Since the debut of Garrett P Serviss’ 1898 novel “Edison’s Conquest of Mars,” space-based warfare was relegated to the imagination — but no longer.
In an address on the “State of the Space Force” on Tuesday, reported by Space.com, chief of space operations for the US Space Force General Douglas Schiess informed the public that the Pentagon has definitively deployed active space-based weapons platforms.
“Let me be crystal clear: today, Guardians operate on-orbit weapons that can defend the joint force against space-enabled attacks,” Schiess said. “Space is both a battlefield and the backbone of our joint force.”
Schiess stopped short of providing any details about the weapons, instead sharing a war story of one Space Force operator named “Specialist Gray.”
“Even as alarm red sirens were blaring and incoming missiles targeted her site, she courageously held the line, protecting forces, denying adversary capability, and delivering space effects until her commander had to literally pull her from the console to safety,” Schiess recounted with a dramatic flair. “She locked onto the target, optimized her weapon system and waged electromagnetic warfare against a determined adversary.”
As Space.com notes, those descriptive elements may point to a kind of non-physical platform, like a signal jammer or a microwave emitter, though it’s anyone’s guess what weapon “Specialist Gray” was supposed to be operating.
The news came just ahead of the Space Force’s request for over $71 billion in additional funding for 2027, adding to the over $100 billion it’s already been allocated, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported.
Evidently, the orbital-weapons announcement was meant to give that absurd request some extra oomph — which, if granted, it would represent the single highest one-year budget adjustment received by any US military branch since 1952.
V2X, a U.S. defense technology company, will help integrate the Air Force’s next-generation Long Range Standoff (LRSO) cruise missile with B-52 bombers under a $46 million order.
Announced on September 15, the work involves producing carriage equipment that will support the deployment of the new weapon from the B-52 Stratofortress.
The LRSO will replace the Air-Launched Cruise Missile the service currently uses, helping maintain its long-range strike capability against evolving threats.
Based in Reston, Virginia, V2X provides integrated mission solutions across the air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains. Its work includes engineering, manufacturing, sustainment, and mission support for defense customers.
Preparing B-52s for the LRSO missile
V2X was awarded a position on the delivery order through the Enterprise-Wide Agile Acquisition Contract, an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract.
Under the order, the company will produce the carriage equipment needed to support the integration of the LRSO weapon system with the B-52.
The equipment will help prepare the bomber to carry the new cruise missile as the Air Force advances the wider modernization program.
The LRSO is designed for deployment from the B-52 and will replace the Air-Launched Cruise Missile currently in service. According to V2X, the transition will ensure that the Air Force retains an effective long-range strike capability for decades to come.
Strengthening the US strategic deterrent
The U.S. Air Force considers the LRSO program a critical modernization effort and an essential part of the country’s strategic deterrent.
V2X said its role in the program reinforces the company’s involvement in advancing next-generation defense capabilities. The carriage equipment will support mission readiness while enabling the Air Force to integrate its new weapon with the existing bomber platform.
“Supporting the modernization of the B-52 and our nation’s strategic deterrent is a responsibility we take seriously,” said Jeremy C. Wensinger, President and Chief Executive Officer of V2X.
“This award reflects the trust our customer places in V2X to deliver high-quality solutions that enable mission success and support one of the Air Force’s highest modernization priorities,” he added.
Supporting complex defense missions
V2X develops solutions that combine physical and digital environments by aligning people, actions, and technology. The company works across different stages of a critical mission’s lifecycle to improve readiness, strengthen security, and optimize resource management.
Its experience in engineering, manufacturing, sustainment, and mission support enables it to help customers address complex defense challenges and evolving operational requirements.
The LRSO assignment expands that work by placing V2X within a major Air Force modernization program. Its production responsibilities will directly support the equipment required to integrate the cruise missile with the B-52.
Through the effort, V2X will help prepare the bomber fleet for a new generation of long-range weapons as the Air Force moves to replace its currently fielded Air-Launched Cruise Missile.
Nitride Global, a US developer of advanced thermal-management, dielectric, and semiconductor materials, will study a centimeter-scale quantum sensor designed to support navigation when GPS signals are unavailable.
The Wichita-based company announced on September 14 that it had received an AFWERX Small Business Innovation Research Phase I contract supporting the Department of the Air Force.
The project will assess the feasibility of a microwave atom-chip quantum sensor for precision navigation and remote-sensing gravimetry.
Known as the Atom-Interferometer Microwave Atom Chip, or A-MAC, the proposed device will be evaluated using Nitride Global’s aluminum oxynitride platform.
Navigation without satellite signals
The project addresses a challenge faced by Airmen and Guardians operating in environments where GPS signals may be jammed, spoofed, or completely unavailable.
Conventional inertial navigation systems accumulate errors over time. Without periodic satellite updates, those errors cause positional uncertainty to increase, restricting how long and how far a platform can operate independently.
Atom interferometers offer a potential alternative because they measure acceleration and rotation against the wavelength of a matter wave. Nitride Global said these systems are among the most stable inertial sensors demonstrated so far.
However, most leading systems still occupy a meter or more of laboratory bench space. According to the company, the principal obstacle to miniaturization is the packaging surrounding the sensor rather than its underlying physics.
Compact microwave atom chips continue to rely on distributed radio-frequency hardware. The resulting heat and phase drift can degrade measurements, making the technology difficult to deploy outside controlled laboratory environments.
Bringing microwave hardware onto one board
Nitride Global’s A-MAC architecture is intended to consolidate the distributed microwave chain onto a single integrated board.
Its thin, conformal AlON dielectric material would allow microwave routing, coupling structures, and trap geometry to be positioned within the same stack. Heat would move outward through metal instead of passing through a bulk ceramic substrate.
The aim is to create a centimeter-scale architecture suitable for platforms with strict size, weight, and power requirements.
Nitride Global will work with Dr. Seth Aubin, associate professor of physics at William & Mary.
Aubin’s atomic physics group will participate as a subcontractor and research partner, bringing more than a decade of work on microwave atom-chip traps and related trapping physics.
During the initial phase, the partners will model the architecture’s thermal behavior, microwave insertion loss, coupling, and possible trap geometries. The work will conclude with a decision gate and technical roadmap for a potential second phase.
From laboratories to contested environments
The technology could eventually support satellite-independent positioning, navigation, and timing across hypersonic vehicles, unmanned aircraft, orbital systems, submerged platforms, autonomous ground vehicles, and UAV interceptors.
Commercial applications could include resource exploration, infrastructure monitoring, and subsurface mapping.
“Quantum inertial sensing has been constrained for the same reason power electronics were constrained a decade ago: the limit is set by the package, not by the physics. If microwave routing and thermal management can be carried on the same material system, the instrument becomes small enough to fly,” said Mahyar Khosravi, CEO of Nitride Global.
The company is now seeking input from aerospace and defense integrators to define the sensor’s form factor, environmental requirements, and performance thresholds.
BAE Systems has unveiled a new electronic warfare family aimed at giving small aircraft stronger protection in contested airspace. The Shadow EW family targets a growing need for compact systems that can fit space-constrained platforms.
The new products focus on electronic sensing and self-protection without demanding the size, weight, or power of traditional systems. BAE Systems also designed them for rapid production, making larger-scale deployment more practical.
The architecture uses commercially available microchips to support computing needs and simplify the supply chain. That approach could help BAE Systems produce systems faster as demand for affordable EW grows.
Compact EW
Small drones and other airborne systems increasingly operate near sophisticated electronic threats. Their limited payload capacity makes traditional EW equipment difficult to integrate.
Shadow EW addresses that constraint with small, lightweight hardware designed around open architecture principles. The systems can also receive software updates after deployment.
That software-defined approach gives operators another way to respond as adversaries change their electronic signatures and tactics. Hardware configurations can also adapt to different platforms and mission requirements.
BAE Systems says the family can support both manned and unmanned aircraft. Its platform-agnostic design aims to preserve valuable payload capacity while adding radio-frequency capabilities.
The systems can support several EW functions, including threat awareness, targeting, deception, and survivability. They can also participate in collaborative electronic effects across multiple platforms.
Commercial chips drive scale
BAE Systems is leaning on commercial components to make high-volume EW production more achievable. Commercial microchips can provide substantial computing performance without requiring specialized hardware for every configuration.
The strategy also reduces dependence on highly customized components. That can simplify procurement and help manufacturers respond more quickly to changing production requirements.
Production scalability sits at the center of Shadow EW’s design philosophy. BAE Systems plans to use established manufacturing methods to support larger orders and faster deliveries.
That matters as the U.S. military explores more affordable ways to equip increasingly numerous autonomous and expendable systems. Electronic warfare capability becomes harder to scale when every platform requires an expensive bespoke solution.
Software keeps EW adaptable
Shadow EW separates much of the system’s adaptability from its physical hardware. Operators can configure capabilities around specific threats and platform architectures.
Software updates provide another path for changing the system after deployment. That flexibility could prove important against adversaries that frequently modify their electronic warfare techniques.
Rebecca Cruz, director of Shadow EW products at BAE Systems, said battlefield conditions are changing rapidly. She said even smaller platforms need adaptable electronic warfare protection.
The family is designed around a configurable approach that lets customers select capabilities suited to individual missions. BAE Systems describes the result as an affordable Electronic Warfare option built for broader fielding.
The company has not disclosed specific performance figures for individual Shadow EW variants. Details such as detection ranges, frequency coverage, power consumption, and platform integration options remain limited.
The engineering approach focuses on shrinking EW hardware while using software to keep the systems adaptable. Commercial-scale manufacturing also helps BAE Systems keep production costs under control.
Chinese researchers have outlined a future tank that could generate its own power and strike targets hundreds of miles away. The concept combines a compact nuclear reactor with a 50-megajoule electromagnetic railgun.
The proposed vehicle would weigh about 60 tonnes. A 10-megawatt-class small modular reactor would supply its electrical power.
Researchers estimate the railgun could accelerate projectiles to roughly 3.5km/s. That could give the weapon a theoretical range of about 280 miles.
Three steps to nuclear power
The development path starts with conventional propulsion. An initial tank would use a 1,500-horsepower diesel generator.
Its 10MJ electromagnetic gun could reach roughly 93 miles. Supercapacitors and flywheels would provide additional energy for high-demand systems.
The first design would also feature 2MJ electromagnetic armor. A second-generation vehicle would increase weapon energy to 20MJ.
Its projected range would rise to roughly 186 miles. That version would carry 10MJ electromagnetic armor and about five tonnes of advanced energy storage.
Researchers also envision solid-state batteries and superconducting storage. An onboard microgrid would coordinate the vehicle’s electrical systems.
The final stage would introduce nuclear propulsion after 2045. That would replace the diesel generator with a compact reactor.
Fitting the tiny reactor
The proposed reactor would use lead-bismuth cooling and produce 10MW of thermal power. Researchers want the reactor package to fit inside just two cubic meters.
Its radiation shielding would weigh no more than three tonnes. The reactor would also need a fuel replacement interval of at least five years.
Those targets create a difficult packaging problem. Engineers must fit the reactor, shielding and power-conversion equipment inside a combat vehicle.
Thermal management presents another hurdle. The reactor would produce substantial heat that engineers must remove from the vehicle.
The system would also need to survive punishing off-road conditions. The researchers say it should withstand shocks approaching 30g.
The railgun creates an even tougher electrical challenge. A 50MJ weapon must release enormous energy within an extremely short pulse.
The reactor could provide steady power, but it cannot instantly deliver the entire firing pulse. Energy storage would need to accumulate power between shots.
That makes the vehicle’s capacitors, batteries, and power electronics critical. Researchers say additional multiphysics simulations and vehicle-level testing remain necessary.
Feeding 50MJ railgun
A nuclear reactor could provide continuous electricity for energy-intensive weapons and sensors. Yet it would also consume space and weight needed for armor, ammunition and crew protection.
A military equipment expert told South China Morning Post that installing a fission reactor in a battle tank remains unrealistic. The expert also pointed to shielding and heat-dissipation requirements.
The expert questioned the practical value of effectively unlimited onboard electricity. Crews still need rest, while tanks still require ammunition and maintenance.
Survivability creates another concern. A destroyed crewed vehicle carrying a reactor could introduce risks beyond losing the platform.
The expert suggested an uncrewed alternative. Such a vehicle could use abundant electricity for lasers, microwave weapons, radar, and electronic warfare.
That approach could transform the concept from a conventional tank into an autonomous, high-power battlefield platform.
The nuclear tank remains a long-term research concept. Its central challenge may be delivering enormous electrical pulses inside a mobile combat vehicle.
The study is published in the peer-reviewed Chinese journal Acta Armamentarii.
It’s common to find things among the sand while strolling along a beach: shells, seaglass, bits of and seaweed. But in Essex, England, a beachgoer found something quite different on the coast of Southend-On-Sea: a World War II explosive.
Southend-On-Sea’s HM Coastguard intervened over the weekend after someone reported a “shell-shaped object” less than half a mile south of a local monument called “The Crowstone.” The team first showed up early in the morning to locate the object and send pictures to the Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams.
The Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams decided that disposal officers should remain on the scene, but that everyone should go back at low tide to identify the object and execute a plan. When they returned that evening, Southend Coastguard Rescue Officers accompanied Explosive Ordnance Disposal officers to the suspected explosive.
“It was confirmed to be an old WWII shell that was approximately six inches in diameter,” HM Coastguard Southend On Sea explained in the social media post. “The decision was made to detonate it in situ, where it posed no risk to passing members of [the] public.”
The video in the Facebook post showcases a significant explosion in the distance, shooting a cloud of debris into the air. It’s not the first time this year that the violence of World War II makes itself known again. In the spring, experts safely detonated a 250 kilogram German explosive in Plymouth, UK. But possibly another World War II find in Indonesia had a drastically less fortunate outcome. A suspected shell killed five people when it detonated in a fishing village.
“As these items can be so dangerous, if you ever see something suspicious or out of place on the beach or in the sea, do not touch it, move it or take it home,” the post continued. “Let the experts decide if it is safe.”
By the time naval architecture firm George G. Sharp tasked Jack Heaney with the design of the world’s first nuclear-powered merchant ship, the Glasgow-born designer had already broken many styling norms. In the mid-1940s, Heaney transformed routine ocean transport into a festive occasion when he designed the interiors of the SS President Wilson and SS President Cleveland with Hawaiian murals, carved glass panels, and a smoking lounge dressed in playful, exotic wall art. His gift for making the mundane desirable wasn’t confined to ocean liners—New York’s Museum of Modern Art had already put one of his stackable aluminum chairs on display in 1947. But nothing in Heaney’s career had prepared him for the commission that reached his drawing board in 1957.
At the time, the shadow of 1945, when the world first witnessed the terrifying power of the atom, loomed large. Following World War II, the United States and Soviet Union were locked in a nuclear arms race, and the public associated splitting atoms with annihilation. Atoms meant war.
To shift that sentiment, President Eisenhower launched his Atoms for Peace initiative, aimed at demonstrating the civilian benefits of nuclear technology—and the NS Savannah, or Nuclear Ship Savannah, was to be its flagship. Heaney suddenly had a much more daunting task than usual; he would have to make the feared desirable.
More than half a century since theSavannah was decommissioned in 1971, there is no nuclear-powered merchant ship in active commercial service anywhere in the world. Four nations have tried. None succeeded, mostly because the economics were not compelling enough and no one trusted nuclear ships.
In the interim, nuclear reactors have only become smaller and safer. Now, as the true cost of burning oil at sea comes due—commercial shipping produces more than three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—the economics of nuclear-powered merchant ships may finally be compelling. But the problem Heaney was hired to solve in 1957 still stands in the way, persuading people to trust what they fear.
The making of a maritime designer
John “Jack” Heaney was born in Glasgow in 1904. He grew up during a time when the River Clyde, which runs through the heart of Glasgow, served as the world’s premiere shipbuilding hub, with nearly 40 shipyards situated on its banks. Heaney studied naval architecture at the University of Glasgow, while taking classes at the Glasgow School of Art and apprenticing at the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company.
When Heaney emigrated to New York in 1926, he worked a string of jobs, including a brief stint as a door-to-door refrigerator salesman, before joining the New York City-based naval architecture firm George G. Sharp, Inc. in 1937. At Sharp, Heaney quickly developed a reputation for having an engineer’s eye and artist’s hand, helping design the interiors of several prominent passenger-cargo ships—a specialized form of merchant ship that is part cruise liner, part cargo vessel—including the Robin Line, the Delta Line, and the American President Lines. In 1947, the same year MoMA put his chair on display, Heaney opened his own design firm on West 54th Street in Manhattan. A decade later, the Savannah project came across his bow.
Originally tasked with the ship’s exterior design, Heaney eventually assumed responsibility for the ship’s interior styling, too. From stem to stern, it was Heaney’s job to design a nuclear-powered ship that passengers would want to cruise on for pleasure, and that businesses would want to ship merchandise on for commerce.
The NS Savannah was the first nuclear-powered merchant ship. Image: Contributor / Getty Images / Mondadori Portfolio
Atoms for Peace
Eisenhower had announced the Atoms for Peace initiative four years earlier, in a December 1953 address to the United Nations. The atom, he argued, should be turned from a great destructive force “into a great boon, for the benefit of all mankind.” Under Eisenhower, the U.S. began sharing reactor technology and medical isotopes with allied nations. Atoms for Peace sought to prove that the technology that had obliterated two cities could also light homes, treat cancer, build harbors, and move ships.
The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, saw the advantages of a vessel that could continuously plow the ocean without refueling for months, or even years. The USS Nautilus was the first atomic-powered vessel, a sub, launching in 1955. By the time Sharp signed Heaney to the Savannah project, two more atomic-powered subs were patrolling the world’s oceans (USS Skate and USS Seawolf). But military vessels primarily keep to military ports, so the public rarely saw them.
Eisenhower needed a civilian showcase that would disassociate atom-splitting from mushroom clouds. That showcase would be Heaney’s NS Savannah. As a passenger-cargo ship, the Savannah would routinely sail into commercial harbors like Rotterdam, Le Havre, and New York, normalizing nuclear reactors and demonstrating their safety. At least, that was the goal.
How safe is our A-ship?
In 1959, the same year the Savannah launched, Popular Science ran a short feature designed to quell readers’ fears: “How Safe Is Our A-Ship Savannah?” The staff-written story read more like a safety brief than an objective review. While boasting about its efficiency—“on a single loading of A-fuel, the Savannah will have a range of 350,000 nautical miles”—the article focused mainly on the “worst possible accidents that might befall the first atomic merchant vessel.” Such caution seemed justified. That same year, Denmark canceled a scheduled visit by the USSSkate to Copenhagen, and England agreed to receive visiting nuclear submarines only at the remote Isle of Portland, population 12,000, rather than major ports.
Popular Science’s initial coverage was not anomalous. “Passengers will receive no more radiation on the Savannah than they receive from normal background radiation of the earth in their day-to-day lives,” The New York Times reassured its readers.
By 1961, however, as the Savannah prepared to begin its cargo and passenger service, which commenced in 1962, Popular Science’s editors were fully onboard, launching a four-part series that spanned four consecutive issues and more than a dozen pages. The do-it-yourself mini-manual provided detailed instructions for readers to build and sail their own four-foot model of the ship. Four different writers and editors took part in the project: hull casting one month, superstructure the next, then a working steam turbine, and finally radio controls. Even as Popular Science promoted its features, the real Savannah was being fitted with Heaney’s final touches.
The January 1961 issue of Popular Science shows a model of the NS Savannah assembled with screws and dowels. Image: Popular Science, January 1961 issue
Domesticating the atom
On a conventional ship, fuel is stored low in the hull, in tanks that any port can refill with diesel by hose. But Savannah’s single, massive fuel core had to sit in the hull’s center, beneath an opening in the deck, so it could be accessible by overhead crane for refueling. Heaney’s answer to this exterior design problem became the ship’s signature: a streamlined, teardrop-shaped superstructure. Popular Science’s writers praised Savannah’s sleek, futuristic lines as “graceful as a racing yacht’s,” and called its reactor housing “a well-placed superstructure [that] blends airfoil curves with sharply angled planes for a dazzling effect.”
Below decks, Heaney took the fear problem head on, weaving Atomic Age motifs into the ship’s interior. In the veranda, the cocktail bar’s backlit wine rack depicted the trilinear chart of the nuclides in blue, red, and yellow glass; the tables ringing the dance floor glowed, their tops lit by “panelescent,” or electrically charged luminescent panels. Even the floor tiles in the main stairwell carried the atomic theme. A separate lounge nearby offered passengers a closed-circuit television view into the reactor containment vessel. Overhead light beamed down through light fixtures adorned with stylized atoms.
In the dining room, sculptor Pierre Bourdelle installed a wall mural titled “Fission.” Nearby, suspended in glass, hung a small gold model of the NSSavannah’s namesake, the 1819 steamship SSSavannah, the first ship to cross the Atlantic under sail and steam. Heaney hoped such Old World symbolism would make people feel comfortable dining, dancing, and sleeping no more than a dozen yards from a nuclear reactor.
As a design achievement, Savannah was a triumph. Her passenger cabins were mostly full from 1962 to 1965, and more than 1.4 million people toured the ship across 46 ports in 13 countries.
Even the plates and silverware used on the NS Savannah had an atomic motif. Image: Baltimore Sun / Contributor / Getty Images / Kim Hairston
Sunk by economics—and fear
But novelty was never going to be enough to move public sentiment or make Savannah pay for itself. The combined ship-and-reactor construction cost ran to roughly $46 million, three to four times what a comparable conventional freighter cost at the time, and the ship’s specialized nuclear crew commanded specialized wages. No private insurer would touch a nuclear-powered merchant ship; the U.S. government had to indemnify it instead, extending $500 million in federal liability coverage just to get foreign ports to receive the ship. Every port call required a small diplomatic mission of its own, negotiated weeks in advance, with tugs standing by in case of an accident. Some countries, like Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, never accepted Savannah.
By the end of the 1960s, the U.S. Defense Department, one of merchant shipping’s largest customers, had concluded that conventional freighters remained the better bet. With no federal appetite left to continue funding a revenue-losing program, Savannah was withdrawn from service in late 1971 with no plans to build another.
The timing proved fateful. Two years after Savannah was decommissioned, the 1973 oil embargo sent fuel prices soaring; had it still been sailing, the ship’s independence from oil might have tipped the scales for commercial customers, even if the public remained fearful.
Fear kills future “A-ships”
In 1979, the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island—eight years after Savannah’s own retirement—hardened American public fear of nuclear power for more than a generation. The Soviet Union’s Chernobyl accident in 1986 and Japan’s Fukushima accident in 2011 reinforced that fear.
Three other nations tried what the U.S. attempted with Savannah, and each ran into the same wall. West Germany’s nuclear-powered merchant ship Otto Hahn logged 650,000 nautical miles over a decade before port restrictions and rising costs forced her conversion to diesel in 1979—the same year as Three Mile Island.
Japan’s nuclear-powered Mutsu fared worse. Local fishermen blockaded it in harbor for two years before the ship could even sail, and when its reactor went online in 1974, it leaked. The crew had to improvise radiation shielding using boiled rice and old socks.
The Soviet Union’s nuclear-powered Sevmorput, the last of the four and the only one to operate into the 21st century, has sat idle at a dock in Murmansk since 2024. As of today, not a single nuclear-powered merchant ship plows the seas anywhere on Earth.
And yet, military fleets have proven the technology works. The U.S. Navy alone has logged more than 6,200 accident-free reactor-years since 1955. What’s more, reactor designs have advanced significantly since Heaney’s day. Small modular reactors, or SMRs, have been engineered to be smaller, safer, and simpler to certify than anything available in 1959. SMRs are now in active development for maritime use, including a Norwegian consortium’s NuProShip program, and a molten-chloride test reactor that Core Power and TerraPower are building at the Idaho National Laboratory.
The pressure to act has intensified, too. Commercial shipping produces more than three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions—a share that could climb to 10 percent by 2050 if the industry does nothing while the rest of the world decarbonizes. In 2023, the International Maritime Organization, which governs commercial shipping, committed its member states to a net-zero target by 2050, a goal serious enough that the IMO is now weighing previously unthinkable measures like SMRs.
But none of it matters if nuclear-powered merchant ships remain taboo.
Sixty-five years after Jack Heaney tried to make the atom desirable, the real problem with nuclear reactors was less about the technology and more about public perception. Unfortunately, that perception has kept a viable climate solution off the table for more than half a century, at a cost now measurable in our planet’s atmosphere. As the shipping industry searches for a way to shed its considerable share of global carbon emissions, it is not physics but persuasion that remains unsolved.
In A Century in Motion, Popular Science revisits fascinating transportation stories from our archives, from hybrid cars to moving sidewalks, and explores how these inventions are re-emerging today in surprising ways.
RTX Ventures has invested in laser fusion company Xcimer Energy to develop pulsed-laser technology for potential use in US military directed-energy systems.
The collaboration brings together two applications that share a fundamental engineering challenge: building powerful lasers that can fire repeatedly, reliably and affordably.
Xcimer is developing excimer laser technology for its fusion power system. The company says the same approach could provide the performance and scalability needed for directed-energy weapons, potentially offering longer-range capability than existing systems.
RTX’s investment is also intended to support Xcimer’s fusion program. In June, the US Department of Energy approved Xcimer’s fusion pilot power plant design under its Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program.
One laser, two missions
Laser fusion works by using intense laser pulses to compress and heat fuel until it reaches conditions where nuclear fusion can occur. The challenge is developing lasers that can deliver these pulses repeatedly while keeping energy consumption, maintenance, and operating costs under control.
Those same requirements matter for military laser systems. A directed-energy weapon must deliver enough energy to engage a target while remaining efficient and reliable enough for repeated use. Xcimer says its excimer-based system is designed around those requirements.
“As the United States accelerates the development of next-generation air defense, the need for affordable and scalable directed energy systems has never been more urgent,” said Conner Galloway, co-founder, CEO and Chief Science Officer at Xcimer. “Our excimer-based laser technology offers the performance, speed and inherent scalability needed at a fraction of the cost and complexity of today’s systems.”
The partnership will now examine how the laser technology could be integrated and containerized into RTX defense systems.
That could be important because one of the challenges facing directed-energy weapons is making them practical outside laboratory environments. Systems must fit into deployable platforms while generating enough power to engage threats.
Fusion technology enters air defense
RTX brings experience in sensing, command and control, and air-defense systems to the partnership. The company says those capabilities could help integrate Xcimer’s laser technology into future defense platforms.
“We believe Xcimer’s pulsed-laser technology lines up perfectly with our expertise in areas like advanced sensing, command and control and air defense,” said RTX Chief Technology Officer Juan de Bedout. “Together we will explore how we can best integrate these technologies into advanced, scalable defense systems able to defeat a range of new and evolving threats.”
Xcimer is pursuing commercial fusion power alongside the defense work. The company expects its fusion technology to begin delivering electricity to the grid by the mid-2030s.
The dual-use development could give the laser technology two potential markets: commercial fusion energy and military directed-energy systems.
For now, the RTX-Xcimer agreement is focused on exploring integration and development rather than announcing an operational weapon. The companies will need to demonstrate that the laser can meet the demanding requirements of a deployable defense system while maintaining the efficiency, reliability, and scalability needed for repeated operation.
Norwegian defense company KONGSBERG has selected Echodyne’s MESA radar platform for multiple air and surface applications, starting with its PROTECTOR remote weapon stations. The compact radar has already been integrated into the PROTECTOR RS4 and RS6 systems.
The collaboration brings together KONGSBERG’s weapon-station architecture and Collaborative Fire Control capabilities with Echodyne’s solid-state radar. It is designed for static, crewed, and uncrewed platforms.
The system helps them detect, track, and engage fast-moving drones. It also requires less space, weight, and power than traditional high-performance electronically scanned array radars.
Compact radar strengthens weapon stations
The integration provides the PROTECTOR systems with the precise radar data required to operate as counter-unmanned aircraft system effectors. MESA delivers range, range-rate, bearing, and movement data while maintaining stable tracks on agile targets with low radar signatures.
This data allows the radar to direct and stabilize the weapon station’s optical fire-control system on a target. According to Echodyne, the combination can help the system sustain its target lock, reduce the time between detection and engagement, and increase its chances of hitting a drone.
“KONGSBERG has set the standard for remote weapon systems through decades of field experience, disciplined engineering and close collaboration with operators,” said Eben Frankenberg, CEO of Echodyne.
“Integrating MESA radar gives the PROTECTOR family the precise, stable and persistent tracks needed to cue the fire-control system, sustain target lock and act decisively against fast-moving, low-signature drone threats,” he added.
“Just as important, MESA delivers that performance in a compact, software-defined package that can scale across a large installed base and adapt as the threat evolves,” he continued.
Radar supports precise airburst timing
Accurate radar measurements become particularly important when PROTECTOR weapon stations use programmable airburst ammunition. Range and range-rate information helps the fire-control system time the munition so that its effect occurs at the intended point along a drone’s flight path.
MESA can also operate as part of a wider network of sensors and weapon systems. A cooperative search radar or another sensor can initially detect a threat and send its track to a radar-equipped PROTECTOR station. The local radar can then refine the incoming information, maintain the track and provide the data needed for fire control.
This process enables distributed systems to share an air picture, allocate targets and rapidly switch their attention as individual threats are addressed.
Companies explore wider radar applications
Echodyne and KONGSBERG spent several years integrating, testing and demonstrating the radar-enabled system in field conditions. The work reflects KONGSBERG’s approach of validating new capabilities through practical testing before broader deployment.
Beyond the RS4 and RS6 integrations, the companies are examining how high-performance radar could support other air and surface missions across KONGSBERG’s portfolio. Their continued technical work will focus on resilient sensing, networked fire control and protection that can scale as threats evolve.
Both companies are exhibiting at the International Defense Industry Exhibition in Kielce, Poland, from September 8 to 11, 2026.
The U.S. Army has selected Boeing and Anduril to enter the next phase of a competition for a new midrange air-defense interceptor, the companies announced on September 9, 2026. The weapon is being developed to defend fixed and forward operating bases against cruise missiles, militarized drones, and other aerial threats.
The selection moves the program into Phase 2 of the Integrated Fires Protection Capability Increment 2 Second Interceptor effort. Boeing and Anduril will now carry out detailed design, development, integration, and demonstration work before facing a competitive test against Army requirements.
A new layer for base protection
The proposed interceptor is designed to fill a gap in the Army’s air-defense network. It would provide a midrange option between short-range systems used for point defense and longer-range weapons intended for protecting high-value targets.
Boeing is responsible for the seeker technology and compact airframe, while Anduril is developing the interceptor’s solid rocket motor. The weapon’s compact design is intended to allow military units to deploy more interceptors at each defended location.
The companies are also emphasizing affordability and production capacity. A larger number of available interceptors could help units respond to attacks involving large numbers of lower-cost aerial threats.
Modular design could speed upgrades
The interceptor will use a Modular Open Systems Architecture. This design lets crews replace or upgrade key components such as the seeker, avionics, and software without redesigning the entire weapon.
The approach could make it easier for the Army to adapt the system as aerial threats evolve. It is also intended to reduce the time and cost of introducing new capabilities.
“Our scalable production approach is designed to provide a reliable, affordable layer of defense against a range of aerial threats to protect the warfighter with practical, dependable capability when it matters most,” said Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems.
Boeing said its manufacturing approach is intended to support scaled production as the program develops.
Anduril expands rocket motor production
Anduril plans to manufacture the interceptor’s solid rocket motor at its 450-acre Mississippi Solid Rocket Motor Complex. The company has invested more than $100 million of its own money in the facility.
The site has also received $58 million through Defense Production Act funding. Anduril said the combined investment will support several propulsion programs while increasing production capacity.
The facility features a bladeless high-speed mixer that Anduril describes as the only one of its kind worldwide. Its manufacturing line can run multiple stages in parallel and produce different motor configurations.
The company said the U.S. solid rocket motor industry has become concentrated among two suppliers after decades of consolidation. Its Mississippi facility is intended to add capacity and improve supply-chain resilience.
Partnership moves into full development
Boeing and Anduril began exploring technologies for the Army program in 2024 and announced their partnership in December. Their selection now moves the concept into detailed system development and competitive demonstration.
The effort comes as the U.S. military faces growing demand for interceptors that can counter large numbers of relatively inexpensive cruise missiles and drones. Anduril said China, Russia, and Iran have spent the past decade developing mass-producible aerial threats designed to put pressure on U.S. interceptor inventories.
“We welcome the opportunity to continue in this competition,” stated Jim Bryan, executive director of Boeing Integrated Air and Missile Defense. “By combining proven seeker expertise with a purpose-built interceptor, we are delivering thoughtful, effective advances in air and missile defense that meet mission needs.”
China has reinforced artillery firepower facing the Taiwan Strait, deploying additional 155mm PLZ-05 self-propelled howitzers to replace older equipment. State broadcaster CCTV reported Sunday that a combined-arms brigade under the People’s Liberation Army’s 71st Group Army received a batch of the howitzers over the past two months. The deployment phased out the brigade’s previous 122mm artillery, an older and less capable system.
The brigade conducted its first live-fire test with the new howitzers following the deployment. The 71st Group Army belongs to the Eastern Theatre Command, which holds primary responsibility for military operations facing Taiwan, the East China Sea, and Japan.
A brigade-level first
This deployment marks the first time the PLZ-05 has been assigned specifically at the brigade level. The system was originally fielded at the group-army level, where it operated as a long-range suppression weapon rather than equipment directly integrated into brigade formations. Moving the system down to the brigade level represents a structural shift in how the PLA organizes its heavy artillery assets.
Brigade officer Sun Xialong said receiving 155mm self-propelled howitzers for the first time significantly improved the unit’s overall combat effectiveness. That framing suggests the PLZ-05’s move down to brigade level reflects a deliberate effort to streamline artillery firepower closer to frontline combat units.
Swapping between commands
The howitzers arrived painted in brown desert camouflage. The tracked vehicles appear to have been relocated from the Western Theatre Command, rather than built as new equipment specifically for the 71st Group Army. In their place, the Western Theatre Command has instead received lighter, wheeled PCL-181 155mm self-propelled howitzers. That design is better suited to the plateau and mountainous terrain that command typically operates across.
That swap suggests Beijing is deliberately matching different howitzer designs to the specific terrain and operational demands each theatre command faces. It’s a different approach than distributing identical equipment uniformly across the PLA’s various regional forces.
A year after China unveiled the world’s first operational air-breathing hypersonic missiles, the United States is launching a new program aimed at catching up. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency will bring contractors together later this month. The agency plans to outline requirements for its Next Generation Hypersonic Cruise Missile, according to its website, with air-breathing propulsion sitting at the center of the effort.
Unlike rocket-powered missiles, air-breathing weapons draw oxygen directly from the atmosphere instead of carrying an onboard oxidizer. That design frees up weight that can instead go toward additional fuel or a larger payload.
China went public first
China displayed that same air-breathing approach at a massive military parade in Beijing last year. The parade marked the 80th anniversary of the country’s victory in World War II. That event introduced the YJ-19 anti-ship missile and the larger, road-mobile CJ-1000. Both are believed to run on air-breathing scramjet engines and were presented as weapons already in active service with the People’s Liberation Army.
The YJ-19’s distinctive air intake was clearly visible during the parade. Chinese state media described the CJ-1000 as built for far longer-range strikes against targets on land, at sea, or in the air. Outside of Russia’s ship-based Zircon missile, the YJ-19 and CJ-1000 are considered the world’s only other operational scramjet-driven hypersonic weapons.
More than an upgrade
DARPA has signaled it isn’t simply looking to refine existing American hypersonic designs. In an industry request issued last month, the agency called for entirely new propulsion systems, fuels, and boosters. Those systems need supporting technologies capable of withstanding the extreme heat generated during hypersonic flight.
The resulting missile could ultimately come in multiple sizes, ranging from smaller weapons carried by tactical aircraft to considerably larger systems launched from bombers or ground-based platforms. That flexibility mirrors the range of launch options China has already demonstrated across its own hypersonic missile family.
Darpa’s earlier air-breathing hypersonic effort, the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, completed its first successful flight test in 2021. It has continued flight testing since, laying some of the technical groundwork this newer, more ambitious program now aims to build on.
A nuclear-powered submarine can disappear beneath the ocean and remain there for weeks or even months without surfacing. Unlike conventional submarines, it does not need to regularly come up for air or surface to recharge its batteries.
The secret is not simply the nuclear reactor. A nuclear submarine is essentially a self-contained environment that can generate its own power, oxygen and fresh water while carrying enough food and supplies to keep its crew alive for extended periods.
Nuclear power removes the biggest limitation
The fundamental difference is the way the submarine generates energy. Conventional diesel-electric submarines need atmospheric oxygen to run their diesel engines, while their batteries eventually need to be recharged.
A nuclear reactor, by contrast, produces heat through nuclear fission and does not need atmospheric oxygen to operate. That allows the submarine to keep generating power while completely submerged.
In a typical naval reactor system, heat from the reactor is transferred to water in a separate steam system. The resulting steam drives turbines, which provide propulsion and generate electricity for the submarine’s other systems. The steam is then condensed back into water and reused in a closed cycle.
This gives nuclear submarines essentially unlimited range from their reactor fuel compared with conventional submarines. The U.S. Department of Energy says modern naval reactor cores can last more than 1 million miles, although the submarine’s actual deployment duration is limited by other factors.
But what about oxygen?
The crew still needs it, of course. This is where the submarine becomes more like a miniature artificial ecosystem. Modern submarines can produce oxygen onboard, allowing the crew to breathe without drawing a fresh supply from the atmosphere. At the same time, systems remove carbon dioxide and other contaminants from the enclosed air.
The U.S. Navy’s historical account of submarine operations notes that modern boats use equipment to produce fresh air, remove carbon dioxide, and filter potentially harmful vapors.
The reactor is particularly useful here because its enormous energy supply can power these life-support systems continuously. In other words, the submarine does not need to conserve its oxygen simply because it is underwater. It has systems designed to continually maintain the atmosphere inside the boat.
How do they get fresh water?
Water is another resource that could quickly become a problem for a crew spending months underwater. Modern nuclear submarines can produce fresh water from seawater, using onboard distillation systems.
The U.S. Navy says this capability, combined with oxygen production, allows a nuclear submarine to operate independently of Earth’s atmosphere for extended periods. Fresh water can therefore be produced for drinking and other onboard needs, rather than carrying every drop required for a months-long patrol.
So what eventually forces a submarine to surface?
Surprisingly, food is one of the biggest constraints. A nuclear reactor can keep producing power, and the submarine can produce oxygen and fresh water, but its crew still needs to eat. The U.S. Navy describes food as the primary limitation on the length of a submerged patrol, while an official U.S. Navy page for the Ohio-class submarine lists approximately 60 days of endurance with food supplies.
That does not mean a nuclear submarine must physically surface every time it needs supplies. Resupply can sometimes be conducted through specialized operations, but a submarine’s ability to remain completely independent is ultimately constrained by what it can carry and what its crew requires.
What about the people inside?
Keeping the machinery running is only half the challenge. Hundreds of sailors may spend months in a confined environment with no sunlight, limited personal space, and little contact with the outside world.
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History notes that nuclear submarines can operate submerged for months, while crews must cope with cramped living conditions and prolonged separation from their families. The U.S. Navy also studies the effects of disrupted sleep schedules, limited sunlight, and restricted exercise on submariners during long deployments.
That is why a nuclear submarine is better understood not simply as a warship with a reactor, but as a self-contained underwater city. The nuclear reactor supplies the energy needed to propel the vessel and operate its systems. Life-support equipment maintains the air. Desalination systems provide fresh water. Food stores sustain the crew.
Put those capabilities together, and a submarine no longer has to repeatedly return to the surface just to survive. That independence from the atmosphere is what transformed submarines from vessels that could briefly operate underwater into warships capable of remaining hidden beneath the ocean for months.
A Seattle-based company is set to boost autonomous operations in the U.S. Army. Overland AI, the leader in ground-based autonomous capabilities, has been selected by the U.S. Army’s Capability Program Executive (CPE) Mission Autonomy for the Engineer Autonomous Breaching Capability (EABC) initiative.
This $20 million contract signifies a broader shift from proving that autonomy works to delivering an operational breaching package that soldiers can employ.
Breaching mission can be executed most effectively with truly autonomous vehicles
“A breaching mission can be executed most effectively with truly autonomous vehicles,” said Byron Boots, co-founder and chief executive officer of Overland AI.
“Our proprietary software stack is the best solution for ensuring the safety of soldiers by modernizing the battlefield.”
The company revealed that its Overland AI’s software stack, OverDrive, can be integrated onto any ground vehicles to make them autonomous and enable multi-robot coordination. This technology is being leveraged for complex military operations such as breaching to overcome obstacles and facilitate the safe passage of follow-on forces.
With one operator to many robotic platforms, the company’s autonomous systems are designed to reduce the number of combat engineers needed to complete a breach. In doing so, we can reduce unnecessary risk to soldiers during these exceptionally hazardous missions. For operations that have historically cost many American lives, this shift has meaningful implications, according to a press release.
CPE Mission Autonomy was established to accelerate Army acquisition of autonomous mission capabilities, spanning software stacks, hardware platforms, and modular payloads. Along with its partners and subcontractors, Overland AI is delivering the full capability, from operator to battlefield effect.
Overland AI was selected for its innovative approach to autonomous breaching, honed through extensive work with warfighters across multiple combat engineer units and Department of War research labs, and more than 25 government demonstrations for DARPA, DIU, and the U.S. Army. The EABC program is designed to deliver a cohesive autonomous breaching package, and Overland AI is honored to bring this next generation capability to warfighters, as per the release.
Breaching is a critical combat-engineering function. Forces may need to create passages through obstacles so that troops, vehicles and other equipment can continue advancing. Traditionally, combat engineers must operate in highly exposed environments while identifying and overcoming these obstacles.
The EABC initiative seeks to change that equation by introducing autonomous systems into the process.
The objective is not simply to put a vehicle under remote control. Instead, the Army is pursuing a broader autonomous capability that combines vehicles, software, sensors, control systems and mission-specific equipment into a coordinated package.
That distinction is important as military organizations increasingly look at autonomy as a way to reduce human exposure to battlefield hazards.
The company says its approach has been developed through work with combat engineers, military research organizations and government programs. Overland AI also says it has conducted more than 25 government demonstrations involving organizations including DARPA, the Defense Innovation Unit and the U.S. Army.
This operational experience appears to have been an important factor in the company’s selection.
The Overland AI contract comes as the U.S. military is accelerating the integration of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems across multiple domains.
The Army has increasingly emphasized systems capable of operating with greater independence, while recent programs have explored autonomous intelligence, sensing, targeting, logistics and maneuver.
Cameron Stanley talks up ‘revolutionary’ AI capabilities and says Washington working with Nato and Five Eyes partners
The Pentagon’s top artificial intelligence official said on Tuesday that America’s closest allies lack the resources to keep pace with the US military’s adoption of AI, and that Washington is working to steer them away from mistakes it made along the way.
“They don’t have the resources that we do, they don’t have the experience that we do, they don’t have the scale that we do,” Cameron Stanley, chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at the Department of Defense, said at an event at the Billington Cybersecurity summit. Of Nato and the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing partnership of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Stanley said Washington was “actively working with a number of our partners” so “they don’t make the same mistakes that we make”.
As the National Park Service (NPS) continues highlighting the many roles of its parks during World War II, the western most landmass in the contiguous United States is getting its due: Olympic National Park.
First designated a monument by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1909 before President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s reclassification as a park in 1938, the 922,650 acre protected region in Washington State is also recognized by UNESCO as an International Biosphere Reserve. Olympic National Park includes temperate forests, stretches of Pacific coastline, as well as subalpine forests and meadows. Thanks to its location on an isolated peninsula, it’s also home to many endemic plant and animal species including the Olympic marmot (Marmota olympus) and Piper’s bellflower (Campanula piperi).
The national park received a lot of attention during WWII for very different reasons, however. Its history is laid out in a recent social media post by Pearl Harbor National Memorial due to an ongoing search-and-rescue operation in the park. Because the peninsula extends further west than any other landmass in the contiguous United States, military and government officials considered it one of the most strategic—and vulnerable—places in the nation. The nearby Strait of Juan de Fuca funneled all traffic to-and-from vital ports in Seattle and Tacoma, as well as the naval base in Bremerton.
Two of the outposts are still accessible by trail today. Credit: NPS
U.S. Army and Coast Guard engineers began installing 13 Aircraft Warning Service (AWS) stations throughout Olympic National Park in 1942, many from converted fire lookouts. Park rangers even staffed some of the stations, and continuously monitored the skies for potential aerial bombardments. The installations remained operational throughout the entire year, regardless of the region’s notorious winter storms.
The many logistical and environmental challenges were even documented by Olympic National Park’s superintendent. At one point, it took two days for a six-person resupply crew to toboggan the three miles to Hurricane Lookout. Another team of eight workers backpacked six miles to one of the park’s most remote posts while carrying 400 pounds of supplies.
The AWS ended in 1944, but two of the original outposts still exist and are accessible to park visitors. Dodger Point and Pyramid Peak can be reached after hiking a steep trail north of Lake Crescent.
Every week leading up to the 85th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, the National Park Service will take you across the country to explore America’s experience in World War II through the lens of national parks. The first week in the series also highlighted the roles of Golden Gate Recreation Area and Governors Island National Monument in protecting the coasts.
While American tech billionaires fret over the capabilities of Chinese AI, one national security advisor has a brilliant idea to flatten the competition: simply bomb their data centers to smithereens.
In a new report titled “Superpowers and AGI,” former Obama-era national security official Jacob Stokes calls for United States to begin preparing readiness drills in response to Chinese AI development — up to and including military strikes on the nation’s data centers, the South China Morning Post reported.
AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to the theoretical point at which an AI model achieves human, or superhuman, levels of reasoning and intelligence. Though the science is still out on whether such a system is even possible, Stokes’ report begins from the assumption that AGI is inevitable, and that if the US can’t get to it first, its military needs to prepare to take drastic action.
Referring to the US as a hypothetical “laggard state” behind China’s achievement of AGI, Stokes — now the deputy director of the Indo-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a prominent DC think tank — writes that the country could “try to sabotage the leading state’s AGI systems, either through physical infiltration or offensive cyber operations; that is, cyberattack.”
“Cyberattacks to sabotage AGI might not provoke large-scale retaliation,” Stokes considers, given that “cyberattacks are already to some extent considered normal state behavior below [the] threshold of war.”
But waging an unprecedented cyberwar is just one of many scenarios he outlines. As Stokes observes, AI doesn’t just live online; it also requires immense computing power from physical facilities to run.
“The final option,” therefore, “would be the most dangerous and carry the most escalation risk: kinetic attacks, meaning destroying things with missiles and bombs.”
“Data centers can be bombed with conventional munitions,” Stokes writes. (He’s not the first thinker to suggest bombings to stop powerful AI; in 2023, AI critic Eliezer Yudkowsky suggested that countries needed to be ready to “destroy a rogue data center by airstrike.”)
Of course, the China hawk isn’t numb to what such an attack would mean for the world.
“Bombing would cross a major threshold that heretofore has not been crossed in US-China relations,” Stokes continues. “Trying to think through the particulars of that will be especially important, in part because it will help policymakers… start to work backwards based on the unique nature of the technology, in the same way that in a past era, policymakers would learn about nuclear weapons.”
The difference is that nuclear weapons are physical objects which can be empirically observed. AGI, in contrast, remains a fantasy — albeit one which can evidently justify preparations to make war — not unlike the fiction of weapons of mass destruction which justified the brutal invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
And that’s not to mention the fact that China’s approach to AI development is dramatically different than the United States’, which currently leads the world in most large language model (LLM) benchmarks. If anybody is chasing AGI, it’s the US — which surely wouldn’t take kindly to news that Chinese leaders were organizing war games around its own AI development.
Even so, Stokes is undeterred in painting China as the ultimate boogeyman. He warns that Chinese AI companies could make a “surprise technological breakthrough” that brings it closer to AGI, and thus the ability to produce cutting-edge “offensive cyber tools — in other words, cyber weapons.”
Stokes, who previously served as national security advisor to then-vice president Joe Biden as well as the Department of Homeland Security, has long worried about the economic strength of the US relative to its chosen adversaries. Still, his latest comments mark a severe escalation, even for the US national security establishment.
While making a mountain out of a Chinese molehill, Stokes’ report also takes a blind eye to the present-day use of AI by his own country’s military. In Iran, for example, US forces have used LLMs like Claude and Grok to help plan out bombing campaigns — which may have played a role in the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school bombing, which killed over 150 elementary students and staff.
The United States’ 63 official National Parks are often renowned for their natural beauty, but many of them are also hubs of history. To help honor both the country’s 250th birthday and the upcoming 85th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than a dozen locations are participating in World War II Across America’s National Parks. According to a recent announcement, three parks from around the country will highlight “different parts of America’s wartime story, including both triumphs and tragedies” every week leading up to December 7.
“This list of parks is by no means exclusive, nor are the stories that will be shared,” park representatives wrote on social media. “They represent just a fraction of the war’s impact on our parks and the nation, with many of those impacts still felt today.”
Located in New York Harbor near Lower Manhattan, Governors Island National Monument commemorates the location of the Eastern Theater of Operations, later renamed the Eastern Defense Command in 1942. The U.S. established the military headquarters here two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This headquarters oversaw protecting the then 40 states, Washington D.C., as well as Army bases in Bermuda, Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland.
Governors Island also oversaw New York City’s defensive brownouts and blackouts to guard residents against any suspected aerial bombardments.
According to the National Park Service, Governors Island was the command headquarters and military post for the United States Army from 1794 until 1966. From 1966 to 1996 it was the US Coast Guard’s largest and most complex installation. Credit: STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images STAN HONDA
Anti-submarine nets, blackouts, and other domestic defences
On the other side of the country,the Golden Gate Recreation Area, was vital to the West Coast’s domestic defense during WWII. At the newly established Fort Cronkhite, thousands of troops in the Harbor Defenses of San Francisco mandated evening blackouts around the Bay Area, while maintaining an anti-submarine net, anti-aircraft weapons, and 600 underwater mines. The fort also included two 500-pound battery guns that were ready to aim at any potential incoming enemy naval vessels. Even today, many of the site’s hastily built, temporary wooden structures are still used by non-profit and educational park partners.
A sign for Golden Gate National Recreation Area near Crissy Field, in the Presidio, San Francisco, California. Credit: Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images Smith Collection/Gado
To keep up with the series, the National Park Service recommends following the #WWIINPS and #Freedom250 hashtags on social media. Next up for celebration: the Redwood National and State Parks.
Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.
The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.
US armored vehicles were being destroyed so quickly that they were “respawned” and sent back into the simulated fray, a US official told The Wall Street Journal. The US troops who participated in the exercise—held in Germany from April 9 to May 10—were on rotational deployment from Fort Hood, Texas.
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