The future of war

Sci-fi writers, please collect your royalty cheques, because several militaries are now filming a sequel, starting with...

1. 🌌 The US has weapons in space

The annual Air, Space & Cyber conference in Maryland is usually a hotel-ballroom parade of acronyms, challenge coins, and very assertive PowerPoint presentations.

But this year, the US Air Force Secretary (Troy Meink) used his keynote to publicly and officially confirm — for the first time — that the US now has "on-orbit space control weapons" to defend US forces from "hostile adversary action"! Not out on a Nevada drawing board but up there, orbiting the Earth.

So what are we talking here… missiles? Space lasers? Sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads?

The Pentagon won't say, other than to note that Meink's language is vague enough to cover both the kinetic (🔥) and non-kinetic (jammers etc).

Maybe there's nothing surprising about a 'Space Force' having... Forces in Space? But DC's line has long been "Russia and China are militarising space, we're concerned" — perhaps that hasn't worked, so now it's "okay we're in space too".

Why? This is probably a case of deterrence by keynote: target our satellites, and you might get a nasty surprise. But the sweet spot is always deterrence without destabilisation, so the risk is now this news merely gives an incentive and cover for adversaries to accelerate their own space weapons programs. We'll see.

Anyway, while everyone's now busy squinting up into orbit...

2. 🤖 China has an underwater drone mothership

New satellite imagery over a Shanghai shipyard has revealed a strange new craft: like some kind of amphibious dock ship that took the wrong supplements. It's got an open stern, a giant cradle, a massive hangar, and azimuth thrusters.

The experts over at Naval News are connecting the dots to suggest China might be launching the world's first purpose-built mothership for full-size uncrewed submarines, like the 40m (130ft) monsters China is already testing off Hainan.

Who cares? Sure, everyone is now racing for undersea autonomy: the US has its Orca, Australia has its Ghost Shark, and just last week Iran was parading an Anduril drone it scooped out of Hormuz.

But these drones still have a major flaw: short legs and limited battery life. A mothership potentially solves this range problem, enabling China to launch, service, and coordinate undersea drones thousands of miles beyond its own shores.

So with all these drones out there, perhaps it's no surprise that...

3. 🤖 Australia can zap drones for dollars

Australia's Electro Optic Systems made a big splash at Poland's recent defence show in Kielce, unveiling an upgraded 'Apollo' laser that can fry 20 drones a minute at the speed of light, from up to 3km away, at about $5 a pop.

Plug it into an external power source, and it has unlimited ammo.

Who cares? Well between Russia and Iran, cheap drones have now upended traditional air defence economics, forcing defenders to incinerate million-dollar munitions to swat each attack away. So Australia is now selling the obvious answer, though it's still partial, and subject to power, portability, swarms, and even weather.

Anyway, while defensive layers try to slow things down...

4. 🚀 The US is finally going hypersonic

The US navy has now put in a ~$200M order for a Californian startup to start mass-producing its 'Blackbeard' hypersonic, zipping from a Super Hornet towards targets at above Mach 5 (5x the speed of sound).

Who cares? The US has long treated defence tech like exquisite glass art: hyper-engineered, eye-wateringly expensive, and too delicate to test, let alone use. Meanwhile, Russia has been firing ✌️hypersonics✌️ at Ukraine for years, while China has been testing them on Gobi Desert targets that look a lot like US aircraft carriers.

So the US now finally seems to be going cheaper, more scalable, and more usable. If Castelion hits its target price, these Blackbeards could cost 1% (!) of what the army is spending on its own Dark Eagle (which offers more range and punch).

Anyway, that's four sci-fi sequels in a week. It's almost as if our rattled world is gearing up for the next war?

Other intriguing weaponry headlines…

• Japan’s defence minister (Koizumi) has said Tokyo “won’t rule out” getting nuclear-powered subs. We’re still just talking propulsion (not warheads), but it’s a crack in Japan’s post-1945 taboo, and a nod to the fact that China, the US, and (soon) South Korea already run such subs in the same waters.