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Military contractors have successfully fired a high-energy laser attached to a modified commercial aircraft, in a ground test that is a step towards testing the airborne laser system in flight. Boeing and Northrop Grumman are working on the system, which is intended to shoot down ballistic missiles.

The laser is in the back half of a Boeing 747-400F jumbo jet. Subsequent tests will increase duration and power before the beam is sent through a fire control system to a turret mounted in the nose of the aircraft [AP]. A long series of ground tests and flight tests will build up to an attempt to intercept and destroy a ballistic missile in flight; that test is scheduled for August 2009. The Defense Department has already spent $4 billion on the airborne laser system, and the final price tag is expected to reach $5 billion.

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It may not be a big market, but it’s presumably a lucrative one: To meet the needs of consumers who are in the business of transmitting classified national secrets, physicists are working on an absolutely secure communication system that uses the strange laws of quantum mechanics to encode information. The latest experiments in this field, called quantum cryptography, produced a system that researchers say would theoretically work to transmit information around the globe.

The system relies on a concept known as quantum entanglement to establish hack-proof communication. Entanglement allows two particles to be quantum-mechanically connected even when they are physically separated. Although the specific condition of either particle cannot be precisely known, taking measurements of one will instantly tell you something about the other. The trick can’t be used to actually send information, because each particle’s condition is random until it is measured. But entanglement can be used for encrypting data if a sender and a receiver make measurements on a number of entangled particles and then compare their results [Nature News].

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An unmanned, solar-powered plane has unofficially broken the record for the longest uninterrupted flight, staying aloft for 82 hours and 37 minutes; it flew through the nights by drawing energy from batteries that it recharged during the day. Engineers for the high-tech aircraft, the Zephyr, say that the three-day flight is just the beginning of what it can do. [T]he aircraft’s designers, at the defence firm QinetiQ, in the UK, think the plane could fly indefinitely. “We think the aircraft, in future, will be capable of weeks or months duration,” said Paul Davey [Guardian].

The flight was a demonstration for the U.S. military, which is interested in using the craft for reconnaissance and battlefield communications. But the Zephyr didn’t officially break the record for the longest flight because representatives from the world air sports federation weren’t on hand to observe the feat. The flight beats the current official world record [for an uncrewed flight] of 30 hours, 24 minutes set by the US robot plane Global Hawk in 2001 [Telegraph].

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Last weekend, teams of robots maneuvered through an urban warfare training course in southwest England, dodging sniper fire and swerving around roadside bombs. But this wasn’t a new television show featuring battling bots; the robots were competing in the the U.K. Ministry of Defence’s Grand Challenge, which spurred competitors to build autonomous spy robots.

The ministry is eager to develop uncrewed surveillance vehicles that can help the military identify enemy positions in a town or city before sending in troops. The MoD earmarked £4.5m to stage the contest and develop the technologies for the battlefield…. If future work goes well, the technology could be at the disposal of the army within 18 months [The Guardian].

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Yesterday the FBI discussed the scientific investigation that led them to accuse the army scientist Bruce Ivins of sending the 2001 anthrax letters. The agency is attempting to prove its case against the researcher in the wake of his suicide but acknowledges that it will be difficult to reach closure without a trial. “We’ll never put all the questions to rest,” said Vahid Majidi, head of the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate. “There’s always going to be a spore on a grassy knoll” [CNN].

The FBI’s case hinges on the genetic analysis of the anthrax found in the letters, which was eventually found to match anthrax in a flask in Ivins’ lab. Over the past several years, the FBI searched worldwide to gather 1,070 samples of deadly Ames-strain anthrax — the type used in the mailings. Only eight of those anthrax samples contained four distinct genetic mutations — the same mutations found in the mailings. And each of those eight samples, officials allege, could be traced to parent material known as RMR 1029 that was maintained by Ivins in a one-liter flask he controlled in a Ft. Detrick lab [Los Angles Times].

FBI officials say they then interviewed more than 100 people who had access to that flask, and used conventional police work to determine who could have created the anthax powder and mailed the letters during the crucial days in September 2001.

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On Sunday, the Iranian state television network showed impressive footage of a slender white rocket blasting off from a launch pad, leaving behind billows of smoke. Iranian officials say that the rocket, named Safir, or “ambassador,” successfully reached orbit, demonstrating the technological known-how to send up satellites. The rocket released equipment that beamed flight data back to ground control, said Reza Taghipoor, the head of Iran’s Space Agency, in a live television interview [AP].

Yet shortly after Iranian officials boasted of their fledgling space program, unnamed sources from the U.S. Defense Department began disputing those claims of a successful launch. “The Iranians did not successfully launch the rocket,” a senior U.S. defense official told CNN Monday. The two-stage rocket could have been capable of launching a satellite into space, but the U.S. intelligence assessment shows that the second stage “was erratic and out of control,” said the official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the intelligence. The rocket “did not perform as designed,” the official said [CNN].

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Computer experts are investigating the cyberattack that brought down Georgian Web sites during Russia’s invasion of Georgia, and say the assault may mark the first large-scale attempt at “cyber warfare.” As Russian tanks began to roll into Georgia on Friday, millions of extraneous requests — a so-called Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack — took down Georgia’s banking and government sites. [Security expert Graham Cluley says:] “In modern warfare, it’s not unusual to see opposing forces take over TV stations, radios and newspapers. In our century, taking over Internet sites is now part of the same kind of strategy” [Venture Beat].

The attack is similar to an incident in May 2007 when Estonian government Web sites were brought down in response to the government’s plans to move a Russian-installed monument; a 20-year-old Russian hacker was later convicted of organizing that attack. As for who’s responsible for the current online strike against Georgia, the theories range from “some kids who got overexcited” [CNET] to a criminal network directed by the Russian government.

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The U.S. Government is closing the book on the anthrax case, pointing the blame at former Army scientist Bruce Ivins, who committed suicide last week as prosecutors prepared to bring charges. The Justice Department said it was confident it could have convicted the scientist, who spent his career developing anthrax vaccines and cures at the bioweapons lab at Fort Detrick, Md. [AP]

Authorities say that DNA tests showed Ivins’ lab contained anthrax spores identical to those used in the attacks, and that building records show the scientist working late nights in the lab just before both of the 2001 attacks. U.S. Atty. Jeffrey A. Taylor says Ivins’ emails show a man growing frustrated with his lab work as his anthrax vaccine project had stalled, and that contributed to Ivins’ problem with mental illness. Taylor suggests that Ivins may have wanted to create a situation that would show the world the necessity of his vaccine, and that could have been the motive behind the attacks.

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Last week’s suicide by a government biodefense researcher who had been linked to the mailing of anthrax-laced letters in 2001 has raised thorny questions about whether the benefits of biodefense research outweigh the risks. Researcher Bruce Ivins had reportedly been informed by the FBI that he was about to be indicted for murder in the incident that killed five people and sent 17 more to the hospital.

Some observers point out that biodefense research has vastly increased since the terrorist attacks of 2001, and raise the question: Has the unprecedented boom in biodefense research made the country less secure by multiplying the places and people with access to dangerous germs? … Nationwide, an estimated 14,000 people work at about 400 laboratories and have permission to work with so-called select agents, which could be used in a bioterror attack, although not all are authorized to handle the most toxic substances, like anthrax [The New York Times].

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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take on the above question in its next term, when it will wrestle with a complicated lawsuit between the Navy and the Natural Resources Defense Council. For years, the environmental group has been fighting to limit the Navy’s use of sonar in training exercises off the California coast, arguing that the sonar injures and disorients whales and other marine mammals.

Environmentalists successfully sued the Pentagon over the practice in March, forcing major changes in the Navy’s annual offshore training exercises. A federal judge ruled it was “constitutionally suspect” for President Bush to issue a national security exemption so no environmental impact assessment was carried out [CNN]. The Supreme Court won’t try to determine whether the sonar is causing confused whales to beach themselves, but will instead weigh in on whether the executive branch had the right to preempt an environmental law by granting the exemption to the Navy.

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