World’s Most Costly Destroyers See $452 Million Price Rise to $9.5 Billion Each: Zumwalt Class Ships Still Not Operational
https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/world-costly-destroyer-9bil-zumwalt-operational
Excerpt:
The U.S. Department of War on March 31 announced a $1.356 billion contract modification for Lockheed Martin Space to finance the engineering, integration, tooling, and long-lead industrial effort needed to bring the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) program from development into practical fielding in the Navy, providing a conventional hypersonic strike capability to the Zumwalt class destroyer fleet. Should the program not exceed allocated budgets, it will add $452 million to the cost of each of the three destroyers, bringing their costs up to approximately $9.5 billion each. The Zumwalt class destroyer program has been among the most notorious in history for its extreme cost overruns and performance issues, with the ships having been planned to cost between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion each. These issues resulted in the termination of plans to build 32 ships, with 91 percent of production cancelled.
Just 10,000 quantum bits might crack internet encryption schemes
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/quantum-bits-crack-internet-encryption
Excerpt:
To unleash the technology’s full power, scientists have long thought that quantum computers with millions of quantum bits, or qubits, would be necessary. But researchers report that quantum computers’ promise might emerge with as few as 10,000 qubits.
One of the key tasks that future quantum computers are expected to excel at is cracking the encryption used to secure communications on the internet. Now, scientists have calculated that a widely used type of encryption called elliptic curve cryptography could be thwarted with a quantum computer with 9,988 qubits — although it would take about 1,000 days to crack.
With around 26,000 qubits, the encryption could be broken in a day, the researchers report in a paper submitted March 30 to arXiv.org. Another prevalent form of encryption, RSA–2048, would require 100,000 qubits and 10 days to break, according to the researchers, from Caltech and quantum computing company Oratomic in Pasadena, Calif.
The calculation suggests that quantum computers could likewise soon contribute to other areas where the machines are expected to have an impact, such as AI, chemistry and materials science.
Lockheed Martin is building new facilities in Huntsville Alabama.