DARPA

The US Air Force has successfully launched its Atlas V rocket, carrying a X-37B space plane for a secretive mission.

The rocket launched on Sunday from Cape Canaveral, a day after bad weather halted plans for a Saturday launch.

The aircraft, also known as an Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV), will deploy a satellite into orbit and also test power-beaming technology.

DARPA’s ambitious launch-a-day spaceplane is a step closer to lift off after Boeing announced that it’s been assigned the contract to work with the agency to design, build and test a technology demonstration vehicle for the Experimental Spaceplane (XS-1) program.

The U.S. military’s experimental X-37B space plane landed on Sunday at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, completing a classified mission that lasted nearly two years, the Air Force said.

It's not only drones and driverless cars that may become the norm someday - ocean-faring ships might also run without captains or crews.

The Pentagon on Monday showed off the world's largest unmanned surface vessel, a self-driving 132-foot ship able to travel up to 10,000 nautical miles on its own to hunt for stealthy submarines and underwater mines.

According to American journalist and author Annie Jacobsen, US soldiers had been ‘chipped’ after completing their rounds in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

A hypersonic weapon being developed by the U.S. military was destroyed four seconds after its launch from a test range in Alaska early on Aug. 25 after controllers detected a problem with the system, the Pentagon said.
   
The weapon is part of a program to create a missile that will destroy targets anywhere on Earth within an hour of getting data and permission to launch.