If the Su-34 is to turn into a genuine close air support aircraft, it will have to be able to confidently enter into the range of portable surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft guns and enemy small arms fire, the analyst noted. "For this reason, the Su-34 will need armor plates to protect the flight deck, engines, fuel tanks and flight control systems. The dome cabin and its front window must also be armored."

The plates of this armor, according to Vasilescu, will require the use of 15-30 mm titanium, nylon-coated to stop explosive fragmentation. The aircraft will need to be capable of withstanding armor-piercing projectiles and explosives between 23 and 57 mm.

Meanwhile, the analyst noted, the Su-34 already has advanced electronic countermeasures against MANPADS and short-range radar-guided missiles. This system consists of the L-150 Pastel radar warning system, APP-50 decoy flare launchers and the KNIRTI SPS-171/L005S electronic countermeasure system, the latter mounted on the plane's topside.

In addition, the aircraft has a multi-target, passive electronically scanned array forward radar, enabling it to 'hunt' for enemy aircraft and equipment at a range of between 200-250 km. The plane is also equipped with rearward-facing radar, and can be equipped with the M402 Pika side-looking radar. In addition, its L175V/KS418, Digital RF Memory-equipped jamming system allows it to be used as a battlefield jammer.

Vasilescu emphasized that when it comes to aircraft armor design and testing, "that's not so difficult for the Russians, given the successful experience with the Su-25's armor. The Su-25 has a length of 15.5 m, a 14.3 m wingspan and a height of 4.8 m, while the Su-34 is 23.3 m long, 14.7 m wide and has a height of 6.1 m."

Accordingly, the "Su-34's armor will weigh between 800 and 1,000 kg, as opposed to that of the Su-25, which weighs 500 kg. The process will be completed in 2018, when the first group of 12 Su-34s will become operational for ground attack missions."

Among the other benefits of an armored Su-34 is its capability to climb and cruise at heights between 8,000 and 12,000 m, allowing the pilot to familiarize himself with the tactical situation on the ground with the help of onboard sensors before swooping down for attack.

"The selection and continuous monitoring of selected targets is done using airborne radar and the Platan electro-optical targeting system, mounted on the fuselage. It is equipped with a laser target market which measures the distance to the target using laser telemetry."

The armored Su-34 is expected to carry out attacks on ground targets from heights between 1,000 to 3,000 meters, using small 50kg bombs, air-ground anti-tank missiles, S-5 rockets, as well as rounds from the onboard GSH-30-1 30 mm cannon.

The system, developed by Electromashina research and production association, is installed on Armata tanks, Kurganets and Bumerang armored vehicles and detects laser beams or oncoming missiles and fires special smoke grenades, which make the fighting vehicle invisible both to the naked eye and to infrared scopes.
“The system is currently undergoing field trials and we expect to have this work done before this year is out,” a Defense Ministry representative told the newspaper, adding that live-fire tests of the system were slated for next year.

At the heart of the new system is a computer which calculates optimal trajectories of the smoke grenades to ensure maximum smoke cover while allowing the crew to engage the enemy unhindered.

“In Europe they have tried and failed to develop such a system, while in the US they have never developed anything like our  optical-electronic system, traditionally staking on passive protection reinforcing armor, improving maneuverability  and battlefield control in order to better protect against enemy anti-tank fire,” independent military expert Oleg Zheltonozhka, told Izvestia.

The new system ensures maximum protection against the two main types of guided antitank missiles: remote-controlled and laser-guided. The former will not be able to receive radio commands, while the latter will simply fail to “see” the laser beam itself.

It will also be able to effectively handle America’s unique self-homing Javelin antitank guided missiles.

The Enhanced Tactical Multi-Purpose grenade, or ET-MP, will be able to switch between two modes and produce two different kinds of explosions, according to Picattiny. At the same time, it brings back an older “concussive” effect absent from the U.S. Army since the 1970s.

Adjust the grenade, and the operator can select a fragmentation or concussion mode.

The ET-MP is also safer for the thrower, Picatinny Arsenal added in an announcement this week. This is because the grenade will feature an electronic fuze, or delay mechanism, unlike the M67’s mechanical fuze. To simplify, an electronic fuze is more reliable over the long term and the detonation can be timed to be extremely precise.

However, the grenade appears to be just a design at this stage, with the Pentagon committing $1.1 million in funding for the 2017 fiscal year — tiny on the scale of other military programs.

British forces could be equipped with tiny insect-inspired drones and a laser weapon which could bring down enemy missiles in mid-air.

The science fiction style kit is being developed with a new Ministry of Defence innovation fund worth £800million over the next decade.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the fund would encourage hi-tech firms to develop new 'disruptive capabilities' for the armed forces.

This all-terrain vehicle has the ability to take off from indigenous runways and transform into a light-sports aircraft using a parafoil wing. Reaching ground speeds of up to 70 mph and flight speeds of 40 mph, the SkyRunner can transport 2 occupants 240 miles, or 120 nautical miles, at an altitude of 10,000 feet.

The latest model of SkyRunner, equipped with a carbon-fiber body, will cost about $139,000.

After receiving FAA approval in June, a SkyRunner representative explained in an interview with Business Insider that they received interest and a verbal commitment from the US special forces community.

“The shocks [are what] won this particular group over,” said SkyRunner consultant Mike Mitchell. “Going off of a loading dock 4-5 feet tall … with such a soft landing was a big plus in their eyes.”

Rather than being offensively oriented, Mitchell explained that a military-grade SkyRunner would be primarily used for surveillance or recovery missions.

Right now, China’s aircraft carrier uses a ski-jump design, where planes hit a ramp to launch of the ship. This greatly limits the maximum weight of the planes, meaning they can’t carry as much fuel or ordnance as land-launched variants can.

China has set out to develop a Catapult-Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR) variant of the Shenyang J-15 Flying Shark.

But now photos surfaced in Yeo’s piece suggest that China is trying to imitate these flat top carriers. Here’s a photo of a J-15 with additional nose landing gear (this is what the catapult couples with during launches).

Today, Turkey fields three types of M-60s, including 658 M-60A3 TTS vehicles with improved thermal sights for night combat, and 170 Israeli-upgraded M-60A1 Sabra Mark II tanks, designated the M-60T in Turkish service. Ankara fields 104 more M-60A1 tanks that it has yet to upgrade to M-60Ts.

On April 21, video evidence appeared of Islamic State fighters firing a Kornet anti-tank missile at a Turkish M-60T tank, which was training Iraqi forces in Bashiqah, a town north of Mosul. Turkish troops returned fire and killed 32 Islamic State fighters, according to the Turkish army.

A picture of the vehicle released after the incident revealed that the missile damaged the vehicle — but it didn’t appear to fully penetrate.

It’s possible the missile didn’t cause a full kill because it struck the side of the Patton’s turret rather than the center of mass.

In May 2016, Kurdish fighters claimed the destruction of two Turkish M-60s. In video footage of one incident, an anti-tank team cheered as their missile struck a tank deployed behind sandbagged defensive positions on the top of a hill.

On Aug. 27 a Kurdish anti-tank team knocked out a Patton with a U.S.-made TOW missile, leading to the first Turkish death in the intervention. The destruction of a second Patton appeared on video shortly afterward.

On Aug. 27 a Kurdish anti-tank team knocked out a Patton with a U.S.-made TOW missile, leading to the first Turkish death in the intervention. The destruction of a second Patton appeared on video shortly afterward.

However, on Sept. 7, the Islamic State released video footage of two Turkish Pattons near Al Rai taking hits from missiles — again likely to be Kornets. Testifying to the power of the Russian-designed missiles, the first tank violently burst into the flames, while the second erupted in a cloud of smoke and debris.

The Firtinas have long-barreled 155 millimeter howitzers with a range of 30 to 40 kilometers depending on the ammunition.

On April 30, the Islamic State released a video depicting AT-13 Metis-M missiles taking out a platoon of three Firtinas in sandbagged positions. Like most self-propelled artillery, the Firtina’s armor is for stopping shrapnel and small arms, not guided missiles — leaving one to wonder why the vehicles were in such an exposed position in the first place.

Finally, the Otokar Kobra is a unique armored vehicle incorporating Humvee DNA. For one, it has the same suspension and wheel base. However, unlike the Humvee, it’s designed from the get-go with a mine-resistant v-shaped hull and better protection from small arms and shrapnel.

Despite reportedly having a good record surviving blasts from improvised explosive devices and mines, this has simply led to Kurdish fighters making bigger bombs. In August 2015, a 2,000 pound IED destroyed a Turkish army Kobra in Siirte province, killing its eight passengers.

In less than two weeks, the situation in the South China Sea has deteriorated at an accelerated pace: a joint Sino-Russian naval exercise; plans for Japan-U.S. joint patrols in the same area; Taiwan building anti-craft gun towers on Itu Aba; Jakarta trying to get U.S. help to upgrade its naval bases.

According to the 2014 presentation of Asia-Pacific policy, France “has a duty to protect its citizens in Asia-Pacific countries whose number has increased by 220 percent over the last twenty years, to exceed 120,000 in 2012 – almost as large as the French population in sub-Saharan Africa.”

It also has a toehold in Asian military deals, with France a part of 40 percent of Southeast Asian submarine contracts and 20 percent of naval projects. French strategic companies like DCNS, DCI, and Thalès are already active in Asia. French companies are set to supply submarines to Malaysia, 12 attack submarines to Australia, and 36 Rafale fighter jets to India

The French Navy is also used to deploying in the the region. So far in 2016, three vessels have visited the South China Sea and, according to Senator André Trillard, France actually has a surveillance frigate and a patrol boat at all times in New Caledonia. The French Navy is the only European military force deployed in the South China Sea. It will not be difficult for Paris to ensure a “regular and visible presence.”

With six nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) and four ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) equipped with long-range nuclear warhead missiles, there’s no doubt that French Navy’s deterrent force will be heard. But, as specified by President Francois Hollande, “France will not go it alone.” European approval is needed.

Radar used to be a slow science. Electronic warfare is a blanket term that encompasses the radar signals used to detect an attack, the radios used to communicate that the attack is coming, and the specific radio interference sent to confuse enemy radars as they’re attacking. And in the Cold War, every part of this used to be analog.

“In Vietnam we learned what an SA-2 radar signal started looking like,” Joshua Niedzwiecki, director of the Sensor Processing and Exploitation group at BAE Systems, tells Popular Science. The SA-2 is a surface to air missile that destroyed a lot of U.S. Air Force planes, especially B-52 bombers, over Vietnam. “The paradigm then was we saw a new signal in an environment and got a lot of experts and put them in a room in a laboratory and had them start to dissect what those characteristics were, in order to build a prescription for a solution, what’s that antidote. That process took months.”

Niedzwiecki works for BAE Systems, American counterpart to the British defense giant, and we are speaking today because of a new technology that came from BAE’s research and transformed into something called “Cognitive Electronic Warfare.” I’ll get to the specifics of that in just a minute, but in order to understand the breakthrough, it’s helpful to understand the past.

“The current paradigm is extremely time-consuming, extremely cumbersome, and in the past, this was acceptable because the radio frequency technology was very static. Everything was analog hardware. If I built a radar system, all the things that make that signal look like it looks, were driven by analog components,” Niedzwiecki continued. “So they weren’t prone to change for years. Nowadays, you see radar that on every single radar pulse can change what operating frequency they’re working at, what their pulse width is, what their bandwidth is, because of digital processing technology and software-defined radios. By the time you’ve gone back to the lab to study what you saw, the threat is different, by the time you come back from your mission, the threat is different.”

The threat in electronic warfare is manifold. A hostile radar can guide missile after missile at incoming aircraft. A jammer that interferes with GPS can keep bombs from falling where they’re supposed to, or get troops lost on the ground. A strong signal at the right frequency can interfere with soldier’s radios, leaving them suddenly cut off from commanders and friends. On its own this is frustrating; but combined with the other, lethal parts of war (“kinetics”, in Pentagon jargon), what happens in the electromagnetic spectrum can shape battles.

This morning, BAE revealed a “lightweight, handheld tactical sensor” for cognitive electronic warfare. Developed for DARPA, the sensor is designed for soldiers and marines to carry into battle, where it will identify and classify new signals. In the previous, Cold War-era approach, American troops went into battle knowing only signals already identified, and after detecting a new signal, it would take months to have a response. Many systems, even ones that already had signals recorded in peacetime, can, according to Niedzwiecki, "have a “war reserve” mode, a waveform signature that we may not have seen before,” so there’s now guarantee that adapting to an old signal will protect against the signals that replace it.

Cognitive electronic warfare takes the burden of deciphering and countering new signals out of human minds in a lab, and entrusts it instead to AI and machine learning. If the cognitive system sees a signal similar to one it has seen before, it can respond accordingly. If the interference makes the radio signal weak, then the cognitive system might just put more power into the same radio signal. If the jamming makes some parts of the spectrum unworkable, then the cognitive system could look for a part of the spectrum that’s still open for communication, and redirect signals there. If the approach works, as captured by bit-error rate, the system learns and remembers. If it doesn’t, the cognitive system can try a different approach, changing up its response until something gets through.