The U.S. Air Force last week completed the first test flight of its new stealth fighter drone, the XQ-58A Valkyrie. The Valkyrie lifted off at Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona on March 5 and was in the air for 76 minutes. Though the Air Force is often secretive about its emerging technology, it loosened the reins a bit sharing a brief 15-second clip showcasing this milestone maiden flight.
The XQ-58A Valkyrie demonstrator is a long-range, high subsonic unmanned air vehicle with a range over 2,000 miles and flight speeds up to 652 miles per hour. It can take off from a runway like a plane or launch into the air via a rocket. It was designed to fly alongside a piloted aircraft and provide mission support as part of the Air Force’s concept “Loyal Wingman” program. Theoretically, the UAV can assist in surveillance, participate in electronic warfare and even fire upon an enemy target if needed. In the future, the military could equip these loyal wingman drones with artificial intelligence, sensitive surveillance equipment, and advanced weaponry. Soldiers could stay out of harm’s way by using these high-tech UAVs to fly high-risk missions into enemy territory.
The Air Force Research Laboratory contracted with San Diego-based Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems to develop the Valkyrie long-range unmanned aerial vehicle. The project falls under the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology (LCAAT) initiative which is focused on developing faster and cheaper tactical aircraft. The XQ-58A drone took 2.5 years to progress from contract award to first test flight and costs an estimated $2-3 million per drone to build. This price tag puts each drone on a par with a single Patriot missile and is significantly less expensive than the average fighter jet which costs upward of $100 million per aircraft.
Last week’s maiden voyage was the first, but not the final test flight for the stealth combat drone. The Air Force plans to conduct a total of five test flights in two separate phases. Future test flights will evaluate system functionality and gauge aerodynamic performance as well as refine both the launch and recovery systems. Kratos isn’t the only defense company working on combat UAVs. Boeing Australia recently announced plans to make an A.I.-equipped fighter drone that can serve as a “loyal wingman” for piloted fighter jets.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.