MetaFilter posts tagged with technology and military

The Electromagnetic Railgun

Trurl — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:22:22 -0800

The Navy has spent seven years testing out the components of a way-futuristic weapon: a shipboard cannon that blasts bullets over vast distances at hypersonic speeds using bursts of electricity. ... The Navy released video of the first tests, viewable above, on Tuesday. The dramatic mini-inferno in the wake of the slug fired from the railgun is the result of “1 million amps flowing through” the gun, said test chief Tom Boucher, the hypersonic speed of the shot, and the actual aluminum of the bullet — “reactive in the atmosphere” — burning off.

A Farewell to Arms

Trurl — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:59:57 -0800

The B53 wasn’t just any old megabomb. It was the first bunker buster. U.S. nuclear doctrine called for it to be delivered over suspected underground Soviet command-and-control facilities. The dumb bomb wouldn’t destroy them so much as it would destroy everything remotely near it, leaving — literally — a smoldering crater. That was the U.S. plan for “victory” in a nuclear war right up until the implosion of the Soviet Empire. (related) The current point of the US nuclear spear is represented by ~ 228 UGM-133 Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

Of spies, special forces and drone strikes

kliuless — Sat, 21 May 2011 13:23:12 -0800

Warfare: An advancing front - "The US is engaged in increasingly sophisticated warfare, fusing intelligence services and military specialists" BONUS China: Police state - "China's security machine causes concern"

Many inside and outside the country believe the Communist party has reverted to a more authoritarian stance following a long period of relative tolerance. This change, they believe, is reflected in, and exacerbated by, the growing power of the security apparatus... In recent years the amount spent on internal security – police, courts, paramilitary forces, riot squads, secret agents, informants, surveillance, internet censorship and the like – has soared. At about Rmb624.4bn for 2011, it now exceeds the country's publicly stated military budget... One of the most obvious manifestations is the proliferation of surveillance cameras. Last month, the western municipality of Chongqing announced plans to expand its network from 310,000 to 510,000 by next year... Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where almost 200 people died in the July 2009 riots, finished the installation of 40,000 cameras last year. The southern city of Guangzhou, one of the main export manufacturing hubs, boasts 270,000. The expansion of the bloated security apparatus extends to less palpable efforts, including the recruitment of huge numbers of informants to the state payroll... Leaked internal security documents reveal that the ruling Communist party believes that for a police state to work properly, it takes more than the police. "[We have] put the masses in their rightful role as the most important, the most direct and the most pure source of intelligence information," wrote Yang Guangwei, political commissar of the Domestic Security Department in Shaoxing, eastern China... Liu Xingchen, police chief of Kailu county in Inner Mongolia, said more than 12,000 of his county's 400,000 residents were on his payroll.

The Arctic Sea—a New Wild West? - "Global warming is set to bring the Arctic into play as a key strategic region for the US, China and Russia. Can a stable set of rules be crafted?"

"They asked us who we were, and we told them we were civilians from Kijran district."

zarq — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:23:17 -0800

A Tragedy of Errors. On Feb. 21, 2010, a convoy of vehicles carrying civilians headed down a mountain in central Afghanistan and American eyes in the sky were watching. "The Americans were using some of the most sophisticated tools in the history of war, technological marvels of surveillance and intelligence gathering that allowed them to see into once-inaccessible corners of the battlefield. But the high-tech wizardry would fail in its most elemental purpose: to tell the difference between friend and foe." FOIA-obtained transcripts of US cockpit and radio conversations and an interactive feature provide a more in-depth understanding of what happened.

The Future of Border Defense: Robot Sentries

zarq — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:25:24 -0800

The Korean DMZ (pdf) / PLZ has been a hot tourist attraction for years, featuring must-see sites like the Third Infiltration Tunnel, Dora Observatory, the Dora Mountain Train Station, the Freedom Bridge and the Imjingak Tourist Site, complete with its statue of Harry Truman. And now, South Korea's border with North Korea -- the most heavily militarized border on Earth, -- will be patrolled by killer robots. South Korea first began testing stationary robot units intended for the DMZ in 2007, but it appears as if previous versions did not perform to expectations. AOL News: Countries Look to Robot Armies for Border Defense PopMech: Top 5 Bomb-Packing, Gun-Toting War Bots the U.S. Doesn’t Have

High Frontier

Artw — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:49:35 -0800

“In all honesty, we don’t know when it’s coming back for sure” - The US Air Force's first launch of the X-37b reusable space vehicle has provoked much speculation, with some even wondering if the Pentagon is reviving Nazi space-bomber plans. But was the launch of spaceplane an attempt to mask the launch of another secret weapon?

MWAH Hah hah hah HAH!

cross_impact — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:51:48 -0800

Mad Scientists imagine the WMD's of the future. And the Army is listening.

Air Flow

Artw — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:44:37 -0800

How to blog, or counter-blog, for the US Air force, in handy flow chart form.

Victorians, eminent and otherwise

Kattullus — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:00:30 -0800

The Victorian Web is your one-stop resource for England in the Victorian era (1837-1901). The site is much too extensive to give but a flavor. It is divided into 20 categories, including Technology, Gender Matters, Economic Contexts, Authors, Political History, Theater and Popular Entertainment, Science and Genre and Technique. Here are a few examples of the articles inside: Inventions in Alice in Wonderland, The Role of the Victorian Army, Earth Yenneps: Victorian Back Slang (and a glossary of same), Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Philosophy of Androgyny, Hermaphrodeity, and Victorian Sexual Mores, Evolution, progress and natural laws and, of course, Queen Victoria.

John Arquilla interview re: the future of military technology and hardware

jason's_planet — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:52:36 -0800

“[O]ur military today oversees spending of about a billion and a quarter dollars every day. Most of that is misspent. Over this past quarter-century, we've reinforced an old industrial-policy military with hardware that makes increasingly less sense, spending most on things that provide the least return. The principal argument for that is: ‘We have to keep the big, old-style military because we might fight a big, old-style war one day.’ But in the future the bigger you are, the harder you're going to fall to ever-more accurate weapons.”

We are changing the rules of the game

Postroad — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:35:15 -0800

One upping the bad guys

It sounds a lot like science fiction.

dsquid — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 05:25:25 -0800

It sounds a lot like science fiction. It moves at the speed of light and it can penetrate walls. The U.S. military has firepower that uses electromagnetic energy to blind, stun or kill targets. Defense contractors are eager, but the weapons are not yet being deployed.

Do As I Say

gonadostat — Sat, 16 Apr 2005 10:27:18 -0800

Do As I Say and Not As I Do. Go Military R&D. It took less than 4 months to develop a laser that is safe to shine at airplanes.

From the secret world of the "black budget"

NekulturnY — Tue, 17 Sep 2002 01:52:52 -0800

From the secret world of the "black budget" comes the story of a man who wants to know the truth about the army's research into anti-gravity technology and zero-point energy ("There's enough energy in your coffee cup to evaporate the world's oceans many times over." ). Is he a lunatic? A "Ufologist"? Nope, he's an award-winning defense and aerospace reporter for Jane's Defence Weekly, the highly respected magazine on international military and policy issues. In fact, he says, the loonies may be right! He thinks there probably are saucerlike flying objects, but they're not alien, they're made in the USA (who got the technology from the Nazi's - who else?). He even goes so far as to suggest that the CIA has a program to discredit people who see UFO's. I like my stories rich, and this one is very rich. (via Atlantic Unbound)

dchase — Wed, 28 Aug 2002 09:07:00 -0800

MIT's R&D for the US Army of the future appears to be based on a comic book.

Laser Weapons

kliuless — Sun, 17 Feb 2002 06:33:19 -0800

Laser Weapons like in Real Genius, but for real! Combine them with GPS and you get Death Rays!! The technology is there, but how will it change warfare? (via drudge :)

Lockheed Martin

catatonic — Fri, 26 Oct 2001 18:41:49 -0800

Lockheed Martin beat out Boeing for a $200 Billion contract to build the new F-35 fighters jets earlier today. Missile defense, planes that can take off vertically, bombs that fry electronics...military technology is accelerating at a really frightening pace.

Critical review of the U.S. military.

CRS — Fri, 30 Mar 2001 07:18:42 -0800

Critical review of the U.S. military. As someone with an interest in the military (my brother is a fire-controlman on the guided missile cruiser Vella Gulf), I like to see someone taking a serious look at what the future will bring on the warfare front. Maybe it'll help us avoid things like this(1) and this(1).

(1): Mogadishu, Somalia
(2): Sinking of H.M.S. Prince of Wales and Repulse