A US Army officer who "borrowed" an armoured vehicle to go on a joyride has been cleared of wrongdoing by a military court – by "reason of insanity". Joshua Phillip Yabut, 30, a lieutenant in the Virginia National Guard's 276th Engineer Battalion (the American version of the TA), was reportedly deemed delusional by mental …

DARPA, the US military research arm, has launched a program to train fighter jets to engage in aerial battle autonomously with the help of AI algorithms. The Air Combat Evolution (ACE) program seeks to create military planes that are capable of performing combat maneuvers for dogfighting without the help of human pilots. …

The notion of deploying armed human soldiers on the ground to fight wars will disappear over time, according to one of America's top military scientists. “We have to get used to the radical idea that we, human beings, will be just one species of intelligent beings,” Alexander Kott, chief of the Network Science Division of the …

A US Army researcher believes that wars will be fought with human soldiers commanding a team of physical and cyber robots to create a network of “Internet of Battle Things” in the future. “Internet of Intelligent Battle Things (IOBT) is the emerging reality of warfare,” as AI and machine learning advances Alexander Kott, chief …

US warplanners are going to have to deal with an increasing drone threat, both from off-the-shelf hardware today to possibly more intelligent dangers. The increasing power and sophistication of "hobby drones" is making them attractive to insurgents, according to a report drafted by the US National Academy of Sciences, …

The outgoing head of the Defense Information Systems Agency, which handles computer security for the US Department of Defense, has warned a massive cyber-attack is "looming" at the American military's door. Over lunch on Thursday, Army Lieutenant General Alan Lynn, who retires in a few months, told the Armed Forces …

The US Army issued guidance to its formations a few months ago allowing it to shoot down consumer drones buzzing its units, according to reports. It is illegal to fly a consumer-grade drone within 400ft of a US Army base in April, the US Department of Defence stressed this week. Larger drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, as …

The US Army has issued a global order banning its units from using drones made by Chinese firm DJI, citing “cyber vulnerabilities”. The memorandum, issued by the US Army’s Lieutenant General Joseph Anderson, orders all US Army units with DJI products to immediately stop using them. “Due to increased awareness of cyber …

The US Army Research Labs (ARL) has put forward a plan to outrun China in the supercomputer stakes, develop quantum computing, and create The Terminator.* In spite – or perhaps because – of a likely budget squeeze, the ARL says it needs to “harness the potential of computational sciences and emerging high-performance computers …

BAE Systems, which has been working with the US Navy on its futuristic railgun weapon project, has suggested the Mach 7 electromagnetic metal-slinger could be useful for the next generation of the US Army's Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The Brit company made the comments at the Association of the US Army annual conference, …

The US Army says it has successfully conducted a test in which not just one but an entire convoy of unmanned, autonomous, robotized military lorries successfully drove through "urban areas" on their own without crashing into anything or running over any pedestrians. US Army robotised trucks. Credit: Lockheed Goddammit, …

The US army has been forced to pay out $50 million (£30.6m) for copyright infringement after admitting it installed software on thousands of devices without forking out for it. Texas-based Apptricity produces logistics software which the military uses to manage the movement of troops, transport and other supplies across the …

A 28-year-old British man has been indicted in the US, which alleges he hacked of thousands of computer systems in the US and other countries, a New Jersey attorney said today. Lauri Love of Stradishall, England, was indicted on one count of accessing a US department or agency computer without permission and one count of …

A military judge has sentenced US Army Private Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison for leaking classified material to Wikileaks. He was also dishonourably discharged from the Army, busted from private first class to private and will forfeit all pay and allowances. Manning has built up credit of three and a half years of pre …

Radiation that gives you super-strength instead of disfiguring or killing you, spider bites that empower you to fight crime instead of threatening your life with a potentially fatal allergic reaction: when it comes to superheroes we need to suspend a decent amount of disbelief. But what about Marvel's The Avengers, the United …

VideoThe US Army has reported the successfully completion of a two-hour low-level test flight by an automated Black Hawk helicopter dubbed RASCAL, aka the Rotorcraft Aircrew Systems Concept Airborne Laboratory. "This was the first time terrain-aware autonomy has been achieved on a Black Hawk," said Lt. Col. Carl Ott, test pilot and …

A team lead by US Army researchers has been granted a patent on a new chip design that offers radically faster processing speeds and could form the basis for quantum computing systems in the future. Ron Meyers, a quantum physicist with the US Army Research Laboratory, told The Register that the new chip design is capable of …

The US Army has deemed its key $2.3bn intelligence gathering system "not suitable, and not survivable". The DCGS-A (Distributed Common Ground System - Army) is intended to be an ambitious master database of intelligence. It is fully buzzword-compliant, of course – everything from cloud-friendly to iPad-capable, and drawn from …