Miscellaneous


Drones, hackers and mercenaries - The future of war | DW Documentary

Apr 14, 2022

A shadow war is a war that, officially, does not exist. As mercenaries, hackers and drones take over the role armies once played, shadow wars are on the rise.

States are evading their responsibilities and driving the privatization of violence. War in the grey-zone is a booming business: Mercenaries and digital weaponry regularly carry out attacks, while those giving orders remain in the shadows.

Despite its superior army, the U.S. exhausted its military resources in two seemingly endless wars. Now, the superpower is finally bringing its soldiers home. But while the U.S.’s high-tech army may have failed in Afghanistan, it continues to operate outside of official war zones. U.S. Special Forces conduct targeted killings, using drones, hacks and surveillance technologies. All of this is blurring the lines between war and peace.

The documentary also shows viewers how Russian mercenaries and hackers destabilized Ukraine. Indeed, the last decade has seen the rise of cyberspace armament. Hacking, sometimes subsidized by states, has grown into a thriving business. Digital mercenaries sell spy software to authoritarian regimes. Criminal hackers attack any target that can turn a profit for their clients.

But the classic mercenary business is also taking off, because states no longer want their official armies to go into battle. Former mercenary Sean McFate outlines how privatizing warfare creates an even greater demand for it. He warns that a world of mercenaries is a world dominated by war.

[This documentary was originally released in 2021]
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RACER experiment 4 -- RACER Heavy Platform (RHP) Highlight Video

Apr 24, 2024

DARPA’s Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program recently conducted its fourth experiment (E4) to assess the performance of off-road unmanned vehicles. These tests, conducted in Texas in late 2023, were the first time the program tested it's new vehicle, the RACER Heavy Platform (RHP). The video shows autonomous route following for mobility testing and demonstration, including sensor point cloud visualizations.

The 12-ton RHP is significantly larger than the 2-ton RACER Fleet Vehicles (RFVs) already in use in the program. Using the algorithms on a very different platform helps RACER toward its goal of platform agnostic autonomy of combat-scale vehicles in complex, mission-relevant off-road environments that are significantly more unpredictable than on-road conditions.

The RHP utilizes the Textron M5 base platform previously developed and used in U.S. Army campaigns of learning for robotic combat vehicle requirements and acquisition and is upfitted and supported for RACER autonomy integration hardware stacks and software by Carnegie Robotics.

This slate of tests, incorporating the RHP, are the start of Phase 2 of the RACER program; performer teams are the University of Washington and Overland AI; and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Offroad Autonomy, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duality Robotics.
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RACER's Finish Line

Jan 14, 2026

After years of aggressive testing and pushing the envelope with U.S. Army and Marine Corps partners, the Robotic Autonomy in Complex Environments with Resiliency (RACER) program approaches its conclusion. But the impact of RACER will reverberate far beyond the program's official end date, leaving a legacy of robust autonomous capabilities ready to transform military operations and inspire a new wave of private sector investment.

RACER was never about building a single, specialized vehicle. Instead, DARPA aimed to develop an autonomy "stack" -- a collection of algorithms, datasets, and neural network models -- that could be deployed on any ground vehicle. Fast forward from when the program first began in 2021, users can now apply the RACER stack to any vehicle (equipped with appropriate sensors), turning it into an autonomous machine capable of operating in challenging off-road environments, independent of GPS or pre-mapped routes, and at mission-relevant speeds. Learn more:
darpa.mil/research/programs/robotic-autonomy-in-complex-environments-with-resiliency
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