Archive for the 'War' Category
“A Robotic Wingman of Sorts”: Heavily Armed Drones May Accompany U.S. Fighter Pilots Into Combat
February 15th, 2014Via: U.S. Naval Institute: Could the U.S. Navy’s future Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft have an air-to-air role? The service’s director of air warfare Rear Adm. Mike Manazir posed that it could during a Dec. 20 interview with USNI News. Manazir contemplated the possibility that that the UCLASS, which is primarily being […]
Secret Military Contractors Will Soon Mine Your Tweets
February 13th, 2014Via: DefenseOne: The Army wants a contractor to conduct detailed social media data mining to “identify violent extremist influences” around the world that could affect the European Command, responsible for operations in Europe as well as Iceland, Israel, Greenland and Russia. Though the project is classified Secret, an Army contract shop in Europe posted a […]
Connecticut: Thousands Flout Gun Registration Law
February 13th, 2014Via: The Courant: Everyone knew there would be some gun owners flouting the law that legislators hurriedly passed last April, requiring residents to register all military-style rifles with state police by Dec. 31. But few thought the figures would be this bad. By the end of 2013, state police had received 47,916 applications for assault […]
After 5 Rejections, Apple Accepts App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes
February 13th, 2014Via: Mashable: Persistence, it turns out, does pay off. After rejecting it five times, Apple has finally approved an app that tracks every U.S. drone strike and sends a push notification to users every time a flying robot carries out a deadly mission around the world. Josh Begley, the data artist and developer who made […]
DARPA’s Experimental Spaceplane XS-1
February 12th, 2014Via: space.com: The United States military is making progress toward developing a new unmanned space plane, which it aims to begin flight-testing in 2017. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) plans to award the first design contracts for the vehicle project — known as Experimental Spaceplane, or XS-1— in May or thereabouts, officials said. […]
We Track ‘Em, You Whack ‘Em
February 11th, 2014Via: First Look: The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people. According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations […]
Snipers Attacked A Silicon Valley Power Station Last Year And Nobody Told Us
February 6th, 2014See Fiber Optic Cables Cut in California (2009) for commentary that applies here as well. They called that one vandalism. Oh sure. That one happened in April too. Hmm. Via: sfist: Around 1 a.m. on April 16th last year, a team of attackers cut phone likes and took out 17 power transformers at a PG&E […]
XStat for Gunshot Wounds
February 3rd, 2014Via: Popular Science: When a soldier is shot on the battlefield, the emergency treatment can seem as brutal as the injury itself. A medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity, sometimes as deep as 5 inches into the body, to stop bleeding from an artery. It’s an agonizing process that doesn’t always work–if […]
U.S. Army Tests Fully Autonomous Convoy
January 31st, 2014Via: Wired: U.S. Army convoys will soon be able to roll into even the roughest of unfriendly foreign urban areas and combat zones without the worry of loss of life, thanks to new technology that will make large vehicles fully autonomous. In demonstrations earlier this month at Fort Hood, Texas, the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive Research, […]
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
January 29th, 2014Via: io9: Towards the end of World War II, word got through that certain people in occupied territories were eating a near-starvation diet. American researchers wanted to study the effects of starvation, so they recruited volunteers – and starved them some more. The Minnesota Starvation Experiment pretty much lived up to its name. It was […]
