/sci/ - Science & Math

>stealth tech
>hidden
I see what you did there

>>5130722
not exactly top secret, but rustles my /x/'s..
HI MEMS.
Hybrid insect micro electro mechanical systems.
>pic related

>>5130722

In general, anything that you see in scientific journals as being "10 to 15 years away" the US military has working prototypes of.

RS-72, a unmanned mach 6 aircraft for reconnoissance.

"Railguns" the magnetically driven firearm, have been in existence since the 70s but it wasn't until the 2000s that their existence became public.

>>5130779
this, but it's more like 5 to 10 years away stuff

What if all the funding went to NASA instead

>>>/k/

>>5130957

NASA is so afraid of errors involving human life. The shuttle disasters basically neutered NASA. If Mars was the destination back in the 60's, I bet they would've already sent manned shuttles out there in rickety tin cans.

>>5130922
Railguns have been in development since the 70's, true, but it's only in the last decade or so that they've become practical to actually consider testing or deploying in the field. As I recall they're considering putting the first railgun weapon system on one of the new carriers in a few years.

>>5130722
>>apparently the US has plenty of spy satellites as good or better than the Hubble Space Telescope.

yeah, but the focal length is different, so don't be expectin' to find alieums or dark matter with em'.

>>5130722
Actually, wasn't there a story a few weeks ago about the DoD planning to give NASA control of a couple of satellites to use for astronomical research?

still took 'em 10 years to find osama

>>5131071

A bit hard when you're looking into a country where the country's government has sympathizers to the man you're looking for and actively warn him, keep his position hidden, or prevent the U.S. from looking into certain areas of the country due to "religious reasons".

>>5130722

>HST

This is a nifty story, since the Cold War imaging/reconnaissance tech has already been declassified, seeing as it's nearly harmless.

HST is just a modified design of a spy satellite; given the number of amateurs looking at the sky, it's impossible to actually hide a satellite, so there are a long string of US craft which just have a designation and "owner" being vaguely the US Government. From this it has been extrapolated that we could have put up the Hubble a decade earlier in ~1982 if we wanted to. There you go for your estimate of "how far ahead of the public knowledge are skunkworks" question.

One of the Space Shuttle's design priorities was to do classified missions for the USAF; you can find some details about these missions but for the most part they stopped after 1986. Perhaps by that point the US already found more reliable/cheaper servicing tech which didn't need the Shuttle.

Earlier this year (IIRC) a pair of obsolete spy satellites were unveiled and offered for civilian use. The comments for the Slashdot thread about that had a *lot* of info about this kind of thing.

>>5131090
Yeah, the shuttle was originally intended to fly a couple dozen missions a year... half of which were expected to be DoD contracts (deploying/repairing satellites and such). Things didn't work out that was and the DoD ended up using the Atlas and Delta rockets instead, and rather than repair satellites they just abandon/deorbit the ones that break down and launch new ones.

>>5130917

>reconnaissance aircraft

>not using a satellite

>>5131489
>doesn't know how satellites work

Remember those stealth helicopters during the Osama Raid? Those were some pretty kooky looking things.

Judging by how the military is actually funneling a good amount of money into exo-skeleton body suit shit, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a less-effective less-strong less-cool version of the Crysis suit somewhere in a DARPA facility.

>>5131517
The consensus on this is that the battery technology just isn't there. All of those prototypes have an umbilical. So unless they go rig up a loud two-stroke diesel, then no mech suit for you

>>5130740

If the F-22 was designed in the late 80s just imagine what they have now.

>>5131705
battery technology is holding so many interesting things back, it seems.
damn you, reversible reactions!

>>5131705
The Human Universal Load Carrier can manage a couple hours on battery now. Lockheed says they're trying to get it up to 72 hours, which I doubt will happen.

>>5132207
If they hit that target, spacemarines.

>>5131723
oh god this isn't a girl, these aren't a pink panties oh god oh god

>>5130963
>>>/a/

Anyone think they could be hiding certain energy generation or storage advances?

Fuck, DARPA's done some work on LENR. If they could generate power from it, we wouldn't find out, would we?

>>5132857
and if they're getting bumfuck nowhere with it (much more likely scenario) we wouldn't hear anything about it either