Sarcos is still moving ahead with their exoskeleton project. Here's a video that was posted on Live Leak:

At the moment the suit has battery power for about 30 minutes worth of use. In these demonstrations the suit is wired up to a power source. The current suit generates about 20 times the wearer's strength. A software engineer named Rex Jameson was wearing the suit for some of the publicity events. He mentioned that there is a strange delay in the suit's response time to the wearer's actions. Apparently this just takes some getting used to and doesn't hinder performance. He said the learning curve was, "to relax and trust the robot".

Two days ago the NFIRE satellite was launched from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. After the launch US Department of Defense people said that the NFIRE satellite would be researching heat signatures of rocket plumes. It was immediately suggested by critics of NFIRE that the project would be a stepping stone towards creating the long sought after US missile defense shield. after the launch of the NFIRE satellite system Vladimir Putin threatens to pull Russia out of the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty. Putin claims his threat is in response to US plans to develop a missile defense shield.

The Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia launched the NFIRE satellite yesterday. The NFIRE satellite is designed to watch ground based missiles. The acronym stands for Near Field Infared Experiment and will be studying images of plumes from missile launches. Supporters of the program (Missile Defense Agency, Defense Department) claim that the project is only for research and testing purposes. Critics (Russia, China, Helen Caldicott) says that the testing is part of the missile defense shield project and an irrevocable step towards the milit

NASA is testing a portable surgery robot in an underwater testing environment. The test will involve a remote surgeon sewing a tear in a rubber tube and conducting a skill test used for student doctors. The delay time between the movement of the robot and the feedback to the surgeon will be about 1 second. The connection will travel via 'a commercial Internet connection' from Seattle to Key Largo, FL. Then by wireless connection to a bouy. The Raven portable medical robot is tethered to the bouy. There is no further description of the internet connection used in the article...ISDN? IP2 with standard of service protocol?

DefenseTech talks about a new legal interpretation of the rules governing unmanned combat. Rules are currently interpreted as meaning that an unmanned robotic weapon system cannot fire without a human operator in the control loop. A new 'interpretation', or loop hole, is to re-program robots to aim only at weapons. They should be allowed to fire at weapons under the law. While a novel interpretation, I think it would be relatively easy to conceal the shape of a weapon if you knew that a robot would only fire on a weapon.

The idea is the brain child of John S.

The Pentagon is toying with the idea of space based solar arrays accoring to MSNBC. The arrays would allow the military to power their equipment in remote locations, as well as provide power at all times of the day. The whole project goes under the 'maybe' category at the moment with Michael Hornitschek, part of the Air Force staff at the Pentagon, seeking funding from The National Security Space Office (NSSO).

The project sounds similar to an idea from the L5 society in the 70's. Although the L5 idea was to build large human colonies that would beam energy back to earth.

A Small Russian weather satellite recently ceased to exist. The Russians say that the US blasted it with an earth based laser, or communications jamming equipment. The US denies these claims. The US puts forth the alternate proposition that it was hit by space junk. The Russians say that if it was hit by space junk there would be more debris, apparently no debris was tracked. The Russians also say that the weather satellite was working fine until it the orbit placed in into a radar dead zone for about one hour. Once it was again visible on radar, the satelitte was no longer responding.

The US Air force launched a clutch of satellites from Cape Canaveral Thursday night. The satellites are part of a DARPA funded project called Orbital Express. The clutch consists of five NextSat satellites, which have reportedly been launched to study atmospheric conditions and collect data. The sixth satellite of the clutch is the ASTRO, a repair satellite. The ASTRO satellite is testing service and refueling techniques. The ASTRO can attach to working satellites to replace defective parts or provide additional prope

Some folks think that Iran's recent missile launches may have a military goal. According to the article, the intent may be to develop long range ballistic missile capabilities, or trying to launch military satellites.

Given that the Chinese have demonstrated the capability to obliterate satellites in low earth orbit, what does this mean for US military capabilities?

What do we know from publicly available sources?

1. The Chinese have blown up a satelitte in low earth orbit. Low Earth Orbit being commonly defined as 200 - 2000 km above the earth.
2. In the fall of 2006 the Chinese succeeded in illuminating a US satelitte with a laser. This was known by US intelligence agencies.
3. The Project for the New American Century stated in their 2000 defense review that one important objective for the US should be the 'control of space and cyberspace'. This document has been followed extensively by the Bush administration and the military over the last 7 years. There is no reason to suspect that the US military would have slacked on 'control of space' while completing all other objectives. And in fact there is evidence to support that the US has publicly attempted to push forward with the 'control of space' objective by organizing of the US Space Corps, as a division of the US Air Force. To my knowledge this plan did not go forward publicly or directly.
   

I did a little bit of research this morning to clear up my personal confusion over the Chinese anti-satelitte test (ASAT), where in China destroyed an aging weather satelitte. While initially we reported that the satelitte was shot down with a laser, subsequent reports have repeatedly called the satelitte destroyer a ballistic missile. One of my main points of confusion is that Chinese anti-satelitte laser capabilities have been previously suspected by the US intelligence community and from strategypage.com. It is suspected that during the Fall of 2006 China used a laser to 'illuminate' a US military satelitte.

The Chinese ASAT (Anti-Satellite Test) is having some significant consequences for the remaining satellites in orbit around earth. The aging weather satellite that they destroyed on Jan 17th, 2007 has created a debris field in orbit around the planet. The more than 647 detected pieces of junk created by the explosion now sit in low earth orbit 100 to 2200 miles above earth. Claims are being made that the amount of junk in orbit has now reached critical mass, wherein a collision between junk and something useful (like a satellite that carries your favorite tv station) is inevitable. The International Space Station does not appear to be in immediate danger of such a collision. However, a prominent fear is that the amount of junk now orbiting earth will eventually hit some old piece of abandoned equipment and create a new debris field with the subsequent explosion.