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Army Patriot missile connects with Air Force F-35 to destroy cruise missile

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Imagine cruise missile threats streaming through the air toward multiple vulnerable targets. As that happens, radar nodes light up across a wide-spanning territory as an airborne F-35 senses the attack. The stealth fighter then hands off targeting data to ground-based U.S. Army Patriot interceptor missiles, knocking the approaching missiles straight out of the sky and destroying the attacking threat.

This kind of warfare development, wherein multiple sensor nodes track and share information across domains to identify and destroy threats, represents the exact intention of the Army’s Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS).

IBCS is a fast-emerging technical system engineered by Northrop Grumman to network radar and sensor nodes throughout wide-ranging air, ground and sea operating environments as a new interwoven, or meshed, air defense network.

“IBCS is in theory the ability to link multiple sensors to an air defense system. Right now, if a defense system is a Patriot missile, you have a Patriot radar. If it’s a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Air Defense), it has a TPY-2 THAAD radar. We’ve got several radars for different systems. IBCS brings the ability to take any sensor and link it to just about any air defense system to include some of our artillery sensors and counterfire sensors,” Gen. John Murray, Commanding General of Army Futures Command, told Warrior in an interview.

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Northrop recently issued a report about a previous IBCS test demonstration wherein an airborne F-35 used its sensors to acquire, track and share target data with ground-based radar, enabling an integrated air defense system to establish a continuous track of the attacking weapon, and therefore identify the proper defensive weapon or interceptor missile to destroy the threat. High above White Sands Missile Range, N.M., an Air Force F-35 tracked two surrogate missiles in the test and sent the sensor data to Marine Corps TPS-59 radars, an Army Sentinel and Patriot ground-based weapons.

U.S. Soldiers with 5th Battalion, 7th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 10th Army Air & Missile Defense Command install and check MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems for a readiness exercise at Oberdachstetten range complex, Ansbach Germany, March 13, 2019.
(U.S. Army photo by Eugen Warkentin)

“As one sensor loses sight of the threats, and each will at some point—the targets are acquired by other sensors on the ICBS Integrated Fire Control Network. The weapons operator sees every change in altitude and direction as the two surrogate missiles painted tracks across their screens,” a Northrop statement said.

This kind of operational use for the F-35 represents an interesting manifestation of part of the vision for the F-35, namely that as a multi-role fighter it can function as an air-ground attack platform as well as an aerial sensor node able to perform drone-like ISR missions. The aircraft’s Distributed Aperture System, for example, combines electro-optical sensor data from 360-degrees surrounding the plane; the data is aggregated and organized for pilots by on-board computer automation performing what’s often referred to as a “sensor fusion” function. The F-35 uses an Electro-Optical Targeting System in conjunction with DAS and a database of known threats called “Mission Data Files” to find targets. This means that, when it comes to operations, an F-35 could use its long-range sensors to detect a threat object, bounce the data off of a pre-existing database of known enemy assets, and instantly determine what kind of threat might be approaching. This performs a rather substantial combat function, as it could enable an F-35 to cue ground-based radar and air defenses about specific enemy attacks from long ranges beyond the horizon.

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Murray explained to Warrior that this kind of integrated sensor-fire control network brings new dimensions to a heavily emphasized strategic approach for the Army and the Pentagon — multi-domain operations. Longer range weapons and increased adversary air-ground-sea coordination present an entirely new sphere of threats. An F-35 could, along with nearby drones or even satellites, track warfare information and network with surface ships or ground-based artillery. As one senior Army official once described it, “when it comes to artillery, it does not matter if the target is on the ground or at sea,” meaning that ground-based weapons can launch maritime, ground or even air attacks all in coordination.

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“A Multi-Domain Operations Concept will transition into a new doctrine to replace AirLand Battle (a cold war air-ground attack doctrine). A concept is a concept because you don’t yet have all the tools to execute it, so there are certain things related to operations that we don’t have yet. It is important to think about what comes next, If technology continues to evolve at the rate it is evolving, and there are indications that it is going to, you have to look out into the future. If you don’t start thinking about it, it is going to be here before you know it and you are going to be behind,” Murray said.

Amazon failed to protect workers from coronavirus infection, new lawsuit claims

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Amazon failed to protect its workers from coronavirus infections at a New York warehouse facility, a lawsuit filed by three employees claims.

According to a report in AFP, the complaint filed Wednesday in federal court said the “relentless pace of work at Amazon facilities” led to hazardous conditions and that company policies “discourage workers from leaving their workstations to wash their hands and from taking the time to wipe down their workstations.”

The legal action arrives after protests near Amazon’s Staten Island, N.Y.

facility, where one worker was fired. That employee claimed he was dismissed becuase he spoke out about the company’s response to COVID-19, but Amazon claimed he was disobeying the company’s quarantine protocols around the pandemic.

One of the three workers in the lawsuit said they were infected with coronavirus “from workers who were explicitly or implicitly encouraged to continue attending work and prevented from adequately washing their hands or sanitizing their workstations,” according to the lawsuit.

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Amazon Fresh delivery person works in Union Square during the coronavirus pandemic on April 14, 2020 in New York City.
(Getty Images)

The three workers and their families are reportedluy seeking a range of changes, including a more transparent policy around taking leave and sick time, as well as better contact tracing for infected workers and back pay for quarantine leave.

The complaint alleges that the retail giant allowed workers to continue on the job even after being in contact with infected individuals.

Amazon, which was praised early on in the pandemic for hiring 175,000 new employees to deal with surging demand, says it has made many changes to improve health and safety at its facilities.

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Fox News contacted Amazon for comment on the lawsuit and was given the following statement from Deborah Bass, a spokesperson for the tech giant:

“We are saddened by the tragic impact COVID-19 has had on communities across the globe, including on some Amazon team members and their family and friends. From early March to May 1, we offered our employees unlimited time away from work, and since May 1 we have offered leave for those most vulnerable or who need to care for children or family members.

“We also invested $4 billion from April to June on COVID-related initiatives,” the statement continued, “including over $800 million in the first half of this year on safety measures like temperature checks, masks, gloves, enhanced cleaning and sanitization, extended pay and benefits options, testing, and more. This includes two weeks paid leave for any COVID diagnosis or quarantine, and launching a $25 million fund to support our partners and contractors.”

As of Thursday afternoon, there were more than 1.8 million infections and at least 107,685 deaths in the U.S. from coronavirus.

Apple’s Tim Cook says company must do more to combat racism

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Apple CEO Tim Cook on Thursday became the latest Silicon Valley executive to issue a statement about the ongoing nationwide protests against police brutality and racial ineqity that were sparked by the death of George Floyd while in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department.

His statement, which takes up most of the landing page at Apple.com, discusses the “painful past” of racial discrimination that’s still present today in the U.S., including in the criminal justice system, the disproportionate toll of disease on black communities and inequalities in education.

“To stand together, we must stand up for one another, and recognize the fear, hurt, and outrage rightly provoked by the senseless killing of George Floyd and a much longer history of racism,” Cook said.

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Demonstrators take part in a protest, Wednesday, June 3, 2020, in downtown Los Angeles, sparked by the death of George Floyd, who died May 25 after he was restrained by Minneapolis police. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)

According to Cook, the tech company plans to take further steps in the areas of diversity and inclusion, and will be making a donation to the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization that challenges “racial injustice and mass incarceration.”

As the protests and demonstrations, which have been largely peaceful, spread to more American cities, there have been some instances of looting — including at Apple retail stores.

EX-REDDIT CEO BLASTS PLATFORM FOR AMPLIFYING ‘HATE, RACISM’

“This is a moment when many people may want nothing more than a return to normalcy, or to a status quo that is only comfortable if we avert our gaze from injustice,” Cook explained in the statement.

“As difficult as it may be to admit, that desire is itself a sign of privilege. George Floyd’s death is shocking and tragic proof that we must aim far higher than a “normal” future, and build one that lives up to the highest ideals of equality and justice.”

The company did not specify how much money it would donate in the statement. Google and Amazon recently announced donations to racial justice organizations.

This is not the first time Cook has spoken out about the killing of Floyd.

North Korea conducting massive cyber threats against US, other countries, reports say

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North Korea is conducting a wide-ranging malicious campaign against the U.S. and global targets, according to several reports.

Last month, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI and the Department of Defense released three reports on malware variants used by the North Korean government.

This was preceded by an advisory in April from the State Department, the Treasury, and Homeland Security, and FBI on the North Korean cyber threat.

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“[It is] essentially a taxonomy of everything the [North Koreans] have been caught doing,” Mike Hamilton, chief information security officer of CI Security, told Fox News, referring to the May Malware Analysis reports.

“Trying to summarize tactics, techniques, and procedures that everyone can watch out for,” added Hamilton, who also served previously as the chief information security officer for the city of Seattle.

One of the driving forces is North Korea’s need to fund its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, the government’s April advisory said. The campaigns are insidious because they often appear as ordinary cybercrime.

“The North Koreans are pioneers in the organized-crime false flag business,” Hamilton explained. “They are running ransomware extortion groups, which most people just assume comes from organized crime, not a nation-state.”

Hamilton said the aim is cryptomining and financial targets, among other aims.

“They show up as commodity, ‘shotgun blast’ types of untargeted attacks to scoop up CPUs [central processing units] for cryptomining,” he said, referring to the mining of digital currencies.

“They also use research and targeting against the finance sector, and non-commodity malware that AV [anti-virus] vendors have never seen,” Hamilton added.

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North Korea-sponsored cyber actors include hackers, cryptologists and software developers who are engaged in espionage, theft from financial institutions and digital currency exchanges, and in politically motivated attacks against foreign media companies, according to the April advisory.

For example, an investigation into dozens of suspected North Korean cyber-enabled heists revealed that as of late 2019, North Korea had attempted to steal as much as $2 billion worldwide.

Then there are extortion and ransomware campaigns.

“In some instances, DPRK [North Korea] cyber actors have demanded payment from victims under the guise of long-term paid consulting arrangements in order to ensure that no such future malicious cyber activity takes place,” the advisory said.

The advisory cited examples of North Korea-state-sponsored malicious cyber activity including:

  • Sony Pictures: In November 2014, North Korea cyber actors allegedly hacked into Sony Pictures Entertainment’s network to steal confidential data, threatened SPE executives and employees, and damaged thousands of computers.
  • Bangladesh Bank Heist: In February 2016, North Korea state-sponsored cyber actors allegedly attempted to steal at least $1 billion from financial institutions in various countries and allegedly stole $81 million from the Bangladesh Bank. North Korea cyber actors sent fraudulently authenticated messages directing the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to transfer funds out of the Bangladesh Bank’s Federal Reserve account to accounts controlled by the conspirators.
  • WannaCry 2.0: North Korea state-sponsored cyber actors developed this notorious ransomware and two prior versions of the ransomware. In May 2017, WannaCry 2.0 ransomware infected hundreds of thousands of computers in hospitals, schools, businesses, and homes in over 150 countries. 

“We, as a country, have few tools to deal with rogue behavior like this,” Hamilton said. “Our naming and shaming strategy is effective at letting them know we see them, but it doesn’t create accountability or change behavior. So they’ll keep stealing money from banks and other organizations with little to fear.”

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As coronavirus pandemic continues, Fitbit granted emergency use approval for ventilator

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Fitbit announced on Wednesday that it has become the latest entity to be granted emergency use approval by the FDA to help with the coronavirus pandemic, getting the nod for a new ventilator.

Known as the Fitbit Flow, the “low-cost” ventilator is based on the MIT E-Vent Design toolbox and Rapidly Manufactured Ventilation Systems. The consumer tech company, known for its wearable devices, consulted with Oregon Health & Science University emergency medicine clinicians and the Mass General Brigham Center to design and create the product specifically for COVID-19.

“COVID-19 has challenged all of us to push the boundaries of innovation and creativity, and use everything at our disposal to more rapidly develop products that support patients and the health care systems caring for them,” said James Park, co-founder and CEO of Fitbit, in a statement. “We saw an opportunity to rally our expertise in advanced sensor development, manufacturing, and our global supply chain to address the critical and ongoing need for ventilators and help make a difference in the global fight against this virus.”

(Credit: Fitbit)

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It’s unclear exactly how much the Fitbit Flow will cost, but the company told The Verge it aims to sell it around for $5,000.

Fox News has reached out to Fitbit with a request for clarification.

The Fitbit Flow is not a replacement for traditional ventilators, which can cost as much as $20,000 to $30,000. Its design was based on standard resuscitator bags that are used by paramedics, as well as “sophisticated instruments, sensors, and alarms that work together to support automated compressions and patient monitoring.”

By comparison, the NASA-designed ventilator would cost roughly between $2,000 and $3,000, according to Business Insider. It was granted EUA approval by the FDA in late April, Fox News previously reported.

Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., built the device, known as VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally), in just 37 days, using a fraction of the parts a traditional ventilator uses.

It’s unclear how large the shortage of ventilators is in the U.S. and around the world, but the need for additional machines is clear, though not as dire as initially feared.

According to a paper published in late April in the New England Journal of Medicine, the range of ventilators in the U.S. ranged from 60,000 to 160,000 at the time.

The U.S. has a national strategic reserve of ventilators, but that has been criticized as being insufficient to fill the needs of hospitals around the country.

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In early May, The Wall Street Journal reported that manufacturers, including General Electric and Medtronic, delivered 4,200 ventilators to the national stockpile.

CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE  CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

As of Thursday morning, more than 6.5 million coronavirus cases have been diagnosed worldwide, more than 1.85 million of which are in the U.S., the most impacted country.

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As George Floyd protests continue, Amazon, Google pledge millions to racial justice organizations

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As America enters a second week of nationwide protests against police brutality, Google and Amazon announced grants totaling $22 million to activist and racial justice organizations.

“We acknowledge that racism and violence may look different in different parts of the world, so please use this as a moment to reflect on those who have been lost in your own country or community at a time that works for you,” said Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, referncing a planned 8 minute and 46 second moment of silence among the company’s workers worldwide on Wednesday, in a statement.

“The length of the moment of silence represents the amount of time George Floyd suffered before he was killed. It’s meant to serve as a visceral reminder of the injustice inflicted on Mr. Floyd and so many others,” Pichai added.

Protesters raise their fist in front of Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the New York mayor, during a protest Tuesday, June 2, 2020, in New York over the death of George Floyd, who died May 25 after he was pinned at the neck by a Minneapolis police officer. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

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Google is donating $12 million to groups working against racial inequities, including to groups the tech giant has partnered with before: the Center for Policing Equity and the Equal Justice Initiative. The company has already donated $32 million to racial justice causes and groups over the last five years, according to the blog post.

Amazon is donating $10 million to a range of groups working the racial justice space, including the Brennan Center for Justice, the ACLU Foundation, NAACP, National Urban League, Year Up and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, among others.

“Solidarity with our Black employees, customers, and partners, and are committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear,” said Amazon in a statement.

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However, critics of Big Tech were quick to point out how both companies had contributed to the current conditions in America and worked to assist police departments or the U.S. military.

Over the last few years, Amazon has been blasted by civil liberties groups and its own employees for its facial recognition software having been sold to hundreds of police departments as well as Immigration and Customs Enforement.

Google, which ended its controversial Project Maven military AI program after protests from its employees and outside critics, announced last month that it will build security and app-management tools for the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) in a reported one-year, seven-figure deal. The Mountain View, Calif., company has also taken heat for allowing the spread of white supremacy and conspiracy theories on YouTube and Googel Search.

New Army ‘Team Ignite’ force prepares for future wars

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Tanks controlling air-ground robots, AI-enabled targeting and reconnaissance, attacking in milliseconds, vehicle and aircraft-fired lasers, self-guiding ammunition, morphing swarms of autonomous drones and fast, real-time, multi-domain networking are all anticipated elements of warfare in 2040.

These prospects, involving a wide swath of overlapping factors, are now capturing the attention of a special group of “Future Concepts” experts at Fort Eustis, Virginia, with Army Futures Command. They are now analyzing the kinds of operational environments, weapons, technologies and warfare maneuvers expected to characterize warfare decades from now.

Army Futures Command Combat Capabilities Development Command calls it “Team Ignite,” a special future-oriented force of scientists, weapons technology experts and warfare strategy and concept developers. The idea is, fundamentally, not to just explore how new technologies will arrive — and there are many paradigm-changing systems in early development — but how will new technology intersect with new concepts of war? … [C]hanging maneuver formations, multi-domain attack and forcing major adaptations to mechanized warfare?”

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“It is not a standing organization but a cross functional team between my technologists, my scientists and my concept writers at our Futures and Concepts Center. This forces the people who are thinking about future concepts to take technology into account because the technologists are right there with them,” Gen. John Murray, commanding general of Army Futures Command, said in an interview for Warrior.

File photo – U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment watch as CH-47 Chinook helicopter from the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade lands after an advising mission at the Afghan National Army headquarters for the 203rd Corps in the Paktia province of Afghanistan December 21, 2014.
(REUTERS/Lucas Jackson)

Attacking formations of armored columns could, for instance, maneuver in a broader, potentially more lethal dis-aggregated fashion, made possible by advanced sensors, autonomy, networking and AI systems. A less-condensed force would of course be less vulnerable to large-scale destruction by enemy attacks.

The idea is to get a multi-decade jump on warfare decades from now, involving a carefully calibrated blend of intelligence information, near-term emerging weapons, basic research looking 20-years ahead and new technical trends promising to massively alter the nature of war.

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“If we write the concept and say ‘if only I could?’ … And then say ‘well I can’t do that right now, but what about in 15 years?’ There is a path to get there if we put the dollars in the right place today,” Murray said. “We are making those investments now, so that 15 years from now … we go from ‘if only I could’ to … we actually can.”

Speaking to current methods of bringing these ideas to life, Brig. Gen. John Rafferty, director of the Long Range Precision Fires Cross Functional Team, Army Futures Command, told me that new technologies and emerging warfare tactics will inspire a new, modern notion of traditional “Combined Arms Maneuver.” A vital element of the kind of warfare envisioned by futurists incorporates Information Dominance and … as Rafferty put it, using a tactical network. He told me that many key programs and platforms (especially Long-Range Precision Fires in his case) now being developed to surge the Army into future decades of war — are all being engineered with a mind to a “network.”

“We are bringing the Combined Arms effect of Long Range Precision Fires, Future Vertical Lift and Next Generation Combat Vehicle networked together. Multi-domain tenets involve convergence,” Rafferty said.

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Extending this reasoning, several pertinent elements of emphasis with major Army programs point to a networking “synergy” wherein platforms operate as attack machines and information “nodes” in a larger, multi-domain meshed network.

Ex-Reddit CEO blasts platform for amplifying ‘hate, racism’

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Former Reddit CEO Ellen Pao blasted the company on Tuesday for amplifying racism and hate amid nationwide protests against police brutality and racism that were sparked by the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, while in police custody in Minneapolis.

“You don’t get to say BLM when reddit nurtures and monetizes white supremacy and hate all day long,” Pao, who was the company’s interim CEO from late 2014 through mid-2015, tweeted in reference to Black Lives Matter.

Pao retweeted a link to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman’s open letter to his staff, in which he said the company “does not tolerate hate, racism and violence.”

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The company has been criticized for years for allowing racism and hatred to thrive, in particular on a subreddit thread called “the_donald” that was formed in 2015.

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Several Silicon Valley companies have put out statements and announced donations to racial justice organizations in recent days. But these commitments have also prompted critics to point out the ways in which these same platforms have inflamed hatred in all its forms for years.

While she was at Reddit, Pao banned five subreddits for fostering harassment. She resigned from the company after critics complained she was censoring the platform.

Fox News reached out to Reddit for comment on this story.

Zuckerberg defiant in tense session with employees over Trump posts, report says

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Despite public rebukes from several of his employees, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg resisted calls to label posts from President Trump with a warning sign in a similar manner to what Twitter did last month, according to media reports.

In a question-and-answer session with employees on Tuesday, Zuckerberg said the decision to leave up Trump’s post where the president wrote “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” was “the right action for where we are right now,” according to leaked audio obtained by Recode.

“We basically concluded after the research and after everything I’ve read and all the different folks that I’ve talked to that the reference is clearly to aggressive policing — maybe excessive policing — but it has no history of being read as a dog whistle for vigilante supporters to take justice into their own hands,” Recode reported Zuckerberg said on the call, noting Facebook can still moderate Trump if it deems necessary.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Sept. 19, 2019, in Capitol Hill, Washington, DC. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

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“This isn’t a case where [Trump] is allowed to say anything he wants, or that we let government officials or policy makers say anything they want,” the Facebook CEO added.

Recode also noted there were tense exchanges between Zuckerberg and employees, with one asking Zuckerberg how many black people were involved in the decision to not take down or label the post (just one, Facebook’s global diversity officer, Maxine Williams, according to Zuckerberg).

Another member of his company asked, “How can we trust Facebook leadership if you show us a lack of transparency?”

Fox News has reached out to Facebook with a request for comment.

Facebook engineer Brandon Dail tweeted on Tuesday that “it’s crystal clear today that leadership refuses to stand with us,” referencing the lack of action by the company on Trump’s posts.

Facebook software engineer Timothy Aveni said publicly on Monday that he was resigning as a result of the lack of action taken by Zuckerberg and the rest of the Facebook leadership.

“Mark [Zuckerberg] always told us that he would draw the line at speech that calls for violence,” Aveni wrote. “He showed us on Friday that this was a lie. Facebook will keep moving the goalposts every time Trump escalates, finding excuse after excuse not to act on increasingly dangerous rhetoric.”

On Monday, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be donating $10 million to a number of groups working on racial justice.

“The organizations fighting for justice also need funding, so Facebook is committing an additional $10 million to groups working on racial justice,” Zuckerberg wrote in a late Sunday night post to his Facebook account. “We’re working with our civil rights advisors and our employees to identify organizations locally and nationally that could most effectively use this right now.”

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Zuckerberg added that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has also donated large sums of money, “investing ~$40 million annually for several years in organizations working to overcome racial injustice.”

Several media reports, including The New York Times, on Monday reported that Facebook employees were holding “virtual walkouts” in response to Zuckerberg’s decision to leave Trump’s posts on the platform as is. Last week, Twitter put warning labels on a few of Trump’s tweets, including ones related to the protests.

Color Of Change, an organization that has been pushing Facebook and Zuckerberg to do more, thanked Facebook employees who walked out in protest.

A source familiar with Color Of Change said its president, Rashad Robinson, and its members were “not only just underwhelmed, but insulted” by Facebook and Zuckerberg’s response to the protests.

The source added that the $10 million in donations is “small relative to the potential” and “without meaning to the ultimate goal of protecting black lives” and needs to be investigated by criminal justice organizations.

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Israeli stadium deploys disinfectant tunnel in push for safer public gatherings during coronavirus pandemic

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Researchers out of Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv have discovered disinfectant technology that is now being used for a sanitation tunnel, which sprays visitors with disinfecting liquid before they enter large venues to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The industrial automation firm RD Pack in Karmiel, Israel, took the process that makes a disinfectant out of water and applied it to a tunnel structure, according to The Times of Isreal.

The tunnel is reportedly made out of an aluminum and polycarbonate frame and is currently being tested at Bloomfield Stadium in Tel Aviv as soccer players prepare to return to stadium play, albeit without fans.

“When people walk through the tunnel, their whole body gets sprayed with the disinfectant, which works fast and efficiently, and provides the complete sterilization of a person,” Eran Druker, business development manager at RD Pack, told The Times of Isreal during a demonstration on Tuesday.

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The method was developed by Dr. Eran Avraham, Dr. Izaak Cohen and professor Doron Aurbach, head of the electrochemistry group of the Department of Chemistry and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Bar-Ilan.

The main advantage of the disinfectant, hypochlorous acid, is that it is not harmful to human skin or food, Avraham told The Times of Israel.

The tunnel would mostly be used for other public and private events such as stadiums games, concerts, airports, schools and businesses.

Druker said the team is waiting for the conclusion of the pilot program so regulators can inspect the tunnel before the process moves ahead.

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As of Tuesday evening, the coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 6 million people worldwide and killed nearly 380,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University.