Soldiers still burn hours and calories moving water, ammunition, and radios across ground that wrecks ordinary trucks. Pack animals once filled that gap. Conventional electric robots often stall in the same mud, sand, snow, and rubble because their motors sit in the middle of the chassis and feed torque through gearboxes and shafts that lose grip the moment the surface turns ugly. ESOX Group finished a compact uncrewed platform, called the X2, this summer that tries to skip that failure.
High in the Swiss Alps, frozen lakes hide risks that surface checks often miss. Snow piles up, presses the ice sheet down, and new layers form on top. Thin spots or cracks stay invisible until someone or something falls through. For more than a century people have cut holes by hand, measured with tape, and hoped the ice held for skating, racing, or simple crossings. In 1907 St. Moritz turned that hope into spectacle with skijoring, horses pulling skiers across the ice. The tradition continues, yet the dangers remain. In 2017 a crack swallowed horses during an event. Manual surveys still demand hours of chainsaw work and firefighters on standby, and they only sample a few points while ice thickness can change across short distances.
Anduril Industries revealed Thunder today at the Farnborough Airshow, a Group 5 autonomous attack rotorcraft developed jointly with Archer Aviation. The platform is designed from the start to fly alongside current and next-generation crewed attack and assault helicopters, multiplying their firepower while keeping human crews farther from the most dangerous parts of the fight.
South of Tucson, in a stretch of Arizona desert that looks like any other patch of scrub and sun, a plain concrete entrance leads straight down into one of the most complete remnants of the Cold War. This is Complex 571-7, the single surviving Titan II missile site preserved exactly as it stood when the last crews walked out in 1987. Everything else from the original fifty-four sites was destroyed or buried. Here the underground command center and the missile itself remain untouched.
British officials announced an order for 72 units of the RCH 155 howitzer mounted on Boxer armored vehicles. The deal carries a value near one billion pounds and marks a major step in restoring the army’s long-range fire support after earlier systems went to Ukraine. Deliveries start in 2028 with full operations expected around 2030.
Armored vehicles now roll out with thick layers of explosive reactive armor that detonate on contact and blunt older anti-tank munitions. Saab created the HEAT 758 to cut straight through that problem. The round slides into the familiar 84-millimeter Carl-Gustaf recoilless rifle and carries two shaped charges arranged in sequence. The lead charge strikes first and clears a path by disrupting the reactive plates. Moments later the main charge jets forward and bores into the vehicle’s base armor.
Photo credit: NASA / Lori Losey
On April 14, video footage captured NASA’s X-59 silent supersonic research aircraft speeding through the skies over California’s Mojave Desert. Lockheed Martin built the jet, which has a needle-shaped nose and an engine located high on its back. It is nearly 100 feet long and has a wingspan of little under 30 feet. Engineers published the recording as part of an update to the QueSST program, which aims to enable supersonic travel over land by reducing the thunderous boom into a soothing thud.
Intelligence operatives have used some innovative techniques to snoop on information without ever having to step foot inside a target building. A simple approach that involves lasers has been around for eons, and transforms a standard window into a makeshift bug.
Northrop Grumman has released a brief teaser that shows off its sixth-generation fighter concept, and what a look it is. For a few seconds, the camera circles the plane, displaying all of the important lines. The broad nose leads to a spacious cockpit, and the intake vents are tucked firmly up against the fuselage, making them difficult to see. The long, diamond-shaped wings emerge, their outer panels fully folded up. The strengthened landing gear is at the front, ready for a carrier catapult launch, with two wheels and a launch bar, and the curvy doors at the bottom indicate that there is plenty of space inside, even though you can’t see much.
