Short Takes – 3-19-24

Drones and the US Air Force. Schneier.com blog post. Pull quote: “He estimated that a single Chinese Sunflower suicide drone costs about $30,000—so you could purchase 16,000 Sunflowers for the cost of one F-35A. And since the full mission capable rate of the F-35A has hovered around 50 percent in recent years, you need two to ensure that all missions can be completed—for an opportunity cost of 32,000 Sunflowers. As Hammes concluded, “Which do you think creates more problems for air defense?””

2024 Terrorism Risk Insurance Program Data Call. Federal Register Treasury data collection – Summary: “Pursuant to the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, as amended (TRIA), insurers that participate in the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program (TRIP or Program) are directed to submit information for the 2024 TRIP Data Call, which covers the reporting period from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023. Participating insurers are required to register and report information in a series of forms approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). All insurers writing commercial property and casualty insurance in lines subject to TRIP, subject to certain exceptions identified in this notice, must respond to this data call no later than May 15, 2024.”  Comment due date: May 15^th, 2024.

Snake Steak Could Be a Climate-Friendly Source of Protein. ScientificAmerican.com article. Pull quote: “In particular, the researchers were struck by the pythons’ resilience during long fasts: the animals sometimes went months without eating but also without losing much weight. “Observing the ability of relatively young snakes to go many months without food and remain in a healthy state with minimal loss of body condition was really astounding,” Natusch says. Notably, he and his colleagues think that such resilience could be valuable during a major disruption to the food system, such as what occurred during the early days of the COVID pandemic, when some farmers couldn’t afford to keep feeding their livestock but also couldn’t get them to processors.”

Blue Origin plans to test Blue Ring space platform on Pentagon’s DarkSky-1 mission. GeekWire.com article. Pull quote: “Blue Ring is a multi-mission, multi-orbit vehicle that’s being developed to facilitate logistical services in orbit. The Pentagon-backed mission, known as DarkSky-1, will demonstrate Blue Origin’s flight system, including space-based data processing and storage capabilities, ground-based radiometric tracking and Blue Ring’s telemetry, tracking and command hardware, also known as TT&C.”