Moving an army is no easy task, and it's even harder when that army wants to travel by air. Working with NASA and the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army is developing a new fleet of helicopters to carry troops into battle, and into the future. Some helicopter designs from the early 1960s are still in use. There's been decades of innovation since then, and as we can see from the artist's rendering above, the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator design could be radically new.
In a move that surprised no one, President Obama vetoed legislation that would have permitted construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Federal Aviation Administration did something rather remarkable on Sunday: they proposed a new set of drone rules. For years, drone hobbyists and businesses have been left in limbo, flying in unregulated skies and wondering whether they were unintentionally breaking the law. In 2012, Congress mandated that the FAA offer new rules for small unmanned aircraft by 2015, and breaking with expectations, the FAA actually delivered.
This week the United States announced that, for the first time, it will sell armed drones to select allied nations. Over the past decade, drones have become something of a poster child for America's war on terror. While selling Predators and Reapers to other countries might raise a few eyebrows, the State Department announcement goes to great lengths to clarify sharing this technology doesn't carry with it any major risk.
No military technology is perhaps more viscerally upsetting than the idea of a machine, armed with a gun, making the decision on its own to kill people. It's a theme throughout dystopian fiction and films, and it animates protests against drones, despite the fact that military drones still have humans at the controls. Autonomy for weapons--where a gun turret or future machine will be programmed to press the trigger on its own--is a definite possibility in future wars. A new report from the Center for New American Security, a Washington D.C. think tank, wants to guide us calmly into understanding this future of armed thinking machines.
