Lifeboat Foundation

Japan and U.S have agreed to Tokyo’s contribution for hosting U.S. military forces to 9.2 Billion dollars over the five-year period from fiscal 2022, which starts in April, government sources said.

Roughly 5% increase in so-called host nation support came in response to calls from the administration of U.S president Joe Biden for the Japanese government to foot more of the cost, given the need for U.S. forces to deal with China.

The two sides have agreed to reduce Tokyo’s financial contribution for utility costs, with the increased amount to be allocated to funding expenses such as maintenance of facilities used by both Japan’s self-Defence Forces and the U.S. military as well as their joint exercise.

Taiwan’s spycatchers are battling a sustained Chinese espionage campaign. Even the security detail of President Tsai Ing-wen has been compromised.

The operation detailed in these documents shows how Beijing allegedly sought out commanders in the Taiwan military and induced them to become spies. It comes amid a series of convictions for military espionage in Taiwan in recent years. Those cases reveal that China has mounted a broader campaign to undermine the democratic island’s military and civilian leadership, corrode its will to fight, extract details of high-tech weapons and gain insights into defense planning, according to senior retired Taiwanese military officers and current counter-espionage agents, as well as former U.S. military and intelligence officers with experience in Taiwan.

Taiwan’s spycatchers are battling a campaign that has compromised senior officers at the heart of the island’s armed forces and government agencies, a steady stream of convictions handed down in the courts shows.

Continue reading “Chinese spies have penetrated Taiwan’s military, case documents reveal” »

=O-O=.

Moscow — President Vladimir Putin used some of his most direct language to date on Tuesday in his escalating standoff with the U.S. and its European allies. The Russian leader warned that if the U.S. and NATO do not halt what Moscow considers aggressive actions along the country’s border with Ukraine 0, Russia would respond in a “retaliatory military” manner.

“If the obviously aggressive line of our Western colleagues continues, we will take adequate, retaliatory military-technical measures [and] react toughly to unfriendly steps,” Putin told senior military officials during a meeting in remarks carried by Russian state TV. “I want to emphasize that we have every right to do so.”

Continue reading “Putin threatens ‘retaliatory military-technical’ measures as standoff with U.S. and NATO over Ukraine escalates” »

Occasionally, there are things that Google Maps can’t find but a B-2 stealth bomber is not among them, according to a Redditor.

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China operates Russian Sukhoi SU-35 fighter jet. Armed with PL-15 missiles, Su-35 can pose a big challenge to F-35 or F-22 stealth aircraft.

JF-22 will reach speeds of up to Mach 30.

A Chinese physicist revealed that a new wind tunnel in Beijing will “soon” be unveiled that will put China decades ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to testing hypersonic weapons technology, a South China Morning Post article reveals.

In an online lecture last week, Han Guilai, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, revealed new information about the JF-22 wind tunnel in Beijing, which will be capable of simulating flights at Mach 30 — 30 times the speed of sound and approximately 6.2 miles (10 km) per second. The launch date for the JF-22 wind tunnel is currently classified.

Continue reading “A New Hypersonic Wind Tunnel Will Put China ‘20 to 30 Years Ahead’ of the West” »

Who better to answer the pros and cons of artificial intelligence than an actual AI?

Students at Oxford’s Said Business School hosted an unusual debate about the ethics of facial recognition software, the problems of an AI arms race, and AI stock trading. The debate was unusual because it involved an AI participant, previously fed with a huge range of data such as the entire Wikipedia and plenty of news articles.

Continue reading “AI debates its own ethics at Oxford University, concludes the only way to be safe is ‘no AI at all’” »

It may have seemed like an obscure United Nations conclave, but a meeting this week in Geneva was followed intently by experts in artificial intelligence, military strategy, disarmament and humanitarian law.

The reason for the interest? Killer robots — drones, guns and bombs that decide on their own, with artificial brains, whether to attack and kill — and what should be done, if anything, to regulate or ban them.

Once the domain of science fiction films like the “Terminator” series and “RoboCop,” killer robots, more technically known as Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, have been invented and tested at an accelerated pace with little oversight. Some prototypes have even been used in actual conflicts.

The U.S. Air Force has failed for a third time to conduct a successful test of the rocket booster on a prototype AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon hypersonic missile, or ARRW. This can only add to the palatable frustration within the service, as well as elsewhere in the U.S. military and in Congress, about the progress, or lack thereof, in the testing of various new hypersonic weapons.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Command’s Armament Directorate confirmed to The War Zone today that another attempted ARRW flight test had failed on Dec. 15, 2021. The Air Force says that it has not yet determined the cause of the issue that led to the test being aborted. The prototype missile never left the wing of the B-52H bomber carrying it.