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The new project is called Anti-submarine warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), and is intended to produce “an X-ship founded on the assumption that no person steps aboard at any point in its operating cycle”. The uncrewed frigate would have enough range and endurance for “global, months long deployments with no underway human maintenance”, being able to cross oceans largely without any human input – communications back to base would be “intermittent”, according to DARPA.

In particular, the automated warship would need to avoid crashing into other vessels as it prowled the seas on the business of the US government, a function normally performed by bridge watchkeeping officers. DARPA specifies that the ACTUV must be able to conduct “safe navigation at sea within the framework of maritime law” – that is the International Rules for Prevention of Collisions at Sea, aka “Rule of the Road”, which Royal Navy officers have to memorise almost word-perfect.

Then, while weaving in and out of other ships, the crewless frigate must be able to stay on the trail of a well-nigh silent diesel-electric submarine running beneath the waves. Such subs are operated – albeit in small numbers – by various minor powers around the world, and are considered by some in the major navies to be a very serious threat.

“People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,” Mr. Koellmann said. “Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?”

After three years of plunging real estate values, after the bailouts of the bankers and the revival of their million-dollar bonuses, after the Obama administration’s loan modification plan raised the expectations of many but satisfied only a few, a large group of distressed homeowners is wondering the same thing.

New research suggests that when a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying.

In a situation without precedent in the modern era, millions of Americans are in this bleak position. Whether, or how, to help them is one of the biggest questions the Obama administration confronts as it seeks a housing policy that would contribute to the economic recovery.

“We haven’t yet found a way of dealing with this that would, we think, be practical on a large scale,” the assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, Herbert M. Allison Jr., said in a recent briefing.

The number of Americans who owed more than their homes were worth was virtually nil when the real estate collapse began in mid-2006, but by the third quarter of 2009, an estimated 4.5 million homeowners had reached the critical threshold, with their home’s value dropping below 75 percent of the mortgage balance.

The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.

But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

Rear Admiral Yang Yi told the Herald yesterday China was prepared to hurt itself in order to teach the administration a lesson.

”We’re waiting for the reaction from US Congress and if they don’t have a U-turn then the follow-up of sanctions will come soon,” said Admiral Yang, who previously co-wrote Chinese defence white papers while director of international strategic studies at the National Defence University.

”We are clear this action will harm ourselves but we don’t care,” he said. ”We are going to give a lesson to the US government that harming others will harm yourself. This will not only affect Boeing but all companies involved in this.”

The theme of teaching the US a lesson has emerged in China since it strengthened its economic and strategic standing after the global financial crisis. Last month China’s climate change ambassador, Yu Qingtai, told the Herald that ”the key lesson” developed countries should learn from his team’s aggressive diplomacy at Copenhagen was that China could not be pushed around.

Yesterday China opened up yet another challenge to President Barack Obama warning that he would ”threaten trust and co-operation” between the two countries if he met with the Dalai Lama.

On Friday the administration presented Congress with its first weapons sale package to Taiwan.

Chinese trade sanctions against companies involved in the sales could trigger counter-measures from the US under World Trade Organisation rules. Or it could cause US companies, perhaps including Boeing, to lobby the US Congress to dilute the Taiwan arms package – which would be a milestone in China’s rising economic and diplomatic power.

A bearish report by CIBC 1captures precisely the highly unstable system that U.S. housing has become, and deconstructs it along the five key axes of weakness which while individually may be controllable to a degree, combined represent a recipe for disaster. CIBC’s main sources of concern arise from:

1. Short-lived remedies; used by the administration to prevent further price deterioration (tax-credits);

2. Shadow Inventory; in reality when accounting for the surging shadow inventory which very few dare talk about, the total number of available unit sdouble to over 8 million, representing a record high 16 months of supply.

3. Strategic defaults; the amount of households with negative equity is roughly 10 million or about 20%, in 2009 25% of all foreclosures were strategic; as populist anger against banks accelerates look for strategic defaulits to keep rising

4. Quantitative Easing expiring; This needs no introduction: the sole reason why mortgage rates have been as los as they have, has been due to the Fed’s constant manpulation of the MBS market via the $1.4 trillion MBS/Agency QE purchase program. With this program set to expire in 2 months, rates are set to explode.

The ordinance approved in January by the Department of Public Works would require such projects to capture, reuse or infiltrate 100% of runoff generated in a 3/4 -inch rainstorm or to pay a storm water pollution mitigation fee that would help fund off-site, low-impact public developments.

The fairly new approach to managing storm water and urban runoff is designed to mitigate the negative effects of urbanization by controlling runoff at its source with small, cost-effective natural systems instead of treatment facilities. Reducing runoff improves water quality and recharges groundwater.

Cobbling together this round figure for the military’s hush-hush projects is easier than it seems. The Pentagon’s separate ledgers for operations, research and procurement all contain line items for “classified programs.” Add those to the non-sensical, all-caps programs, and you’ve got yourself an estimate for the Pentagon’s secretive efforts.

Last year, that budget grew to more than $50 billion – ”the largest-ever sum,” according to Aviation Week’s Bill Sweetman, a longtime black-budget seer. A few more billion were added for wartime operations, for a total of $54 billion. This year’total would be $2 billion higher, a 3.7 percent increase.

The administration on Monday asked Congress for more than $7 billion for activities related to nuclear weapons in the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an increase of $624 million from the 2010 fiscal year.

NNSA Administrator Thomas D’Agostino said more money is needed because the U.S. needs the best nuclear weapons facilities, scientists and engineers, even as it moves toward eventual disarmament.

“This budget is implementing the president’s nuclear vision,” he said.

NNSA wants a 4.7 per cent overall increase for infrastructure to more than $2.3 billion, including money for major long-term projects to replace aging buildings at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Greg Mello, director of the nuclear watchdog Los Alamos Study Group, said budgets have increased in recent years, but the nation “hasn’t seen any increase in weapons activities like this since the early years of Ronald Reagan.”

He called the budget “a complete surrender to Senate Republicans,” who have argued that stockpile reductions must be accompanied by a modernized nuclear weapons complex.

Los Alamos’ budget includes about $225 million for design work for a research building to replace a 58-year-old lab where scientists analyze samples of plutonium and other radioactive materials.

Watchdog groups contend the new building would position the U.S. to build more nuclear weapons, but Los Alamos lab officials have said the facility would replace existing capabilities.