Iain Boyd News

High-energy laser weapons: How they work, what they are used for

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 22:22:59 +0000

High-energy laser weapons: How they work, what they are used for Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/07/2024 - 15:22

Militaries around the world are rapidly developing science fiction-like laser weapons, motivated in part by the growing threat from swarms of drones. Read from CU defense expert Iain Boyd in The Conversation.

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Boyd discusses high altitude balloons with CBS News

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 16:20:50 +0000

Boyd discusses high altitude balloons with CBS News Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/26/2024 - 09:20

Iain Boyd was interviewed by CBS News for a piece discussing a high altitude balloon slowly making its way across the United States.

A professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Boyd is also the director of the CU Boulder Center for National Security Initiatives.

Defense officials say there is no threat from a high-altitude balloon, which follows multiple other balloon incidents early last year that drew international attention.

In the interview, Boyd discusses differences between this balloon and those earlier events as well as the federal response.

Read the full article at CBS News...

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Boyd discusses Iron Dome, missile defense systems with Fox

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 20:50:11 +0000

Boyd discusses Iron Dome, missile defense systems with Fox Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/25/2023 - 14:50

What is the "Iron Dome" that protects Israel from missile attacks and why did it fail on Oct. 7?

Iain Boyd discusses missile defense systems in a new interview with Fox's LiveNOW network.

Boyd is a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and director of the CU Boulder Center for National Security Initiatives.

In the interview, he outlines how Hamas was able to penetrate Iron Dome, misile defense in Ukraine, and efforts to develop new laser-based defense systems.

Watch the interview at Fox Live Now...

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How Hamas got around Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system

Anonymous — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 16:42:53 +0000

How Hamas got around Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/13/2023 - 10:42

How did so many Hamas missiles penetrate Israel’s state-of-the-art air defense system? CU Boulder aerospace engineer Iain Boyd explains in The Conversation.

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Call them UFOs or UAPs, scientists need better data, according to weekend panel

Anonymous — Sun, 08 Oct 2023 15:21:18 +0000

Call them UFOs or UAPs, scientists need better data, according to weekend panel Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 10/08/2023 - 09:21

Scientists shouldn’t be afraid to talk about, or even study, those mysterious objects flying in the sky—maybe just don’t call them UFOs.

That was one of the conclusions of a panel discussion this weekend at ScienceWriters2023, an annual gathering of hundreds of science journalists and communicators from around the country and abroad. CU Boulder and the CU Anschutz Medical Campus hosted this year’s events.

On Saturday morning, the talk was all about unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs—a relatively new name for the strange blips that zoom across the instruments of fighter jets or flashing lights amid the stars. During a session called “Look! Up in the sky! It’s not a UFO … it’s a UAP,” a panel of journalists and scientists tackled a tricky question: How should serious scientists approach a topic that has, for decades, been the butt of so many jokes?

CU Boulder’s Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives and professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, took part in the panel.

The group got the most obvious topic out of the way early: “UFOs are almost certainly not alien visitors,” said writer and UFO investigator Mick West, who joined the session remotely. Other panelists included moderator Dan Vergano, senior opinion editor for Scientific American; Nadia Drake, physics editor for Quanta magazine; and Thomas Zurbuchen, director of ETH Zurich Space and former associate administrator for science at NASA.

ScienceWriters2023 attendees pack the Glenn Miller Ballroom for a session on UAPs. (Credit: Casey Cass/CU Boulder)

But that doesn’t mean researchers shouldn’t investigate them more closely, the speakers agreed.

“Behind all of this, there’s a really important contribution to be made from the scientific community and the scientific communications community,” Boyd said.

In 2022, NASA convened an independent study team to begin the process of exploring UAPs from a scientific perspective. The group’s report, released in September, lays out a path for the research community to collect more data about unknown and strange things high above Earth.

Getting to the bottom of these sightings—no matter their causes—could help governments keep military or commercial aircraft safe, the panelists said. UAPs could also lead scientists toward discovering new natural phenomena they hadn’t known about before.

As Drake, an author of the NASA report, put it: “When something is stigmatized, it really hampers data collection, so you don't get the types of observations that are going to be useful.”

The (alien) elephant in the room

And there are good reasons for collecting data on UAPs, Boyd said.

In part, that’s because there are a lot of human-made objects flying around in the skies at any moment in time, and governments don’t always know what they are. They include drones, high-altitude balloons and more. He pointed to the case of a Chinese balloon that floated over Alaska and much of the United States in early 2023 before it was ultimately shot down by the U.S. Air Force.

“In a time of enhanced tensions internationally, leadership has to make difficult decisions,” Boyd said. “Do we shoot this thing down? Do we let it fly over the U.S.?”

Military pilots have to make even quicker and potentially more dangerous choices if they encounter something eerie in their paths, Boyd said.

The panelists noted that, for decades, scientists have shied away from exploring UAPs—in part because of their popular association with little green men and flying saucers. But Zurbuchen, at least, hopes that researrchers can begin to shed that stigma.

“There are a number of things that used to be UAPs that are now well-recognized science phenomenon because somebody actually said, ‘Wow, these clouds really look weird. What happened there?’” Zurbuchen said.

True science

In many cases, researchers have struggled to study such phenomena because they can’t get their hands on high-quality observations, Drake said.

In their NASA report, she and her colleagues noted that researchers may already have access to a treasure trove of top-notch data. Scientists, for example, could use the many scientific satellites circling the planet to search for unexplained events in the atmosphere: They just need to better define what they’re looking for.

“We also suggested some sort of citizen science campaign,” Drake said. “So really harnessing the power of all of these people with all of these smartphones to come up with a way to make reports, put them into a system, and include metadata that can be really useful for figuring out what something is.”

Boyd, in turn, said he would like to see more comprehensive and easy-to-access catalogues of UAP sightings. That way, if a bystander captures video of strange lights high above Earth, researchers can quickly tell if those lights seem like a new phenomenon or can be easily explained. He also urged the assembled science writers not to give into the sensationalism around UFOs.

“That is critical for your community to make sure when there are stories that have a science element to them, that the true science is being recorded,” Boyd said.

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Boyd discusses unexplained aerial phenomena with Popular Mechanics

Anonymous — Wed, 17 May 2023 19:59:40 +0000

Boyd discusses unexplained aerial phenomena with Popular Mechanics Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/17/2023 - 13:59

Iain Boyd discusses research into unidentified aerial phenomena in a new Popular Mechanics article.

Boyd is a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and director of the CU Boulder Center for National Security Initiatives.

The piece focuses on renewed military efforts to study unexplained objects seen by fighter pilots and in drone video footage. It points out that with thousands of research balloons and planes airborne at any moment, the objects may have ordinary explanations.

“Observers often only see a fraction of some phenomenon from a particular angle, and this is often what leads to misinterpretation," Boyd said. “These same issues apply to military sensors, which tend to see only a piece of the overall picture.”

Read the full article at Popular Mechanics...

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Popular Mechanics interviews Boyd on hypersonic weapons tracking

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 14:11:54 +0000

Popular Mechanics interviews Boyd on hypersonic weapons tracking Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/29/2023 - 08:11

Iain Boyd was interviewed for a new article in Popular Mechanics on efforts to track hypersonic weapons.

At issue? Hypersonic weapons often travel at fast enough speeds to generate a sheath of plasma, which can obscure them to radar. Traditional missiles travel at comparably slower speeds and are much easier to monitor and potentially intercept midflight.

“It is only the very fastest hypersonic vehicles that create enough plasma for radar to be a consideration,” Boyd explains. Scramjet cruise missiles are “very fast and create a lot of energy, but they are not fast enough to create all those charged particles.”

Boyd, a professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, is also the director of the CU Boulder Center for National Security Initiatives. He is a leading researcher in hypersonic aerothermodynamics.

Read the full article at Popular Mechanics

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Boyd featured in multiple media outlets on spy balloon

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 18:28:10 +0000

Boyd featured in multiple media outlets on spy balloon Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/13/2023 - 11:28

Iain Boyd was interviewed by national and international outlets on the balloon from China that overflew the United States.

A professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, Boyd is also the director of the CU Boulder Center for National Security Initiatives.

He spoke to multiple reporters on the highly unusual action by China last week and what we can learn from studying the wreckage.

"It would be very surprising if there's any technology on that platform that the US does not already have some equivalent form of, but it does give the potential to give the intelligence services here an understanding of the technological maturity that the Chinese have for these kinds of applications," he said.

“Part of me also wonders whether China really decided to do this provocative act as it underestimated the strength of the response from the US and the broad international interest in this story."

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Chinese spy balloon over the US: An aerospace expert explains

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 16:14:29 +0000

Chinese spy balloon over the US: An aerospace expert explains Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/13/2023 - 09:14

The U.S. military shot down what officials have called a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, 2023. Iain Boyd, professor of aerospace engineering sciences, explains how the balloons work and what they can see. Read it on The Conversation.

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Boyd discusses hypersonic weapons with Newsweek

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 17:39:05 +0000

Boyd discusses hypersonic weapons with Newsweek Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/02/2023 - 10:39

Professor Iain Boyd discusses the War in Ukraine and Russia's use of hypersonic weapons in a new article in Newsweek.

Boyd, who is also the director of the CU Boulder Center for National Security Initiatives, is a leading researcher in hypersonic aerothermodynamics.

Hypersonic weapons present major new challenges to national defense systems for nations worldwide, include the United States.

"They are very difficult to shoot down not just because of their high speed, but also because they fly in a region of the atmosphere that we have not needed to defend before," Boyd said. "They fly higher than aircraft and regular missiles but lower than satellites and ballistic missiles.

Read the full article at Newsweek...

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