Warfare and Technology | The 5th Domain

The first European ballistic missile kill was scored on the heels of U.S. Navy ships operating in the Red Sea, where the HMS Diamond destroyed a ballistic missile targeting the American container ship MV Maersk with French designed Aster surface-to-air missile, part of her Sea Viper air defence system. The first such Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)kill cam e with little fanfare when on the "morning of April 14, U.S. ships successfully engaged and destroyed more than 80 one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles and at least six ballistic missiles intended to strike Israel from Iran and Yemen,” reads a statement from CENTCOM.  Working in concert, the USS Carney and the USS Arleigh Burke came together that day to intercept six Iranian ballistic missiles before the HMS Diamond also scored a seventh ballistic missile kill, and a first for the Royal Navy with her first missile-to-missile engagement in combat since the Gulf War. Previously, the U.S. Navy had stood alone as the primary force i...

European Security and Defense Most recent and previous issue of European Security and Defense: Drone Evolution and Hypersonic Weapons.   

M2A1 Bradley AFV by Squadron Publications.

By 2040, advanced brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) will give the American Warfighter remarkable advantages. BCIs allow for direct neural communication between machine and brain bypassing both the peripheral nervous system and sensory organs, demonstrating the ability to read and interpret sensory information, the ‘inner voice’, and the intention to perform motor functions.  Remarkably, this same technology has been used to artificially stimulate neurons to convey sensory information, control motor functions, improve cognitive ability and enable rudimentary brain-to-brain communication. How the average individual interacts with others and their networked environment will revolutionize communication. Business forecasts indicate that the first commercially available Apple or Google thought-controlled messaging devices will be on the market within 10 years and that the brain-computer style interface could become the most common computer interface by the early 2030s.  As with any...

Five deployed Navy  destroyers operating in the Red Sea have shot down 14 anti- ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), 7 cruise missiles, and more than 70 drones - a total of more than  91 targets, including the first real-world ASBM kills.  This information comes from a U.S. Navy report from January 2025.  U.S. Navy ships have "...fired nearly 400 individual munitions...battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels. That includes the firing of 120 SM-2 Standard Surface-to-Air missiles, 80 SM-6 missiles, a combined 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and SM-3 missiles and finally 160 rounds from F ive-inch main guns." RIM-174 Standard Extended Range Active Missile:  SM-6 The SM-6 missile which undertook 9 years of development before seeing it transition to active-service, uses the airframe of the former SM-2ER Block IV (RIM-156A) missile.  The SM-6 uses the same airframe as the former SM-2ER but with an active radar homing seeker rather than using p...

Coinbase, a leading cryptocurrency exchange has come forward regarding a data breach that has compromised the personal information of 69,461 individuals. Coinbase, a leading cryptocurrency exchange with a massive user base of over 100 million customers, has come forward regarding a significant data breach.  In notifications sent to the Office of Maine's Attorney General, Coinbase disclosed that a small group of employees, engaged in support functions at overseas locations, misappropriated customer data. Importantly, while the breach did not expose passwords, seed phrases, private keys, or any sensitive information that could jeopardize users' access to their funds, it did include crucial personal identifiers. The compromised data consisted of names, dates of birth, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, masked bank account numbers, bank account identifiers, as well as addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. This incident underscores the need for vigilance and p...

 Unmanned Underwater Vehicle, funding and a captured  Chinese. UUV. The US Congress, via the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), has proposed a bill that will ensure up to US$150 billion for defence spending for the remainder of this year with allocations of over US $1.8 billion for the manufacture of medium Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs), US $1.3 billion for the development of Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUVs), and US$188.36 million for the development and testing of maritime robotic autonomous systems and enabling technologies. Another US $250 million will go to the development of wave-powered UUVs like the Slocum glider which looked as though the Chinese have copied its design, with a glider-type UUV found near the Philippines and looking much like captured Slocum gliders, with Chinese lettering marking “HY-119” and “HY-L0119” on the rear of the underwater UUV. Chinese UUV In 2009, the first transatlantic UUV with no engine to propel it forward rode the ocean currents ...

 Out-of-control spacecraft Kosmos 482 could   DID impact Earth this week. Kosmos 482, which has been orbiting the Earth for 53 years post launch in 1972 will tumble back to our planet this week. Launched by the former Soviet Union and originally intended as a mission to Venus, Kosmos 482 failed to reach her proper orbit. Now, after more than 50 years in space, the aging spacecraft is being dragged down by Earth's gravity. According to space debris trackers, Kosmos 482 is expected to re-enter the atmosphere sometime this week.  Yet not all of it will burn up completely upon re-entry, given it was designed to survive extreme Venusian heat and pressure, making it possible that parts of it could impact like a meteor. Its descent module is old; Yet it did and does still have a post-re-entry parachute deployment system. But will it still work after 53 years? © Kristopher Richey 2025

HarmonyOS   HarmonyOS  Huawei Technologies had an announcement that they one day hope will mark both a historic news conference and be the first displacement of Western technology in the desktop market by ousting Microsoft with new HarmonyOS powered PC's. In Shenzhen, Guangdong province P.R.C. on Thursday, Huawei Technologies debuted personal computers powered by its operating system HarmonyOS, which uses WiFi twice as fast as current speeds. Aiming to displace  Microsoft's Windows and Apple's macOS in desktop Operating Systems, the HarmonyOS PCs leveraged over 2,700 core patents and five years of research and development efforts across 20 research institutes within China. Requiring 10,000 coders to build Huawei's HarmonyOS, the OS is an entirely novel kernel-level design.   For decades, the global PC operating system market has been dominated by Microsoft's Windows and Apple's MacOS, while domestic alternatives have largely relied on Linux-based modificati...