The Disruptive Military Technologies That the Pentagon Is Spending Nearly $150 Billion On

President Joe Biden’s $886.3 billion fiscal 2024 defense budget request includes $145 billion for research and development into emerging technologies to create new weapons systems using artificial intelligence (AI), hypersonic munitions, and electromagnetic swarms.
The Department of Defense (DOD) and its subsidiary military branch technology laboratories, working in tandem with universities and high-tech contractors that increasingly include small businesses, have produced such big-ticket splashes as newly deployed directed-energy weapons systems and hypersonic-ballistic sensors.
Among prospective products and systems calling for funding in the FY24 spending request are a “rocket cargo” transport that can move 100 tons of cargo anywhere on Earth within an hour; a counter-swarm electromagnetic weapon that can disable drones and be powered from a wall plug; a rotating detonation engine without moving parts; a “pop-up hide” that can make Marines disappear in plain sight; and a Predictive Vehicle Activity for Identification and Location program that “will bring a novel approach to automated target detection and recognition.”…}