North Korea has said it will launch three more military spy satellites, build military drones and boost its nuclear arsenal in 2024, continuing a military modernisation programme that saw a record number of weapons tests this year. Pyongyang put a spy satellite into orbit in November at its third attempt and this month, again launched its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which is seen as having the range to deliver a nuclear warhead to anywhere in the United States. "The task of launching three additional reconnaissance satellites in 2024 was declared" as one of the key policy decisions for 2024 at the end of a five-day party meeting chaired by leader Kim Jong Un, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. Kim wrapped up the meeting on Saturday, lashing out at the US, which he blamed for making war inevitable. "Because of reckless moves by the enemies to invade us, it is a fait accompli that a war can break out at any time on the Korean Peninsula," Kim said, according to KCNA.

As the military tries to enable artificial intelligence on the battlefield, building databases and coding software are only part of the picture. AI goals like the Army's desires for autonomous vehicles or creating "hyper-enabled operators" will require computing systems to become more efficient, military technologists said during a recent panel. The challenge is in deploying "edge computing," where the high-power processors needed to run AI systems are dispersed in the field rather than located only in a central cloud system. Better hardware at the edge means less reliance on communications networks that can be denied, degraded or jammed by enemy forces. For example, sending raw data from the field to a central AI system just for an unmanned vehicle to determine if a road is turning right or left is not realistic, the experts said.

When California issued a stay-at-home order back in March to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Dana Angelo, a 33-year-old copywriter at an ad agency in Los Angeles, found herself with more free time. So, out of boredom, she turned to a social activity she could still do from home: She got back on the dating app, Bumble. Angelo said she's been rotating through online dating apps -- she's also tried Tinder and Hinge -- with minimal luck since getting out of a long-term relationship about a year ago, and had recently been taking a break. "You just see the same people on all of them and then it gets kind of depressing," Angelo said. But something surprising happened this time around: She actually met someone she genuinely likes.

When California issued a stay-at-home order back in March to curb the spread of the coronavirus, Dana Angelo, a 33-year-old copywriter at an ad agency in Los Angeles, found herself with more free time. So, out of boredom, she turned to a social activity she could still do from home: She got back on the dating app, Bumble. Angelo said she's been rotating through online dating apps -- she's also tried Tinder and Hinge -- with minimal luck since getting out of a long-term relationship about a year ago, and had recently been taking a break. "You just see the same people on all of them and then it gets kind of depressing," Angelo said. But something surprising happened this time around: She actually met someone she genuinely likes.

File photo - Troopers with the U.S. Army 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division fire the main gun round at a target during unit gunnery practice with newly acquired M1A1-SA Abrams tanks at Fort Stewart, Georgia, U.S. March 29, 2018. Picture taken March 29, 2018. The targets are dispersed across expansive, mountainous terrain, yet moving in coordination for attack. The armored vehicle cannot fire upon the enemy tanks and give away its position, so it "networks" the targeting specifics to an armed overhead drone which then attacks the enemy tanks -- exploding them with Hellfire missiles, all without putting soldiers at risk. In similar fashion - perhaps a forward operating unmanned ground vehicle receives the targeting information and, controlled by a human operator, fires on the enemy tanks without exposing the location of a manned crew.

The Army wants AI to detect hidden targets, like this M109A6 Paladin armored howitzer camouflaged during wargames in Germany. AUSA: The Army has developed AI to spot hidden targets in reconnaissance photos and will field-test it in next year's massive Defender 20 wargames in Europe, the head of the service's Artificial Intelligence Task Force said here. It's just one of a host of AI applications the Army is exploring with combat applications, Brig. Shooting down drones, aiming tank guns, coordinating resupply and maintenance, planning artillery barrages, stitching different sensor feeds together into a single coherent picture, analyzing how terrain blocks units' fields of fire and warning commanders where there are blind spots in their defenses are all uses that will be tested. The most high-profile example of AI on the battlefield to date, the controversial Project Maven, used machine learning algorithms to sift hours of full-motion video looking for suspected terrorists and insurgents.

AI "needs to span every battlefield system that we have, from our maneuver systems for our fire control systems to our sustainment systems to our soldier systems to our human resource systems and our enterprise systems." Gen. Matthew Easley, Director of the Army AI Task Force (AAITF), made these remarks at the 2019 AUSA Warriors Corner, which runs from October 14-16. "We need to be able to create an AI infrastructure for the Army" -- Brig. The US Army is looking to integrate AI into every facet of its operations. "We see AI as an enabling technology for all Army modernization priorities -- from future vertical lift to long range precision fires to soldier lethality," said Easley.