The Air Force Office of Scientific Research recently began funding several new initiatives that hope to improve defense operations from process prediction—understanding the surprise factor in complex systems—to analyzing blogs to determine patterns to aid in the war against terrorism. In other research, AFOSR believes it has developed a break-through in high energy laser technology involving an electric oxygen iodine laser research, solving a 30-year-old problem.
Facing competition from fast-growing startups, Lockheed Martin is speeding up production of an “affordable, scalable” hypersonic glide body, dubbed the Next Generation Glide Body, the firm said in a June 24 release.