August 19, 2024 | International, Aerospace
US approves $3.5 billion sale of Apache helicopters to South Korea
The sale, which still needs approval from Congress, would continue a huge year in foreign military sales that are reaching historic highs.
December 7, 2020 | International, Naval
Norfolk Naval Shipyard can go ahead with power and steam plant, state air quality regulators say
By DAVE RESS
DAILY PRESS |
DEC 04, 2020 AT 5:14 PM
Norfolk Naval Shipyard can proceed with plans to build a plant to supply the steam and most of the electricity it uses, the State Air Pollution Control Board ruled.
The board found that the new facility would not boost pollutants — including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide — above air-quality standards.
Its staff analyses also found increased emissions of those chemicals would not be significant, although the board staff did note that increases in very small particulate matter would be significant.
The shipyard wants to install two natural gas-powered turbines, each capable of generating 7 megawatts of electricity, as well as a boilers, heat-recovery generators and one 2.4 megwatt steam turbine.
The $30 million project would allow the yard to generate its own steam, instead of purchasing it from the nearby Wheelabrator plant. The plant also would supply most of the electricity the yard now receives from Dominion Energy.
James Boyd, president of the Portsmouth branch of the NAACP, said the project would add pollutants to the already bad air, raising serious environmental justice concerns.
In a letter to the board, he also said forecasts of emissions miscalculated totals, by reporting pollutant totals from one gas turbine and one burner from the steam generator, instead of calculating the total of all the turbines were operating.
University of Richmond geography professor Mary Finley-Brook noted that the shipyard is a Superfund site, which means its neighbors are more vulnerable to harm from emissions.
Finley-Brook said the assessment of impact on community health was inadequate.
A study for the board by two Massachusetts-based PhD toxicologists said air currently is safe and new plant would not change that, while board staff said air quality in the area had improved over the past 20 years.
Chesapeake Bay Foundation executive director Peggy Sanner said she is disappointed that the board did not require monitoring and reporting of actual emissions from the plant, once it is operating, in 2022.
“There are serious environmental justice concerns around building a new fossil fuel plant in this predominantly African-American community, which is overwhelmed by health risks from industrial pollution, she said, adding " Portsmouth residents already live near high concentrations of toxic waste at the nine Superfund sites within a 15-mile radius.”
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September 12, 2018 | International, C4ISR
DARPA Wants to Find Botnets Before They Attack
By Jack Corrigan The defense agency awarded a contract to develop a tool that scours the internet for dormant online armies. The military's research branch is investing in systems that automatically locate and dismantle botnets before hackers use them to cripple websites, companies or even entire countries. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on Aug. 30 awarded a $1.2 million contract to cybersecurity firm Packet Forensics to develop novel ways to locate and identify these hidden online armies. The award comes as part of the agency's Harnessing Autonomy for Countering Cyber-adversary Systems program, a DARPA spokesperson told Nextgov. To build botnets, hackers infect internet-connected devices with malware that allows them to execute orders from a remote server. Because the virus sits dormant most of the time, the owners of infected devices rarely know their computer, smartphone or toaster has been compromised. Through the HACCS program, DARPA aims to build a system that can automatically pinpoint botnet-infected devices and disable their malware without their owners ever knowing. Launched in 2017, the program is investing in three main technologies: systems that uncover and fingerprint botnets across the internet, tools that upload software to infected devices through known security gaps, and software that disables botnet malware once it's uploaded. Packet Forensics' technology falls under that first category, the DARPA spokesperson said. Eventually DARPA plans to integrate each of those technologies into a single system that can spot, raid and neutralize botnet-infected devices without any human involvement. Because the tool would only target botnet malware, people could continue using the devices just as they had before, the agency said in the program announcement. During phase one of the three-part project, Packet Forensics will build a technology capable of scanning some five percent of global IP addresses and detecting botnets with 80 percent accuracy. By the end of the program, DARPA anticipates the system to analyze 80 percent of the global internet and correctly spot botnets 95 percent of the time. The effort is scheduled to last to four years, with the first phase running 16 months. Later phases include additional funding. https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2018/09/darpa-wants-find-botnets-they-attack/151182/
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November 19, 2024 | International, Land
Last American soldier to leave Afghanistan to command US Army Europe
The general, whose career has been defined by special operations, has been tapped to lead a conventional deterrence mission.