More Robots

South Korean Navy robot pilot PIBOT

Defence Blog reports:

PIBOT wasn’t designed with ships in mind. The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST, built it as a life-sized humanoid pilot, roughly 5 feet 3 inches tall and 143 pounds, able to climb into an ordinary aircraft cockpit and fly it using the exact same switches, yokes and throttles a human pilot would use, with zero modification to the plane itself. That’s the entire point of the design, according to the KAIST team led by professor David Shim: rather than building a new autopilot system for every aircraft type, you build a robot that can operate whatever cockpit is already sitting in front of it.

Saildrone

Saildrone Surveyor USV (unmanned surface vehicle) armed with Lockheed Martin JAGM (Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles) Missiles

First I have heard about Saildrone. Apparently it is an unmanned vessel that moves about using the wind on that big vane sticking out of the deck. Defence Blog has the story.

What's Old is New Again

New Acoustic Drone Detector

Another chapter in the drone wars.

Soldiers Operating an Acoustic Locator in 1940

Tactical Burger King

The Economics Of A Tactical Burger King
Micro

Best quote: "The Whopper is now a semiofficial piece of military equipment."

I suspect that half of our economy is franchised businesses. Everywhere you go, you see the a new random arrangement of the same businesses. I guess it's good. People have jobs, which means they are getting paid,  and that's good. Some of them even make real money. Okay, probably only the managers. But they are businesses which means they wouldn't be there if they didn't have any customers.

And the food isn't that unhealthy, I mean look at a whopper - it practically includes a small salad. Cheeseburgers might be my favorite food. Mmm, maybe pizza. No, definitely burgers. Unless there is cake and ice cream.

Russians get Right to Bear Arms

Pischal Counter-UAV Gun

Not really for the average slob, it essentially enables private armies, as long as they are loyal to the regime. Of course they are going to be loyal. You aren't going to let a rebel force raise an army, are you?

From Meduza, 

Russia has authorized private companies to purchase heavy weapons and equipment to defend against drone attacks, including anti-aircraft artillery systems, gun turrets, radar systems, and electronic warfare systems, the Russian business outlet RBC reported, citing sources.

Previously, businesses were limited to what were described as “passive safeguards for facilities” for their security personnel, including small arms.

Authorities expect the policy, adopted under new regulations, to speed up the supply of weapons and equipment to mobile fire groups — units formed from reservists, volunteers, and employees of private enterprises to protect civilian infrastructure from drones.

One of RBC’s sources said such groups “demonstrate high effectiveness in intercepting fixed-wing drones.”

Ratt Anti-UAV System Exterior

Ratt Anti-UAV System Interior

About Meduza:

Meduza is the world’s largest independent Russian media outlet. Completely outlawed by the Russian state, we operate from abroad to deliver news that censors can’t stop to millions of readers inside Russia and around the globe. You can read our reporting in both Russian and English. 

Drone Killer from the Giant's Kitchen

ThinKom Anti-Drone Microwave Weapon

It doesn't disrupt communications, it fries the target drone's electronics. It's a mechanical phased array powered by vacuum tubes. Don't know how much power it packs, but you probably don't want to be standing down range. Defence Blog has the story.

Compact Nuclear Reactor

Loading a Valar Atomics Compact Nuclear Reactor onto a C-17 Aircraft

Defence Blog reports:

The United States Department of War and the Department of Energy transported a next-generation nuclear reactor aboard a C-17 military aircraft on Feb. 15, 2026, from March Air Reserve Base in California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah for testing under a federal nuclear modernization initiative.

'Compact' is a relative term. 

Squire autonomous seaglider drone

Squire autonomous seaglider. (REGENT Defense pic)

Funny looking bird. Eight electric motor driven propellers, flying boat hull, gull wings, wing tip sponsons. Defense Blog has the story.

Drone Me

Three drone stories from Defence Blog:

Israeli Aero-Sentinel drone being sold to Kazakhstan

V-BAT drone from Shield AI in India

US ULTRA autonomous drone transport vehicle

This drone business is just nuts. How nuts? Lets' ask Google:

How many military drones have been made each year since 2000?

The production of military drones has increased exponentially since 2000, evolving from limited, high-cost surveillance tools to hundreds of thousands of low-cost, AI-enabled systems annually by 2025. While precise, aggregate annual numbers for all countries are rarely disclosed, industry data indicates a shift from a few hundred units in the early 2000s to a market expected to see over 596,000 units produced in 2025. 

At this rate I except to see million drones to be produced this year.

The Last Elephant Cage

The Last Elephant Cage
National Security Agency

Previous posts about these antennas:

• Luneburg Lens
• The Honourable Schoolboy by John LeCarre

Wikipedia has a page about these things.

Death Dealer

A statue of the III Corps Phantom Warrior, which was modeled after Frank Frazetta's iconic 1973 painting, "Death Dealer", stands outside the III Corps headquarters building on a windy afternoon, Feb. 26, 2013. Frazetta's signature can be found on the base, between the horse's feet. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Ken Scar, 7th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment)

When I first saw this on Riders of Skaith I wondered if it was real or some AI fantasy. Seems to be real, which is very cool.

AIRCAT

AIRCAT 35 Crewliner
AIRCAT VESSELS

AIRCAT is a French outfit. This boat is pretty substantial: 115 feet long and 45 feet wide. Power comes from four 2000 HP engines.

I got onto this from this photo on Liberalguy:

Eureka’s AIRCAT Bengal

MarineLink has a story about the militarized version.

AIRCAT cutaway drawing

I would have thought you would need big air intakes, but apparently they are able to draw in enough air through an opening in the bow.

AIRCAT and FPSO (Floating production storage and offloading)

That FPSO is truly huge. The oil business is truly nuts.

Starship Troopers

The US Special Forces Extreme Techniques to Perform Halo Jumps

Reading Starship Troopers (a zillion years ago) and we've got soldiers dropping from orbit. I went looking for pictures of such, but bupkis. Well, how about HALO jumps? They're not from orbit, but they can be jumping from 8 miles up, which has so little air you might as well be in space, and I found this image.

Why am I thinking about Starship Troopers? Because the Air Force is building a new missile base on Johnston Island:

A mockup of the Rocket Cargo Vanguard program. © Air Force art.

Remember back at the beginning, back before the first Starship prototype was even built, when Elon was talking about how the Starship was going to revolutionize international travel? It was kind of a hair-brained scheme, but evidently someone at the Air Force was paying attention, because they realized it could be used to transport cargo as well as people. Any kind of commercial shipping isn't going to use a rocket, they use cargo ships because pound for pound, they are much cheaper. But if you have an emergency somewhere and you need to get a bunch of stuff somewhere quickly, a rocket is just the ticket.

But the Starship is designed to carry people. It's going to be a little tougher on people than an airliner, but soldiers are pretty tough, so it shouldn't be a problem for them.

Landing in remote regions occupied by enemy forces might be a problem though, so we might want to drop our troops in, like paratroopers. We don't have a technique for doing that from orbit, at least not yet, but Starship can manage reentry, and at some point it's velocity will be low enough that troops could safely exit the vehicle, so we would have Starship paratroops, i.e. Starship Troopers.

It's going to be a few years before we get to this point, but it's undoubtedly coming.

Johnston Atoll is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean:

Johnston Atoll

Johnston Island inside Johnston Atoll

Johnston Island

Previous post on the subject here.

Johnny Harris tipped me off.

Hercules in Lithuania

M88 Hercules

Three days ago four US soldiers went missing in Lithuania. They were operating an M88 Hercules  recovery vehicle (i.e. a tow truck). The vehicle was found sunk in a swamp, but no sign of the soldiers. 

In this image provided by the U.S. Army, Lithuanian Army and emergency services personnel during recovery efforts for a U.S. Army M88 Hercules submerged in a swamp near a training area near Pabadre, Lithuania, Thursday, March 27, 2025. (Christopher Saunders/U.S. Army via AP)

Also from CT :

The soldiers' armored vehicle was discovered submerged in 15 feet of water and so far teams have been unable to get inside or pull it out.

Recovery of the recovery vehicle is underway, but it looks to be a long, hard slog to pull it out of the swamp. Hopefully the soldiers will soon be found alive and well. Right now it's anybody's guess as to where they have got to.

Pabadre, Lithuania

Pabadre is about three miles from the border with Belarus.

Air Tractor Goes to War

Defence Blog reports: US Air Force introduces Skyraider II attack aircraft

I look at the picture and say - that's an Air Tractor, and sure enough that's what it is, er, was.

OA-1K Sky Warden

OA-1K Sky Warden airplane

OA-1K Sky Warden light attack aircraft - L3Harris

$3 billion for 75 aircraft comes out to $40 million each which seems a bit steep to me considering an F-35, a vastly more sophisticated aircraft, costs about twice that much.

Wikipedia article here.

Previous posts about the Air Tractor here, here and here.

Papua New Guinea

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Pallavia Rao, locates the known overseas bases of the American military, categorized by who controls the base.*

Graphics from a story in Zerohedge about U. S. Military Bases Worldwide. There is also a list of all the bases. I'm reading through the list (my copy here) and I notice that we now have six bases in New Guinea. Really? When did that happen? I know we were there fighting the Japanese during WW2, but after that? There are always stories in the news about U. S. Military Bases in some furrin country, but I don't recall hearing anything about any in New Guinea, so I ask our friend Google, who turned up a couple of stories. One was about WW2 and the other, widely reported, was from 2023, where the U. S. is granted six bases in Papua New Guinea (PNG). I guess it didn't cause much of a stir, or if it did the stinkers were suppressed.

All this got my attention because I just finished reading Lucky 666. a story about an aerial reconnaissance crew flying a B-17 out of New Guinea during WW2.

* Methinks the map is trying to convey too much information. Europe, for instance, has a bunch of military bases. Each military base is individually marked, but if you zoom in far enough to be able to distinguish one from you can only get a vague idea of their location because the borders have been pixelated.

New Chinese Aircraft Carrier

New Chinese Aircraft Carrier

Aircraft carriers are simple in concept - take a big boat, put a flat deck on top and load it with airplanes - but horribly complex in reality. The complexity arises from having numerous, large, complex systems crammed into a limited area AND then getting them all to operate together, all of which makes it very difficult to make them effective weapons. America has poured zillions of dollars and zillions of man hours into learning how to make them operate coherently. A few other countries have made a few, but I don't think any of them are as well prepared and effective as America's.

They are calling this an assault ship. There is a floodable well deck at the rear. It's 850 feet long. American nuclear-powered carriers are 1100 feet long. It has an electromagnetic catapult and possibly electromagnetic arresting gear as well. I suspect that the blue and white building sitting on the forward end of the flight deck is a temporary structure being used for the final fitting out.

Google has links to numerous articles about this ship, but most of them are speculative.

Via Defence Blog

Previous posts about aircraft carriers.

Special Ops: Lioness - Amazon Series

Special Ops: Lioness Season 1 Trailer
Rotten Tomatoes TV

This show is just insane. Tough girl joins the Marines, gets recruited by the CIA, goes undercover in Kuwait to infiltrate filthy rich family in order to get close to the patriarch, a terrorist for hire. Black Ops, helicopters, operators dispensing death and destruction left, right and center.

Unlike many of the shows we watch, the soldiers here are competent. They're also cowboys. They know what they are, they know their jobs and how to work together and that's all that counts.

It's weird how the amount of money you have available can completely change your view of what's important. Poor people squabble over a dollar. When daddy has a zillion dollars you don't flinch at paying a thousand dollars for a T-shirt because it's 'cute'. Actors have to mimic both kinds of attitudes and the entire range in between.

Military Jetpack

The Military Jetpack Has Gotten Even More Insane
VEXR Old time science fiction is coming true.

Accurate Missile Attack

An Israeli missile hits a building in Ghobeiry, Beirut. [Bilal Hussein/AP Photo]

Al Jazeera has the story and several more pictures of the missile on it's way to the target. You might think the missile is going to hit the roof, but it actually impacts the building a few stories above ground level.

I like this excerpt. Al Jazeera is usually all Israel-bad all the time.

The strike on Tuesday came roughly 40 minutes after an Israeli military spokesperson posted a warning in Arabic on social media, notifying people in and around a pair of buildings in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital that they should evacuate the area.

He did not explain why the buildings were being targeted, other than to say they were near “interests and facilities” associated with the Hezbollah group.

The warning prompted many people to flee the busy, densely populated neighbourhood, even as others, including a few journalists, kept watch. By the time of the attack, the building had been evacuated and there were no reports of casualties.

Minutes before the missile brought down the building, two smaller projectiles were fired at the roof in what Israel’s military often refers to as warning strikes, according to the AP journalists at the scene. It is a practice Israel has followed in strikes in the Gaza Strip.