Meet the Buoyant Airborne Turbine (BAT), developed by Altaeros Energies, a four-year-old company founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In essence, the BAT is a 60-foot-diameter helium aerostat with a lightweight three-blade-rotor spinning inside. As you would expect, the BAT can take to the sky at heights around 2,000 feet, but unlike other aerostats, the BAT is […]
The latest satellite imagery from Digital Globe suggests Iran has built a mock-up of a US aircraft carrier which may be used for target practice according to US officials. Eric Schmitt writing for The New York Times reports that Iran is building a mock-up Nimitz class aircraft carrier at the ISOICO shipyard near Bander Abbas. […]
Guy Anderson from IHS Jane’s talks about the military industrial dimension between Russia and the Ukraine. If you were already familiar with Soviet supply chains, one might have already guessed the major take-away: Ukraine has much of its defense industrial base concentrated in the Crimea with 13 organizations in total. These firms have played an […]
Ukraine Leading up to the referendum which will undoubtedly provide Russia with the justification to annex the Crimea, the United States and Europe find themselves in a precarious position — what to do about Russia? Militarily, the West is at a loss. No one wants to use force and let the issue slip into a […]
It’s great to see this next bit of news while the Raptopoulos TED talk is still fresh. According to multiple sources, Facebook is in negotiations to buy a drone manufacturer (possibly Titan Aerospace) with the aim of using its high-altitude UAVs to beam internet connections to isolated communities in Africa. Although not surprising considering the success of […]
IHS Jane’s has provided a quick and dirty assessment of Russian and Ukraine military forces. As one would already suspect there’s really no comparison to be made. The Russian military simply has the numbers and more training than their Ukrainian counterparts as suggested by their defense budgets at USD 69 billion and USD 2 billion, […]
