military

Chris Knight's avatar

This is part of the PowerPoint presentation that was shown to General Stanley McChrystal and other United States military officers leading operations in Afghanistan. It’s supposed to clearly and concisely diagram why the situation there is so dire.

No wonder…

McChrystal, commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, quipped that “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”

Daily Mail brings us the both tragic and comic story of how PowerPoint has become despised by senior members of the military....

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Chris Knight's avatar

Awright, let’s be clear about something: the navigator was not listening to his iPod while at his station. But he was in his cabin listening to his iPod when he was supposed to have been at his station. Which in some ways is indicative of plenty more that was wrong on this sub.

“iPranged a submarine” screams the The Sun in the United Kingdom (gotta love those wacky British headlines). It’s now come to light that the collision between the United States Navy’s nuclear submarine USS Hartford and the transport ship USS New Orleans in the Persian Gulf a year ago was caused by the Hartford’s navigational officer off on his own “revising for an exam” while listening to tunes from his iPod when he should have been uhhh… navigating.

But wait, that’s not all! Crewmen had also set up loudspeakers so that they could listen to music (presumably ...

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Those mad scientists at DARPA (who previously brought us such curiosities as the Internet) are now actively engaged in research to produce semi-undead swine.

Yeah you read that right: the Pentagon is working on zombie pigs now.

Before you reach for the nearest shotgun or chainsaw though, you should know that there’s some practical applications being sought from this. The problem is severe injuries of military personnel in combat situations: massive blood loss from wounds that without immediate (and often nearly impossible) treatment leads to death or debilitating lifelong trauma that may stand a chance of being averted. So the eggheads at DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) are experimenting to see if a state of hibernation can be achieved in pigs, similar to squirrels and other mammals. If it can be made to work in pigs, humans could be the next step. Artificially slowing down brain and heart ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

It was sixty-eight years ago today that Pearl Harbor in Hawaii came under attack from the military forces of the Empire of Japan, propelling the United States into World War II. And we’ve known for awhile now that among those forces were a fleet of “mini submarines”: five midget submersibles that were to enter the harbor and attempt to sink American battleships. However four of them ran aground or were destroyed before the attack and wound up playing no part in it at all.

But what of the fifth Japanese mini-sub?

There’s been evidence for decades – particularly an intercepted radio transmission from the day after the ambush reporting on the success of the mini-sub – but no hard proof of the role it might have played. Historians have debated it for years.

But today history has one less mystery. The scuttled remains of the fifth Japanese mini-sub have been ...

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Call it what you may, a law of either history or human nature. Anything can be used as a weapon… and that a thing intended as a weapon will be used as a weapon.

Concordantly, there is no reason to produce a weapon unless there is a determined possibility of using that weapon.

The San Diego Sheriff’s Department is now in possession of a Long Range Acoustical Device or LRAD: a “sonic weapon” straight out of science-fiction (particularly Atlas Shrugged). This is something that has been used in Iraq against insurgents and also recently against pirates off the coast of Somalia. Quite effectively, it should be noted.

Well, now San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore has been placing his new toy at town hall meetings where citizens have been coming in droves to protest “health care reform” and bigger government.

A spokesman for the San Diego Sheriff’s Department claims ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

According to a story at The New York Times, the United States military is about to offer American citizenship to legal immigrants if they enlist in the armed forces. Some might be eligible for citizenship in as little as six months.

The reason for this, is that the American military is admittedly “stretched thin” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So let’s go review what happened a little over a millenia and a half ago, when the cost of maintaining its vast empire utterly taxed Rome’s martial capability. With not nearly enough proper imperial denizens to draw upon, the Roman government eventually acquiesced to enlisting barbarians from Germania and Gaul to bolster its forces. In many cases, the foreign soldiers were offered Roman citizenship as part of a package of incentives (which could also include some lucrative latifundia).

Fifteen hundred years later, and another great world-spanning power… is now doing much ...

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Is there anything more pathetic than a person scrambling against time in a vain effort to ensure that history will be kind to him or her?

Perhaps only if that person happens to be a current President of the United States.

George W. Bush was at West Point yesterday, trying to spin his eight years in office as a blazing success. The most foolish man to ever occupy the Oval Office actually defended his policy of pre-emptive war (something that had never been done before in American history) and declared to the assembled cadets that “With all the actions we’ve taken these past eight years, we’ve laid a solid foundation on which future presidents and future military leaders can build.”

The Decider also boasted that the present condition of the United States military is “”stronger, more agile and better prepared” than how he found it when he first took ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Couple of items that I found in the news today, that juxtaposed together make for a rather disturbing scenario…

First, the Pentagon wants 20,000 soldiers deployed inside the United States by 2011 to complement local law enforcement agencies. A move that from what I’m reading comes perilously close to blatantly violating the Posse Comitatus Act.

And as if that isn’t bad enough, the Pentagon is also working with a British scientist to create robot soldiers that will be deployed without risk of “committing war crimes”.

So logically, it can be deduced that in the near future there is an outstanding possibility that robot soldiers – armed with lethal firepower – will be active on the streets of your hometown.

This blog has already discussed reasons why this might not be such a hot idea. Gotta wonder if the first robotosoldier that goes nuts and kills a pregnant woman will ...

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And now the dirty secret of whatever success “the Surge” had rears its ugly head…

Military.com is reporting that ex-rebels in Iraq are demanding more money, or else they will go back to the ranks of Al-Qaeda and begin attacking American forces again. The money that’s been paying the former rebels to begin with has originated with the United States government.

So all this time we’ve either been funding an army of mercenaries that used to be shooting at American personnel, or we’ve been outright bribing them, depending on what your take on the situation is. I don’t know if all of the diminished violence in Iraq can be attributed to this chicanery, but it’s a safe bet that a big chunk of it will be.

I’m reminded again of the last phase of the Roman Empire, when that government was reduced to hiring barbarians to fill the ranks ...

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Robert Ballard has come forward with something very interesting: his successful 1985 search for the Titanic was only a cover story for a mission from the United States Government.

The deal was: Ballard would assist the U.S. Navy in examining the wreckage of two American nuclear submarines – the Thresher and the Scorpion – that were lost at sea in the Atlantic during the 1960s. At the time, there was concern that the Soviet Union might somehow find and exploit the sunken subs. The expedition was funded by the government and upon completion, Ballard would be free to continue his quest for the Titanic. All fine and dandy… except few people expected him to find the thing! Some in the Navy were alarmed that Ballard’s discovery might arouse suspicion, but because of all the publicity about the Titanic itself nobody dared question the purpose of Ballard’s mission.

Head ...

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