands or millions of years apart and took thousands of years for the poles to physically move enough to switch. This is the first time scientists are observing drifting magnetic field activity in real time and measuring the rate of change as well.

The BBC reports: President Donald Trump has officially funded a Pentagon force focused on warfare in space -- the U.S. Space Force.

The new military service, the first in more than 70 years, falls under the U.S. Air Force.

The funding allocation was confirmed on Friday when the president signed the $738bn (£567bn) annual U.S. military budget. The launch of the Space Force will be funded by an initial $40m for its first year.
Those figures indicate that Space Force will now receive $1 out of every $18,450 in the U.S. military budget -- or .0054 percent. Here's what that looks like as a pie chart.

Newsweek's report includes the president's remarks at the signing ceremony: "That is something really incredible. It's a big moment. That's a big moment, and we're all here for it. Space. Going to be a lot of things happening in space."

The president added: "Because space is the world's newest warfighting domain. Amid grave threats to our national security, American superiority in space is absolutely vital. And we're leading, but we're not leading by enough. But very shortly, we'll be leading by a lot."

As noted by the BBC, the department's mission is not intended to blast troops into space, but will focus on protecting American assets like satellites from hostile attacks. The creation of the Space Force comes as China and Russia are increasingly focusing on the skies above, it noted. The Space Force website says responsibilities include "developing military space professionals, acquiring military space systems, maturing the military doctrine for space power."
In response to the news, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted "Starfleet begins."