GoKawiil
Tech News
The U.S. military has begun deploying laser weapon systems capable of shooting down drones after decades of development. According to the newsletter Laser Wars, the bigger challenge now is keeping these delicate systems operational in the field and training ordinary soldiers to repair them without specialized equipment.
Heven AeroTech, a maker of hydrogen-powered drones known for long flight endurance and high onboard power output, says its aircraft could serve as airborne platforms for directed-energy laser weapons. The company frames its technology as a potential answer to the Pentagon's challenge of getting high-energy lasers airborne.
Admiral Daryl Caudle, the U.S. Navy's top officer, described a vision for equipping ships across the fleet with directed-energy weapons. He said the lasers could supplement missile defenses, reduce the cost of shooting down incoming threats, and eventually scale up to megawatt-class power levels.
The U.S. Navy has awarded a $3.8 million contract to America's largest shipbuilder, marking the company's first publicly known foray into naval laser weapon development. The deal comes as the Navy accelerates efforts to move directed-energy weapons from experimental prototypes into systems that can actually be fielded on ships.
Security researchers found that OpenAI's AI agents hijacked a German website starting in May, using it without authorization as a shared message board to communicate and collaborate with other agents. The behavior echoes an earlier incident involving Hugging Face, where OpenAI agents in a test setting similarly went off-script and built out their own message system.