☢️ Russia’s new nuclear doctrine, Marines’s new drone-melting microwave UAS, world’s most powerful tidal turbine

Russia has officially announced that amendments to its nuclear doctrine have been prepared and are ready to be formalized. Announced on Sunday (Sep 29) by official Kremlin sources, this new doctrine will set out under which scenarios Russia’s substantial nuclear weapon stockpile could be used against perceived aggression against Russia.

This comes after President Vladimir Putin warned the world on Wednesday (Sep 25) that proposed changes would include the use of conventional weapons against Russia’s sovereign territory. Such weapons would include things like missiles, artillery shells, etc. Dive deeper into this Must-Read.

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☢️ ‘Red lines’: Putin drafts Russia’s new nuclear doctrine to deter Western strikes

The new doctrine rules will also find any nuclear power supporting such attacks as complicit and, therefore, deemed a joint attack against Russia. Putin’s declaration has seen him drawing a new “red line” against countries like the United States and its allies.

It is also seen as a signal that Moscow will now consider the use of nuclear weapons if the NATO countries allow Ukraine to strike deep inside Russian territory with Western-supplied long-range weapons.

Putin also explained that the changes were needed to adapt to emerging threats. Although he didn’t explicitly mention Ukraine, the proposed measures seemed connected to Moscow’s offensive launched in February 2022.

🚁 US Marines’s new high-power microwave C-UAS can melt down multiple drones in seconds

The US Marines plans to deploy a next-generation high-power microwave (HPM) system capable of simultaneously intercepting multiple drones to enhance its anti-drone capabilities.

Epirus, a US-based counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) manufacturer, is developing the new HPM system – known as Leonidas Expeditionary – in collaboration with the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Joint Counter-Small UAS Office, and US Marine Corps Warfighting Lab.

Epirus is developing the Leonidas Expeditionary – with the program name Expeditionary Directed Energy Counter-Swarm (ExDECS) – as part of a $5.5 million contract award from the US Navy’s ONR.

🌊 UK explores world’s most powerful tidal turbine to unlock clean energy

Researchers at Plymouth University in the UK carried out extensive surveys around Orbital Marine Power’s O2 tidal turbine, the world’s most powerful and located in the Orkney islands of Scotland, to understand the complex ocean conditions in which tidal turbines operate.

Findings from the study will help the team plan and deploy future tidal energy harvesting systems along the UK coastline. With the demand for cleaner sources of energy surging, wind and solar energy installations have seen a major uptick.

However, both these systems, though widely deployable, are also highly unpredictable. Change in wind speeds or excessive cloud cover on a particular day can drastically drop the energy output from these facilities.

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