Pentagon trying to try trim 5% off of $12 billion price of 130 F35 plane order

The Pentagon, under the direction of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, has been exploring how to cut the costs of its most expensive weapons program. The deal for last year’s annual purchase contract, struck this February, put the standard takeoff and landing version of the jet at the lowest price ever, $94.6 million, a 7.3 …

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China building 40,000 ton helicopter aircraft carrier and increasing number of marines

China has started building a new generation of large 40,000 ton amphibious assault vessels. They are helicopter aircraft carriers. The amphibious vessel is far larger than similar ships formerly constructed for the PLA Navy. Construction of the Type 075 ships will take two more years. The first will be launched as early as 2019 and …

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DARPA Hybrid Electric VTOL X-Plane could be twice as fast as helicopters and twice as efficient

DARPA has completed flight-testing of a sub-scale version of a novel aircraft design as part of its vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) X-Plane program, and is proceeding with work to develop a full-scale version of the groundbreaking plane. Developed and fabricated by Aurora Flight Sciences, the revolutionary aircraft includes 24 electric ducted fans—18 distributed within …

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China’s fifth generation J20 fighter is not as stealthy as F22 an is still a few years from a competitive engine

The Center for Strategic and International Studies provides a detailed review of the capabilities of China J-20 stealth fighter. The J-20 provides China with a variety of previously unavailable air combat options and enhances its capability to project power. The J-20 is believed to be equipped with subsystems and field signature reduction technology that collectively …

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New version of the Boeing F18 would work with F-35s

Boeing is developing a new Block III version of its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet to complement the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The most important upgrade is long-range IRST system—which is designed to be a counter-stealth sensor, Gillian said. The Navy considers this essential to countering new enemy stealth aircraft such as the Chinese J-20 …

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Hybrid electric passenger jets could be commercialized by a Boeing and Jet Blue backed startup in the 2020s

The United States has 13500 small airports but 140 of largest carry over 97% of the air traffic. Zunum Aero (a startup backed by Boeing and Jet Blue) believes electric aircraft of varying sizes are ideally suited to this critical need, requiring little support other than a GPS flightpath and a quick recharge or swap …

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Russia’s PAK FA fifth generation stealth fighter improved engine testing is delayed a year

Tests of the second-stage engine for Russia’s fifth-generation PAK FA fighter jet have been delayed a year and will start in 2018. Previously trials of the PAK FA main engine were due to begin in 2017, with the entire project to be completed by 2020. The next-generation Saturn izdeliye 30—sometime referred to as the izdeliye …

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Future Human lifespan 140 years, 500 years, 1000 years or indefinite with aging damage repair and aging reversal

Speaking at the Aspen Abu Dhabi Ideas Forum, Dr Brad Perkins, chief medical officer, Human Longevity, said: “Right now the most daunting and expensive human health problem that the world is facing is age related chronic disease. Our hypothesis at Human Longevity is that genomics and the technologies that support its application in medicine and …

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New Materials Could Turn Water into the Fuel of the Future and puts chemical fuels from sunlight on the fast track to commercial viability

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have—in just two years—nearly doubled the number of materials known to have potential for use in solar fuels. They did so by developing a process that promises to speed the discovery of commercially viable generation of …

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Google lawsuit against Uber could mean multi-billion dollar settlement and possibly jail for some

Google’s Waymo self driving car company has sued Uber. The lawsuit alleges former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski secretly downloaded 14,000 files proprietary technical files before leaving to found self-driving truck startup Otto. Uber acquired Otto last summer and put Levandowski in charge of its self-driving efforts. Wired describes the situation. “From what we know in …

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Superconductivity in a chiral nanotube

Scientists have found that a superconducting current flows in only one direction through a chiral nanotube, marking the first observation of the effects of chirality on superconductivity. Until now, superconductivity has only been demonstrated in achiral materials, in which the current flows in both directions equally. Chiral superconductivity combines two typically unrelated concepts in a …

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