For a few hundred years, the best way to build a battleship was to put a bunch of cannons on it, reinforce the hull, and then maneuver it to blow up another battleship. A century of change in naval warfare means no one really fields battleships anymore (there are a couple of edge cases). Instead the sea is ruled by a complex mix of aircraft carriers, escort ships, and submarines. The best explanation for our post-Battleship presence comes from the greatest naval battle of the first World War. Begun 100 years ago today, the Battle of Jutland pitted the British navy against the German fleet. This video, narrated by Nick Jellicoe, grandson of Britain's Admiral Jellicoe, who commanded the battle, walks through the battle itself.
To accompany its new aircraft carriers and destroyers, China is acquiring a fleet of heavy support ships that will enable naval and amphibious assault operations around the world. Rounding out China's heavy sea lift operation is the Guang Hua Kou, which was launched at the Guangdong Shipyard International (also builder to many other Chinese naval supply and logistic ships) on April 28, 2020. Built for COSCO Heavy Transport, a state owned shipping line, the 98,000 ton Guang Hua Kou is one of the largest heavy lift semi-submersible ship in the world. While owned by a civilian company, albeit state owned, the Guang Hua Kou is almost certainly available to the PLAN for peacetime and wartime usage.
A weird and totally true thing about the modern world is that whoever gets to be President of the United States has 7,100 nuclear warheads at their command. Theorized in the 1930s and first built and used in the 1940s, these weapons shape the outer bounds of human conflict: they're powerful, they're terrible, there is not much we can do about them, and they're waiting to end the world the moment an equal number of Russian nukes launch. Should that fateful day come to pass, we'll initiate the apocalypse with another similarly anachronistic technology: floppy disks.
Nicknamed "silent professionals," America's Special Operations Forces exist on the edge of war, moving behind and around front lines, preparing battles behind the scenes. They are as protected by obscurity as they are their own skill, which means that when they move around, it's best if they can do it without any loud engines giving them away.
Imagine a plant that changes color in the presence of a land mine and alerts unwary people to a danger beneath their feet. It's an idea that has inspired a number of groups, including a Danish company, which developed arabidopsis plants to turn red in the presence of explosives that have leached into the soil. At first glance, it's the perfect combination of humanitarian appeal and high-tech cool. So, why aren't land mine-detecting plants already here? Because it's bad biodesign.
America's stealth F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive fighter program in history, isn't exclusively made for the Pentagon. Besides America's Navy, Marines, and Air Force, nine other nations signed on to receive F-35s from Lockheed Martin, and today, a pair of F-35s are arriving in the Netherlands.
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