An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: NASA scientists conducting surveys of arctic ice sheets in Greenland got an unprecedented view of an abandoned "city under the ice" built by the U.S. military during the Cold War. During a scientific flight in April 2024, a NASA Gulfstream III aircraft flew over the Greenland Ice Sheet carrying radar instruments to map the depth of the ice sheet and the layers of bedrock below it. The images revealed a new view of Camp Century, a Cold War-era U.S. military base consisting of a series of tunnels carved directly into the ice sheet. As it turns out, this abandoned "secret city" was the site of a secret Cold War project known as Project Iceworm which called for the construction of 2,500 miles (4,023 km) of tunnels that could be used to nuclear intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) at the Soviet Union. "We were looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century. We didn't know what it was at first," said NASA's Chad Greene, a cryospheric scientist at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in an agency statement. "In the new data, individual structures in the secret city are visible in a way that they've never been seen before." "Weapons, sewage, fuel and other contaminants were buried at Camp Century when it was abandoned, but the thawing Greenland Ice Sheet threatens to unbury these dangerous relics," reports Space.com. In 2017, the U.S. government issued a statement saying it "acknowledges the reality of climate change and the risk it poses" and will "work with the Danish government and the Greenland authorities to settle questions of mutual security" over Camp Century. Scientists are using Camp Century to serve as a warning and a signpost to measure how climate change is affecting the area. You can learn more about Camp Century in a restored declassified U.S. Army film on YouTube.

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Tuesday at California's Vandenberg Space Force base, the U.S. launched a Minuteman III missile, "in an important test of the weapon's ability to strike its targets with multiple warheads," according to Air and Space Forces magazine: The Minuteman III missiles that form a critical leg of the U.S. nuclear triad each carry one nuclear-armed reentry vehicle. But the missile that was tested carried three test warheads... The intercontinental ballastic missile (ICBM) test was controlled by an airborne command post in a test of the U.S. ability to launch its nuclear deterrent from a survivable platform.... Gen. Thomas A. Bussiere, the commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, said in a release: "An airborne launch validates the survivability of our ICBMs, which serve as the strategic backstop of our nation's defense and defense of allies and partners...." The three test reentry vehicles — one high-fidelity Joint Test Assembly, which carries non-nuclear explosives, and two telemetry Joint Test Assembly objects — struck the Reagan Test Site near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands roughly 30 minutes later after launch, a flight of about 4,200 miles. "They make up essentially a mock warhead," Col. Dustin Harmon, the commander of the 377th Test and Evaluation Group, the nation's operational ICBM test unit, said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine. "There's two different types. One is telemetered, so it's got a radio transmitter in it, it's got antennas, gyroscopes, accelerometers — all the things that can sense motion and movement. And we fly those or we can put one in there that's called a high-fidelity. That is assembled much like an actual weapon would be, except we use surrogate materials, and so we want it to fly similarly to an actual weapon. ... It has the explosives in it that a normal warhead would to drive a detonation, but there's nothing to drive...." The U.S. government formally notified Russia in advance of the launch in accordance with a 1988 bilateral agreement. More than 145 countries were also provided with advance notice of the launch under the Hague Code of Conduct — an international understanding on launch notifications. The U.S. also provided advance notice to China, a DOD spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine. China notified the U.S. of an ICBM launch over the Pacific Ocean in September. There is no formal agreement between Washington and Beijing that requires such notifications, but each side provided them to avoid miscalculations. Test launches happen three times a year, according to the article, yielding "several gigabytes of data" about reentry vehicles, subsystems, and payloads. "There are 400 Minuteman III missiles currently in service across Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming." Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader SonicSpike for sharing the article.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Royal Navy: The Royal Navy has successfully demonstrated the capabilities of ground-breaking cold atom technology. P2000 vessel HMS Pursuer hosted the trial, which unlocks new possibilities in areas such as covert monitoring, which require precise signals for accurate positioning, navigation and timing. The Office of the Chief of Technology Officer (OCTO) for the RN worked with UK quantum technology company Aquark Technologies. The trial involved the company's miniature cold atom systems, founded on Aquark's unique laser-cooling method, known as supemolasses. This method to generate cold atoms does not need an applied magnetic field, therefore reducing the size, weight, power consumption and cost of sensors. A cold atom is an atom that has been laser-cooled to extremely low temperatures, typically near absolute zero (-273.15C). At these temperatures, the thermal motion of atoms is very slow, allowing their quantum mechanical properties to be precisely controlled. Quantum Sensing is an advanced sensor technology that detects changes in motion, and electric and magnetic fields, by collecting data at the atomic level. Commander Matthew Steele, who heads up Future Technology for OCTO, said: "Quantum technologies being developed in the UK will offer an alternative Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) capability necessary to operate effectively in GPS denied or degraded environments." "Over the next three years, the Navy seeks to accelerate the development of quantum technologies -- such as Aquarks -- through funding and sea trials, to secure the Royal Navy an opportunity to invest in a non-GPS-based PNT capability and to maintain its global operating advantage."

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A commercial military simulation software, originally inspired by Tom Clancy novels, has become an unexpected tool for military training across NATO forces and defense analysts worldwide. Command: Professional Edition, developed by Britain's Slitherine Software, has secured contracts with the U.S. Air Force and British Strategic Command, while Taiwanese analysts use it to war-game potential conflicts with China. The software's success stems from its vast database of military equipment and capabilities, compiled through contributions from its million-strong user base. Marine Corps University's wargaming director Tim Barrick employs the software to train officers, noting its effectiveness in developing tactical creativity. "These are not simple problems," said Barrick, a retired Marine colonel, told WSJ. A fascinating excerpt from the report: Command's British publisher, Slitherine Software, stumbled into popularity. The family business got started around 2000 selling retail CD-ROM games like Legion, involving ancient Roman military campaigns. When Defense Department officials in 2016 first contacted Slitherine, which is based in an old house in a leafy London suburb, its father-and-son managers were so stunned they thought the call might be a prank. "Are you taking the piss?" J.D. McNeil, the father, recalled asking near the end of the conversation.

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SFGate spills the secrets of Disneyland's "Enchanted Tiki Room" and its lifelike animatronic singing birds — Jose, Fritz, Michael and Pierre — "whose movements were perfectly synced with the audio track." "Beneath the room, the heartbeat of the attraction is a $1 million installation of electronics equipment, operated by a roll of 14-channel magnetic tape," the Orange County Register wrote upon its opening. "It is the same system which programs the U.S. military's polaris missile." That system also ran very hot. To keep guests from overheating, air conditioning was installed throughout the building, making the Tiki Room Disneyland's first attraction to be fully air conditioned... Or, as another article puts it, "While Disney did not delve into the speculative science of cryogenics to preserve his life, he did borrow the mechanical brain of a nuclear missile to simulate life, creating a new type of entertainment in the process." The article remembers how Wernher Von Braun became a technical advisor (and on-camera presenter) for three Disney-produced TV episodes about space travel — at the same time Von Braun was working as technical director for the U.S. Army rocket program that produced the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile, plus the first submarine-launched ballistic missile with its ground-breaking launch control mechanism: An important aspect of the Polaris launch system hinged on the fact that the conditions under which the missiles might be launched were constantly changing. Different underwater currents, temperatures, and flexing of the metal hull all contributed to the difficulty of a successful launch. In order to minimize human errors and to automate the sequence as much as possible, scientists developed an audio control system. A magnetic audio tape with a series of prerecorded cues precisely timed to account for the submarine's movement, controlled the launch machinery. This new technology, invented to deliver nuclear destruction, proved exactly what Disney needed for his wonderland developed for children. The article concludes that Disneyland engineering "transformed Von Braun's military technology" to the point today where "what was once controlled by the artificial brain of a nuclear missile is now run by the equivalent of a MacBook." SFGate delves deeper into the attraction's strange origins — and how it all came full circle 63 years later... At the intersection of Main Street and Adventureland, a restaurant called the Pavillion — now the Jolly Holiday — bridged the gap. Under one roof, it served food to Main Street guests on one side and Adventureland diners on the other. The inelegant transition created an eyesore that Walt despised... The need for the Tiki Cafe "appeared to be less about food and more about aesthetics," Ken Bruce writes in Before the Birds Sang Words , a comprehensive history of the attraction. In 1961, Walt gathered with park designers about the concept. The sketch made by legendary theme park designer John Hench was remarkably thorough, with much of its design incorporated into the final product... When Walt saw a plethora of birds in the sketch, he famously exclaimed, "We can't have birds in there ... because they'll poop in the food." Hench hurriedly ad-libbed that the birds would be mechanical, a concept that Walt adored... Although its powerful air conditioning may be its biggest draw today, many attractions you love owe their existence to the flock of singing birds. Disney engineers' work on the talking flora and fauna laid the foundation for much more complex Audio-Animatronics (a word that Walt Disney coined). Without Jose, Fritz, Michael and Pierre, there would be no Haunted Mansion, no Pirates of the Caribbean, no Rise of the Resistance. Next year, in celebration of Disneyland's 70th anniversary, the park will unveil one of its most sophisticated animatronics yet: Walt Disney himself. It will be the first time Walt appears in a Disney attraction anywhere in the world, completing a journey that started with a mechanical bird and ends with an immortal homage. Their article also reveals that a year after the Tiki Room opened, one of the birds was programmed to say "Come, there's an island there for you in Hawaii. Soaring birds of United Airlines fly there too!" Because Disneyland had signed a sponsorship deal with United Airlines...

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An anonymous readed shared this report from CNN: [U.S. army boats] are poorly maintained and largely unprepared to meet the military's growing mission in the Pacific, a new government oversight report said this week. The Government Accountability Office released a report on Wednesday that concluded there are "wide-ranging" issues facing Army watercraft, which limit the Army's ability "to meet mission requirements in the Indo-Pacific theater where the need for Army watercraft is most pronounced." Despite Army policy requiring the vessels to be at least at a 90% mission capable rate — meaning the vessels are ready to perform their mission — the boats currently have a less than 40% capable rate this year. Overall, the fleet of watercraft has dropped by nearly half since 2018, going from 134 vessels to 70 as of May this year, in part due to divestment of vessels in 2018 and 2019... "Army boats have not been ready, capable, or in a mindset they'll have to do something dangerous or in the real world ... for decades now," a retired warrant officer and former chief engineer on Army watercraft told CNN at the time... [Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith] said that the Army is "actively" working to address gaps in the watercraft's capability as a whole, and prioritizing improving the current fleet while also "investing in a modernized fleet to meet the needs of the 2040 force." Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, told CNN that the Army is also looking at possibly replacing the existing fleet of Army watercraft with autonomous vessels in the future. "What we see is the oil industry and other shipping industries are doing this already, we see that happening all around the world," Butler said. "There's no reason the Army shouldn't be thinking that way ... leaders from down at ship level all the way to the Pentagon are looking at this and determining the best way to deploy our forces... "Maybe the future fleet is all autonomous, we just don't know," he said. "This is all stuff we're looking at in terms of trying to modernize the way we move people, weapons, and equipment." CNN notes that the report "also said the Army is considering leasing civilian watercraft to bolster its existing fleet and moving all of its watercraft to the Pacific." The report also included a response from Army Secretary Wormuth, who said the Army is "actively pursuing a holistic approach to mitigate the gaps in Army watercraft capability and capacity."

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The Wall Street Journal reports on a "suspicious fleet of unidentified aircraft... as many as a dozen or more" that appeared in Virginia 10 months ago "over an area that includes the home base for the Navy's SEAL Team Six and Naval Station Norfolk, the world's largest naval port." The article notes this was just 10 months after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon... After watching the drones — some "roughly 20 feet long and flying at more than 100 miles an hour" — there were weeks of meetings where "Officials from agencies including the Defense Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pentagon's UFO office joined outside experts to throw out possible explanations as well as ideas about how to respond..." Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn't qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway... Drone incursions into restricted airspace was already worrying national-security officials. Two months earlier, in October 2023, five drones flew over a government site used for nuclear-weapons experiments. The Energy Department's Nevada Nuclear Security Site outside Las Vegas detected four of the drones over three days. Employees spotted a fifth. U.S. officials said they didn't know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones... Over 17 days, the [Virginia] drones arrived at dusk, flew off and circled back... They also were nearly impossible to track, vanishing each night despite a wealth of resources deployed to catch them. Gen. Glen VanHerck, at the time commander of the U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said drones had for years been spotted flying around defense installations. But the nightly drone swarms over Langley [Air Force base], he said, were unlike any past incursion... Analysts learned that the smaller quadcopters didn't use the usual frequency band available for off-the-shelf commercial drones — more evidence that the drone operators weren't hobbyists. "Langley officials canceled nighttime training missions, worried about potential collisions with the drone swarm, and moved the F-22 jet fighters to another base... On December 23, the drones made their last visit." But toward the end of the article, it notes that "In January, authorities found a clue they hoped would crack the case." It was a student at the University of Minnesota named Fengyun Shi — who was reported flying a drone on a rainy morning near a Virginia shipyard that builds nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. Their drone got stuck in a tree, and ended up with federal investigators who found "Shi had photographed Navy vessels in dry dock, including shots taken around midnight. Some were under construction at the nearby shipyard." On Jan. 18, federal agents arrested Shi as he was about to board a flight to China on a one-way ticket. Shi told FBI agents he was a ship enthusiast and hadn't realized his drone crossed into restricted airspace. Investigators weren't convinced. but found no evidence linking him to the Chinese government. They learned he had bought the drone on sale at a Costco in San Francisco the day before he traveled to Norfolk. U.S. prosecutors charged Shi with unlawfully taking photos of classified naval installations, the first case involving a drone under a provision of U.S. espionage law. The 26-year-old Chinese national pleaded guilty and appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Oct. 2 for sentencing. Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leonard said he didn't believe Shi's story — that he had been on vacation and was flying drones in the middle of the night for fun. "There's significant holes," the judge said in court. "If he was a foreign agent, he would be the worst spy ever known," said Shi's attorney, Shaoming Cheng. "I'm sorry about what happened in Norfolk," Shi said before he was sentenced to six months in federal prison. But "U.S. officials have yet to determine who flew the Langley drones or why..." "U.S. officials confirmed this month that more unidentified drone swarms were spotted in recent months near Edwards Air Force Base, north of Los Angeles."

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Former Ukranian officer Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov created a Signal channel where military communications specialists could talk with civilian radio experts, reports MIT's Technology Review. But radio communications are crucial for drones, so... About once a month, he drives hundreds of kilometers east in a homemade mobile intelligence center: a black VW van in which stacks of radio hardware connect to an array of antennas on the roof that stand like porcupine quills when in use. Two small devices on the dash monitor for nearby drones. Over several days at a time, Flash studies the skies for Russian radio transmissions and tries to learn about the problems facing troops in the fields and in the trenches. He is, at least in an unofficial capacity, a spy. But unlike other spies, Flash does not keep his work secret. In fact, he shares the results of these missions with more than 127,000 followers — including many soldiers and government officials — on several public social media channels. Earlier this year, for instance, he described how he had recorded five different Russian reconnaissance drones in a single night — one of which was flying directly above his van... Drones have come to define the brutal conflict that has now dragged on for more than two and a half years. And most rely on radio communications — a technology that Flash has obsessed over since childhood. So while Flash is now a civilian, the former officer has still taken it upon himself to inform his country's defense in all matters related to radio... Flash has also become a source of some controversy among the upper echelons of Ukraine's military, he tells me. The Armed Forces of Ukraine declined multiple requests for comment, but Flash and his colleagues claim that some high-ranking officials perceive him as a security threat, worrying that he shares too much information and doesn't do enough to secure sensitive intel... [But] His work has become greatly important to those fighting on the ground, and he recently received formal recognition from the military for his contributions to the fight, with two medals of commendation — one from the commander of Ukraine's ground forces, the other from the Ministry of Defense... And given the mounting evidence that both militaries and militant groups in other parts of the world are now adopting drone tactics developed in Ukraine, it's not only his country's fate that Flash may help to determine — but also the ways that armies wage war for years to come. He's also written guides on building cheap anti-drone equipment...

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In a rare disclosure, the U.S. Space Force announced that its secretive X-37B spaceplane will execute a series of maneuvers before returning back to Earth. SpaceNews reports: The reusable spacecraft, which has been in orbit since December 28, 2023, will perform aerobraking maneuvers to alter its trajectory around Earth, the Space Force said Oct. 10. This technique involves making multiple passes through the planet's upper atmosphere, using atmospheric drag to modify the vehicle's orbit while conserving fuel. These maneuvers also are intended to showcase responsible space operations, the Space Force said. The aerobraking enables the spaceplane to change orbits and comply with space debris mitigation rules by safely discarding the service module. The X-37B, manufactured by Boeing, is jointly operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Since its launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the spaceplane has been conducting radiation effect experiments and testing space domain awareness technologies in a highly elliptical orbit. [...] After completing its aerobraking maneuvers, the X-37B will resume its testing and experimentation objectives. Once these are accomplished, the vehicle will de-orbit and return to Earth, utilizing its autonomous landing system to touch down horizontally like a conventional aircraft. The Space Force has not disclosed the expected duration of the current mission.

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The Washington Post interviewed Lebanese officials, people close to Hezbollah, and Israeli, Arab and U.S. security officials and politicians about a years-long plan (originated at Mossad headquarters) that ultimately killed or maimed "as many as 3,000 Hezbollah officers and members — most of them rear-echelon figures... along with an unknown number of civilians... when Israel's Mossad intelligence service triggered the devices remotely on September 17." In the initial sales pitch to Hezbollah two years ago, the new line of Apollo pagers seemed precisely suited to the needs of a militia group with a sprawling network of fighters and a hard-earned reputation for paranoia... Best of all, there was no risk that the pagers could ever be tracked by Israel's intelligence services. Hezbollah's leaders were so impressed they bought 5,000 of them and began handing them out to mid-level fighters and support personnel in February. None of the users suspected they were wearing an ingeniously crafted Israeli bomb... Israeli officials had watched with increasing anxiety as the Lebanese group added new weapons to an arsenal already capable of striking Israeli cities with tens of thousands of precision-guided missiles. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service responsible for combating foreign threats to the Jewish state, had worked for years to penetrate the group with electronic monitoring and human informants. Over time, Hezbollah leaders learned to worry about the group's vulnerability to Israeli surveillance and hacking, fearing that even ordinary cellphones could be turned into Israeli-controlled eavesdropping and tracking devices. Thus was born the idea of creating a kind of communications Trojan horse, the officials said. Hezbollah was looking for hack-proof electronic networks for relaying messages, and Mossad came up with a pair of ruses that would lead the militia group to purchase devices that seemed perfect for the job — equipment that Mossad designed and had assembled in Israel. The first part of the plan, booby-trapped walkie-talkies, began being inserted into Lebanon by Mossad nearly a decade ago, in 2015. The mobile two-way radios contained oversized battery packs, a hidden explosive and a transmission system that gave Israel complete access to Hezbollah communications. For nine years, the Israelis contented themselves with eavesdropping on Hezbollah, the officials said, while reserving the option to turn the walkie-talkies into bombs in a future crisis. But then came a new opportunity and a glitzy new product: a small pager equipped with a powerful explosive. In an irony that would not become clear for many months, Hezbollah would end up indirectly paying the Israelis for the tiny bombs that would kill or wound many of its operatives. Because Hezbollah leaders were alert to possible sabotage, the pagers could not originate in Israel, the United States or any other Israeli ally. So, in 2023, the group began receiving solicitations for the bulk purchase of Taiwanese-branded Apollo pagers, a well-recognized trademark and product line with a worldwide distribution and no discernible links to Israeli or Jewish interests. The Taiwanese company had no knowledge of the plan, officials said... The marketing official had no knowledge of the operation and was unaware that the pagers were physically assembled in Israel under Mossad oversight, officials said... In a feat of engineering, the bomb component was so carefully hidden as to be virtually undetectable, even if the device was taken apart, the officials said. Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah did disassemble some of the pagers and may have even X-rayed them. "Thousands of Apollo-branded pagers rang or vibrated at once, all across Lebanon and Syria," according to the article, with a short sentence in Arabic that said "You received an encrypted message." The two-button de-encryption procedure "ensured most users would be holding the pager with both hands when it detonated," according to the article, although "Less than a minute later, thousands of other pagers exploded by remote command, regardless of whether the user ever touched his device. The following day, on September 18, hundreds of walkie-talkies blew up in the same way, killing and maiming users and bystanders..." "As Hezbollah reeled, Israel struck again, pounding the group's headquarters, arsenals and logistic centers with 2,000-pound bombs," the article concludes. And the strike "convinced the country's political leaders that Hezbollah could be put on the ropes, susceptible to a systematic dismantling using airstrikes and, eventually a ground invasion..."

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