Meet CRACUNS, or the “Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned Nautical System.” It’s a submersible drone, made by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, designed to straddle the littoral space between unmanned aircraft and unmanned underwater vessels. It is also made for the littoral, that part of the ocean between the beach and the high sea. Parts of it are 3D printed, to create a watertight body, and other parts are coated in commercial sealant, to keep the water out from the engines. According to Johns Hopkins, its “low cost makes it expendable”, though given that the customer is the Pentagon, “low cost” isn’t that revealing a metric.

In tests, it survived two months under water, and was still able to fly afterwards. While there’s no payload specified, it’s easy to imagine a swarm of CRACUNS waiting near a beach before Marines land on it, and then emerging to scout overhead. Or perhaps, armed with a more sinister payload (read: explosives), CRACUNS could become a semi-mobile minefield, put in place temporarily and then removed after the danger has passed.

There’s a deep wealth of possibilities for a device like this. Watch the promotional video for it below, and see just how many Pentagonese buzzwords would can spot.:

Russia is planning to modernize its 150 T-72 main battle tanks to the T-72B3M version. The upgraded vehicles will be comparable to the more advanced T-90, but with much lower costs.

Currently, there are 500 T-90A and T-90AM tanks in service with the Russian Armed Forces. But the bulk of the Ground Forces rely on the Soviet-era T-72 and its numerous modifications.

In order to upgrade its ground forces, especially during an economic crisis, Russia will modernize its ageing main battle tanks while working on the newest T-14 Armata.

Russia will spend 2.5 billion rubles ($37 million) to upgrade 150 T-72Bs to the advanced B3M standard, Uralvagonzavod deputy director Alexey Zharich told the Russian newspaper Izvestia.

On average, 17 million rubles ($250,000) will be spent on each tank which means that the upgrade is a "relative bargain for the capability the vehicle is expected to deliver," analyst Dave Majumdar noted in his article for The National Interest.

According to Izvestia, the upgraded machine will be equipped with the 2A46M5 125-mm smoothbore gun as well as the new Sosna-U sighting system paired with the 1A40-4 fire-control system. The tank will also receive a new ballistic computer to increase accuracy.
What is more important, the T-72B3M will be equipped with an independent panoramic sight for the tank’s commander, with its own thermal imaging device.

The tanks will also get the new Relikt explosive reactive armor. It will replace the old Kontakt-5 system and is expected to be two times more effective.

"It’s not clear if the Russians are modifying the vehicle’s passive armor package — but it would make sense it they did. Further, while some sources suggest that the T-73B3M might be equipped with the Arena-E active protection system, it’s not clear that the production variant does," Majumdar wrote.

Furthermore, the upgraded version will be powered with the new V-92S2F engine and deliver 1,130 hp. It will replace the old 780-hp diesel engine. The new engine is paired with an automatic transmission system and improved drivetrain to improve the tank’s mobility

Responding to a recent Reddit question “what things do movies get hilariously wrong about the military,” hundreds of military service members from a number of countries chime in on how their military experience was nothing at all like what is displayed on the silver screen.

Reddit member endlessbloodorgy shared: “Not enough cussing. Not even close.”

And Newguy6962579 chimed in that what bothered him most was:

When no one knows their job and the lead folks are always micromanaging. You don’t have to tell marines to shoot at the bad guys.

Also, “That’s an order!”

Pyronaut44 noted that the ages in the movies never seem true to life:

Ages always seem well off, movies and TV shows seem to have Private soldiers averaging in their 30′s whereas reality is more 19/20 years old. A realistic depiction of your typical infantry platoon would have audiences wondering why all these kids are running about playing soldiers.

Commenter rick7475 noted:

What I hate the most is how easy it is to kill or take out trained soldiers or mercenaries who were probably veterans. Some spy or hero sneaks on base, a few kicks and hits, and the guards with automatic weapons are down for the count. Also, one shot takes out a soldier when the hero gets wounded a dozen times and still has strength to defuse the fakest looking bomb ever or save the cute honey trapped in a high security cell.

When its a military picture or TV show, they always focus on the officers as heroes, never the squad members or NCO’s that most officers give credit for getting the job done.

Or even the tactics, and I’m looking at you “Saving Private Ryan”, sending man after man to take out a pill box and only after a dozen are dead deciding on using a sniper.

For user bleachmike51, his complaints were much more technical:

Popped collar on ACU’s, no patches, soldiers running into combat with patrol caps and berets…. list goes on. Try watching the military in the flash and not cringing.

Reddit member tcain5188 noted that for many in the military, the jobs are not at all close to combat: “not enough people at desks pretending to work.”

And Tyrantt_47 echoed that unlike in the movies, few people in the military are in peak physical shape:  “hardly anyone I knew in the military was ripped”

Commentor p00d73 shared a hard truth about combat in the military:

Artillery impacts. When the heroes get shelled, they just seem to brush off the dirt from the massive explosion 5m next to them and continue fighting. In movies an artillery barrage always seems like a minor annoyance instead of a slaughterfest.

User tacsquid wrote:

Everyone is always an officer and uses military radio jargon in real life conversations. People don’t even say that sh– over the radio ffs. Also in movies EVERYTHING is bullet proof when in real life very few things are. Everything is always super clean and neat. Girls have nice hair and makeup. No one has salty crust on their uniform from not being able to wash clothes. Officers also always give out orders and sh– like everyone else is a robot. on a patrol a good officer shouldn’t be doing sh– except talking on the radio to the TOC for CAS. Everyone should already know what to do and the NCOs can handle the rest.

edit

also suppressors!

And in reply to tacsquid, SavageHenry0311 shared his own personal experience:

Speaking of suppressors -

Nobody seems to understand how f—— LOUD sh– is.

I was in a gunfight in a stairwell once, and my left ear is still ringing 10 years later.

In the movies, they do a few mag dumps in an elevator/car/parking garage….and then whisper back and forth 3 minutes later.

What?

Next-generation Russian nuclear submarines may use composite structures — imagine something akin to a cutting-edge carbon fiber — in an attempt to drastically reduce their acoustical signatures.

“These are new multi-layer composite materials … Their structure and composition reduce the sonar signals that are reflected from a submarine, isolate working mechanisms from vibrations, and so on,” said Valeriy Polovinkin

“The opponent just will not get the required level of signal reflected from the submarine as the composite material has a high internal loss factor, or sound absorption properties can change when vibration occurs, completely preventing the spread of vibrational energy.”

The Russians hope to use composite materials for everything from the hull coating to the dive planes, rudders, stabilizers, propellers, drive shafts and possibly even the hulls themselves. If the technology works, composite materials would greatly reduce the weight of various structures, increase the boat’s reliability and reduce operating costs.

That’s because composites don’t corrode and thus wouldn’t need to be painted, Polovinkin said — reducing maintenance costs. Moreover, composite structures should simplify manufacturing by reducing part counts.

The new composite materials are still in testing, but Russia will test its first composite propeller design in 2018.

“This trend reduces vibration in the blades and increases the efficiency of the screw. These various effects will help improve the ship’s acoustic signature.”

Russia will incorporate composite materials in its next-generation follow-on to the Project 855M Yasen-class and Project 955A Borei-class submarines in the 2020s

In 2012, leaders in Beijing and Buenos Aires inked a deal to build the so-called “Deep Space Station,” and the facility is expected to be completed by the end of 2016.

While Argentina and China have said that “the ground station in the Southern Hemisphere to support the program for moon exploration and other space activities,” there is a concern among some that the Chinese facility may have a more military purpose

Unlike the other space station in the South American country – an antenna in Argentina's central-west Mendoza province built by the European Space Agency – the Chinese facility will be operated by the country’s military

The intended use of the giant antennae at the station is supposed to monitor the moon – as China has ambitions of sending people to the earth’s only satellite – but some speculate that it could serve a dual purpose of watching celestial bodies and also intercepting signals from other nation’s satellites

British troops have been testing a Harry Potter-style ‘invisibility cloak’ that makes them disappear on the battlefield.

During field trials in the US, soldiers from 3rd Battalion The Rifles (3 Rifles) used a high-tech camouflage sheeting called Vatec that even hid them from infra-red and heat-seeking devices.

Their skin contains pigment- rich cells known as chromatophores that react to external factors such as the threat of a predator to change colour.

Scientists have recently made significant steps towards mimicking this process, which they call visual appearance modulation, with a new material.

One side of the material contains thousands of tiny light-sensitive cells that can detect surrounding colours. Electrical signals then trigger the top layer to imitate those colours by using heat-sensitive dyes.

The change in colour apparently takes two to three seconds.

Scientific sources estimate that in five years this colour-changing technology could also be used to disguise military vehicles on the battlefield.

camouflage would allow soldiers and their vehicles to adapt to their surroundings instantly.’

The tests by 3 Rifles and American troops of camouflage material that is ready for use now against enemies such as Islamic State and the Taliban took place earlier this year at the US Army’s centre for experimental warfare techniques at Fort Benning, Georgia.

During the trials, British snipers used Vatec – which can be moulded into shapes to match mountainous terrain – to build hideaways on a mock battlefield.

The dome will immerse warfighters in a virtual environment that not only tests their skills, but allows Army researchers to assess soldier cognitive abilities.

The dome is a concave virtual-reality system that provides a full 180-degree horizontal field, using high-density, front-projection to create a high-resolution, visual world.

Other scientists at the Natick lab are developing metrics for measuring cognitive workload during mission tasks. This will enable researchers to assess how new equipment and technology born by soldiers effects their cognitive abilities, according to Mahoney.

Planned new features will include whole-body motion tracking, low-frequency vibration, directional wind and “vibro-tactile collision feedback” – merging vibration and touch to give participants a sense of physical constraint.

Donald Trump has declared war on Muslims, Mexicans and Sen. John McCain — and it has made him a success with members of the military and their families.

many members of the military and their families who live in and near military bases have enthusiastically supported the real-estate mogul

Trump won at seven bases — with his biggest lead in Chattahoochee County, Ga., where everyone votes in a single precinct and half of the adults are enlisted at Fort Benning

“I love Trump right now,” a Navy sailor serving at Camp Pendleton in California told The News. “He’s just brutally honest, and I like brutally honest.”

The sailor also backed Trump’s pledge to bring back torture.

recent Military Times poll of 931 subscribers found Trump was the favorite in the general election — scoring 27%, compared to 22% for Bernie Sanders and 17% for Ted Cruz. Clinton received a paltry 11%.

Trump was asked earlier this month if he had yet assembled a group of foreign policy advisors to help shape his scary national security pronouncements — which have included killing the wives and children of terrorists, bringing back torture techniques “a hell of a lot worse” than waterboarding, a massive ground war of some 30,000 troops to defeat ISIS, and seizing the oil from various Middle Eastern countries.

Trump, a graduate of the New York Military Academy who sidestepped the Vietnam War with a medical deferment for bone spurs on his heels, drew widespread condemnation when he said Sen. John McCain was no war hero and he preferred “people that weren’t captured, O.K.?"

“He’s not worried about pleasing everybody. In my profession — infantry — we’re harda--, alpha males, get to it, get it done. That’s what he is.”

The Bush White House argued waterboarding wasn’t torture if the goal was intelligence gathering, not the infliction of severe pain for vengeance.

The term continues to evolve, spawning iterations like “multi-vector hybrid warfare” in Europe. Hybrid warfare has become the Frankenstein of the field of Russia military analysis

I prefer to use Frank Hoffman’s definition, “a tailored mix of conventional weapons, irregular tactics, terrorism, and criminal behavior in the same time and battlespace to obtain [a group’s] political objectives.”

The term now covers every type of discernible Russian activity, from propaganda to conventional warfare, and most that exists in between. What exactly does Russian hybrid warfare do, and how does it work? The short answer in the Russia-watcher community is everything

United States cannot hope to successfully counter or deter Moscow elsewhere. It would be one thing for such notions to dominate the world of punditry, but the references to Russia’s dark hybrid arts permeate the conversation among U.S. policymakers and leading generals alike.

Gerasimov spent most of this treatise on non-linear warfare scrutinizing how the West conducts war, based less on traditional invasions like Iraq in 2003, and more on the 2011 intervention in Libya, the events of the Arab Spring, and “color revolutions” in Russia’s near abroad. In his view, the West pioneered indirect approaches to warfare, leveraging political subversion, propaganda, and social media, along with economic measures such as sanctions

From his perspective, humanitarian interventions, the use of Western special forces, funding for democracy movements, and the deployment of mercenaries and proxies were all features of a U.S. doctrine of indirect warfare. If only we were that good. Russian leadership is remarkably conspiratorial in their views of U.S.

Thanks to the countless number of presentations on hybrid war, many have seen the famous Gerasimov chart, outlining the phases of non-linear warfare, but far fewer seem to have read or understood his article.

[P]olitical warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. … They range from such overt actions as political alliances, economic measures, and “white” propaganda to such covert operations as support of “friendly” foreign elements, “black” psychological warfare and even encouragement of underground resistance in hostile states.

Non-linear warfare is not Russian for hybrid warfare. It is a blend of intellectual currents among Russian military leaders and responses to how they view NATO operations. If Russian thinking here had a relative, it would be the Chinese concept of unrestricted warfare, which recommends the use of lawfare, economic warfare and network warfare, along with terrorism against an adversary

When members of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade in Crimea took off their unit patches and moved out to seize key roads on the peninsula in February 2014, they did not become “hybrid warriors.” They were merely naval infantry without unit patches on

If a Russian missile cruiser lowers its ensign, does it become a hybrid cruiser about to engage in a new form of naval hybrid warfare? Of course not. There is simply not much hybrid war to be found in the case of Crimea.

Meanwhile, the conflict in eastern Ukraine began in February 2014 with political warfare in the mold of Kennan’s writing, not hybrid warfare, and absent the application of force

Moscow sought to scare Ukraine’s government into agreeing to a federalization scheme, that would neuter its ability to move the country in a more Western direction, and result in de facto political partition of Ukraine along regional divisions. The entire affair was cheap political warfare and done in a hurry.

Russia switched to direct action in mid-April of 2014, supporting irregular warfare with paramilitaries (some led by Igor Girkin from Crimea), local recruits, and a unit of mercenaries, along with a good deal of defectors from Ukraine’s own security services. This was the product of Russian intelligence, and collusion with vested local interests, not large detachments of special forces or hybrid warriors.

It was only at the end of May, when irregular warfare had run into too much resistance from Ukraine’s volunteer battalions and armed forces, that we began to see Russia backing into a hybridized approach. Here I’m referencing the introduction of high-end conventional capabilities, and the intermixing of Russian units along with individual Russian soldiers among the separatist force

By August 24, the hybrid approach had demonstrably failed in the vein of previous efforts. Moscow traded it in for a conventional invasion by regular Russian units, which it had sought to avoid. The invasion in August of 2014 marked the transition to conventional war as the deciding approach, but with limited political and territorial objectives. Russian forces defeated Ukraine’s army in the field, but more importantly they demonstrated the ineffectiveness of a hybrid approach in achieving political objectives

Simply put, what Russia does best is conventional war, and if a conflict does not start that way, it is how it always ends

In analyzing the presence of hybrid approaches in this conflict, the West has broadly confused Russian activity for achievement. Let’s talk less about what Russia tries and more about how Russia wins

Russia has used proxy soldiers, unmarked Special Forces, intimidation and propaganda, all to lay a thick fog of confusion; to obscure its true purpose in Ukraine; and to attempt deniability.  So NATO must be ready to deal with every aspect of this new reality from wherever it comes. And that means we must look closely at how we prepare for; deter; and if necessary defend against hybrid warfare.

Have Russian tactics truly confused anyone? Are special forces typically marked when engaging in operations? Did Ukraine suffer from two years of confusion or a conventional military defeat?

Ms Susi said Indonesian officials were pursuing the ship Kway Fey 10078 at 2.15pm on Saturday, for illegally fishing off the coast of Indonesia’s Natuna islands as it attempted to flee to the contested South China Sea.

Three officials managed to climb on board and arrested a total of eight crew members, but a Chinese coast guard ship intervened and rammed the fishing ship back into the South China Sea.

The incident, she said, occurred just 4.34 kilometers off Indonesia’s Natuna islands, which meant it was well inside Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.

“We want to avoid a much more serious incident, so we settled on just arresting the eight crew members. The ship got away but we have the eight men in custody to help us investigate this incident,” Ms Susi said.

The government-to-government arrangement between India and France for the sale of 36 Dassault Rafale fighters to New Delhi may be running into insurmountable problems

A senior French official told the Business Standard that if the Indian defense ministry continues to drive a hard negotiation, France could look elsewhere:  ”We are currently building it for Egypt and Qatar, and we could have another customer in Malaysia,” he remarked, highlighting other deals

“If you don’t want the Rafale, go ahead and build the F-16 here. You can build it in India and supply it to Pakistan also.” He was referencing a recent $699 million U.S.-Pakistan deal for the sale of eight F-16 Block-52 fighters.

Now, nearly a year later, the two countries remain hung up on a range of issues. For example, as my colleague Franz-Stefan Gady discussed in January, the two governments were hung up for months on so-called “offset clauses” in the deal, which require Dassault to invest 50 percent of the contract value of the deal inside of India. Though India is keen to conclude the deal to fill important requirements for the Indian Air Force, it is also interested in bringing investment to the country and having the deal spur a more robust domestic defense industrial base, in line with Modi’s “Make in India” initiative.

In recent weeks, New Delhi’s negotiating position has only hardened; for instance, in February, it requested a further decrease in the price after initial concessions by France.

The 36 fighters in this deal are to be purchased in “fly-away” condition, meaning that the complications of arranging for domestic assembly by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) no longer applied

Today, the Russian Air Force’s MI-24 helicopters are bombing on the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham’s (ISIS) defensive positions in Palmyra, killing unknown number of terrorists.

According to a twitter report from Gjoene, ISIS held Jbel Marbat al Hasan and Jbel al-Asafir of Palmyra was heavily bombarded by the Russian helicopters with the ground support by the Syrian Arab Army.

For nearly five years, Syria has been observing a deadly conflict it blames on certain foreign states.  At least 470,000 people have been killed and millions have been displaced in the Arab country, according to a February report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research. The conflict has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure.

Nevertheless, the Arab country is currently observing an agreement for the cessation of hostilities which entered into force on February 27. The agreement stipulates the cessation of all military hostilities in Syria, except for the operations against ISIS terrorist group and al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front militants.

The agreement was negotiated by Russia and the United States. Many suggest that Washington is among the main supporters of terrorists fighting against the Syrian government forces.

Today, on March 20, Syrian war correspondents published the first photos showing the effects of the TOW-2A hit on the T-90.

Unfortunately, the photo’s angle was not chosen too well–it is only evident that one of the Shtora emitters suffered damage.

On Thursday, Putin surprised Western experts, who had earlier estimated that Russia's air operation was costing the Kremlin $4-$8 million per day, by revealing that the campaign, which stretched from late September 2015 to March 2016, actually cost Russia about $464 million (under $3 million per day).

5: The NATO Bombing Campaign in Yugoslavia: $43 Billion

"The war in Kosovo," RIA Novosti recalls, "ended with the 78-day NATO operation, code-named Operation Allied Force, which saw attacks by Allied aircraft against military targets and civilian infrastructure in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). According to estimates by journalists from the BBC and military experts from the British military publishing company Janes, the bombing campaign cost NATO about $43 billion."

#4: Gulf War: Operation Desert Storm: $102 Billion

"The Gulf War of 1990-1991," RIA Novosti notes, "can be considered one of the most transient military conflicts in US history. The Combat operation by a multinational coalition of forces led by the United States under the codename Desert Storm lasted 42 days, and ended with the liberation of Kuwait and the withdrawal of Iraqi forces."

#3: Korean War: $341 Billion

"On June 25, 1950, North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel and launched an attack on South Korea; the same day, the UN Security Council promptly decided the 'Korean question', taking advantage of a boycott by the Soviet delegation" (in connection with the organization's refusal to accept Communist China as a permanent member of the Security Council), "adopting a resolution proposed by the United States in favor of military assistance to South Korea."

Vietnam War: $738 Billion

"In 1965, North Vietnamese guerrillas attacked a US military base at Pleiku, central Vietnam, and the United States launched Operation Rolling Thunder, which would become the longest US Air Force bombing campaign since the Second World War. Air strikes on North Vietnam cost Washington about $900 million," while on the whole "the Vietnam War, which lasted eight years, would cost the US $738 billion [in 2011 dollars] and more than 58,000 US military personnel."

The US 'War on Terror' (Iraq, Afghanistan): Between $1-6 Trillion

"After the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, US President George W. Bush launched Operation Enduring Freedom," a series of campaigns ostensibly aimed at combating global terrorism in countries around the world, from Afghanistan and Iraq, to the Philippines, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Indonesia.

For one, the plot to kidnap Najib and his ministers is real. Thirteen men were arrested in connection with the plot, two of them air force soldiers. The arrest of military personnel should set off alarm bells as such people are trained, ready-made combatants for ISIS. Moreover, they have access to weapons. Add to that, four terror plans were foiled by police last year.

To date, a total of 160 ISIS suspects have been arrested since 2014, according to Malaysian police, while 46 have gone to Syria to join ISIS. Another 18 have been killed fighting for ISIS in Syria and Iraq; six of them died as suicide bombers.

One of the suicide bombers, 26-year-old Mohd Amirul Ahmad Rahim, blew himself up in ISIS’ capital Raqqa in northern Syria on December 26, 2015.

Before he died, Amirul wrote a will decreeing that his pregnant Malaysian wife and their two-year-old son remain in Syria to continue the “jihad,” according to his father-in-law in an earlier interview with The Diplomat.

Amirul’s 25-year-old wife gave a chilling testimony, that many Malaysians eagerly signed up to become suicide bombers.

“People queue up to register as a suicide bomber… and many Malaysians have registered themselves to become a suicide bomber, according to my daughter,” said Amirul’s father-in-law.

The willingness of Malaysians to become suicide bombers reflect ISIS success in recruiting and radicalizing people from the country.

The counterterrorism unit of Malaysian police intelligence arm, the co-called Special Branch, has done a tremendous job in preempting attacks, identifying and arresting ISIS returnees from Syria as well as blocking many from going to Syria in the first place.

Prior to the emergence of ISIS, Special Branch was instrumental in keeping Malaysia safe from terror attacks following 9/11, even as its close neighbor Indonesia suffered devastating attacks, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 202, the 2003 Marriott Hotel bombing, 2004 Australian Embassy bombing and others.

Jemaah Islamiyah, Al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asia branch, was blamed for all the attacks.

Malaysians tend to forget that the mastermind for all the attacks in Indonesia were Malaysian fugitives Dr. Azahari Husin, an expert bomb-maker, and Noordin Moch Top, a charismatic recruiter and strategist. Both men have since been killed by Indonesian police.

To date, Malaysia has not suffered a single major terrorist attack, a situation which many in the country take for granted. ISIS is an issue that makes big headlines, but has little impact in people’s minds.

Ayub Khan Mydin Pitchay, Special Branch’s counter-terrorism chief, who works tirelessly together with his team to track down ISIS suspects, constantly warn against the threat of lone wolf attacks.

On Saturday morning Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin, a 27-year old artilleryman, was killed by a ISIS rocket attack on a previously secret forward fire support base in northern Iraq

What is known is that American advisers and about 5,000 Iraqi soldiers and their equipment are massing in the farming village of Makhmour, about 60 miles south of Mosul

The base is described as in an austere location with a “couple hundred” Marines living in tents, according to CNN’s sources. The site is said to be an artillery fire base setup to support allied forces heading toward Mosul and to protect Makhmour and the base, known as the Nineveh Operations Center, from ISIS attack.

Makhmour is not known to be a highly secure location in the first place. ISIS fired artillery shells filled at least partially with mustard gas last year at the city when Kurdish forces were present

ISIS scouts spotted the Marines doing just that before organizing the rocket attack. The enemy rockets are thought to have been launched from about nine miles away

The Marines quickly executed a counter-battery artillery attack, although it remains unclear if it was successful at killing the assailants

An anti-tank missile fires by an Iraqi CH-4 drone destroys an ISIS artillery piece, seen in footage captured by the drone's onboard, retractable sensor turret.

China's armed CH-3 and CH-4 drones have recently made international news, being used by nations that range from Iraq to Nigeria. And now NORINCO, one of China's leading defense contractors, is getting in on the international drone export game, showing off a new armed drone helicopter.

The Sky Saker H300, seen here in Dubai, is China's first helicopter UCAV. Being cheaper and easier to use then larger UCAVs like the Reaper and CH-4, it could become a battalion and company level UCAV for on demand air strikes.

Unveiled at the International Exhibition of National Security and Resilience in Dubai, NORINCO's Sky Saker is a coaxial rotor, 100-200kg helicopter UCAV. The Sky Saker H300's cameras include electro-optical and infrared systems, along with laser target designators. In addition to surveillance and fire control, the Sky Saker H300 can provide midcourse corrections for guided munitions launched by other platforms, such as cruise missiles from H-6K bombers or shells fired from PLZ-05 howitzers. The Sky Saker H300's ground control station is likely to be networked to a wider array of Chinese military systems for integrated fire effect, which would make it not only a valuable asset for counterinsurgency and urban combat, but also for wider missions like hunting enemy small ships (such as the Taiwanese Tuo stealth boat) or electronic warfare vehicles.

NORINCO offers this 16 kg, 6km range TL-2 guided missile for use on small UAVs, such as the Sky Saker 300. Small attack missiles, like the TL-2 and Northrup Grumman Viper Strike, will arm small tactical level UAVs to provide company and battalion units with their own organic air attack assets.

The Sky Saker has two missile launch tubes mounted on the fuselage sides; given that those missiles are "fire and forget", they are likely a version of the HJ-10 anti-tank missiles, which already arms the Z-10 attack helicopters, or even smaller 16kg TL-2 missiles.

The C-17 is to the go-anwhere, do-anything workhouse of the U.S. military. Here is it not only landing on a dirt runway, but carrying two AH-64 Apaches, which get unloaded and ready for action in faster than most of us can get ready for work.