In a display of its growing space prowess and surveillance capabilities, radar images of a US Navy base taken by a Chinese satellite are circulating online. Appearing first on China’s domestic social media platform Weibo, defense analysts later identified the spacecraft as the Taijing-4 03 “flat-plate radar imaging satellite” and identified the naval facility as the Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
The radar image showed three aircraft carriers, what appeared to be two Arleigh Burke-class warships. Four other vessels in the image, however, cannot be identified.
The Norfolk base, on the east coast of the US, is one of the premier naval bases responsible for projecting power and operations in the Atlantic Ocean and is home to the Military Sealift Command and the submarines of the Atlantic Fleet. It is also the world’s largest shore-based naval establishment, supporting 75 ships and 134 aircraft alongside 14 piers and 11 aircraft hangars. READ MORE...
The US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) is winding up tests of its new Long-Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) as part of a significant defense upgrade against inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) to fend off a potential nuclear attack on mainland US from North Korea.
Brig. Gen. Joey Lestorti, head of the US Northern Command’s Operations Directorate/J3, said that the LRDR will be operational within months, reported Breaking Defense.
“We are literally months away from being able to plug in the Long Range Discrimination Radar, LRDR, in the missile defense operational architecture.
From the testing so far, we are seeing positive results for what this radar can do for us, discriminating threats to the continental US to make ground-based interceptor engagements more lethal,” Lestorti told the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Ala., on August 10. READ MORE...
China’s new announcements indicate that it has taken one step further in that direction.
Nuclear fusion is based on the idea that energy can be released by forcing atomic nuclei together rather than separating them, as in the fission reactions that powers the existing nuclear power plants.
In what could be a significant breakthrough, a Chinese research team claims to have created the world’s first power plant capable of converting fusion energy into electricity without disrupting the power system, South China Morning Post reported.
This development comes a few months after China’s experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak (EAST), HL-2M fusion energy reactor had run for 1,056 seconds at 70 million degrees Celsius.
According to Xiang Kui, chief engineer of thermal systems at the China Energy Engineering Group Guangdong Electric Power Design Institute in Guangzhou, converting the heat into electricity is challenging because the reactor must take a 20-minute break every two hours.
Xiang and his colleagues stated in a report published in the domestic peer-reviewed journal ‘Southern Energy Construction’ that this frequent interruption can create pulse energy that “will cause huge damage to the power grid.”
The entire world is chasing nuclear fusion technology, with a facility in France called International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), where experiments take place with the assistance of a world consortium with the EU, the US, Russia, and even China being members.
They hope to make a breakthrough by the second half of this century. READ MORE...
China is reportedly developing and testing its hypersonic technology at an unprecedented pace. It claims to have added another engine to its arsenal that can propel it to the forefront of the hypersonic race.
China’s hypersonic weapons program hopes to springboard itself into the future with an “air-breathing” magnetic fluid engine that might make it commercially possible to go anywhere on Earth in under an hour.
By 2035, China intends to construct a hypersonic passenger fleet that will use near-Earth orbit to go to any destination in the world in under an hour. Even though this program has been ridiculed by Western observers, China remains committed to developing an aircraft of this caliber and expanding the fleet in over a decade after a successful operation.
The program’s lead scientist claimed that the super-quiet engine with no moving parts will also aid in the construction of the next-generation launch vehicle, which is expected to enhance China’s space capability tremendously.
The ‘Next Generation Launch Vehicle’ is likely to launch a crewed mission to space and could potentially make its first flight in 2026. An advanced engine powering it could turn out to be a technological space milestone for the communist nation. READ MORE...
