The Adventures Of A Would Be Arms Dealer (PDF) is an eight-page comic illustrating how an illegal arms deal works in practice. Via.
posted by Fiasco da Gama on Jul 28, 2009 - 16 comments

Excellent post over at BLDBLOG on the history of Bannerman's Arsenal, a ruined island castle in the middle of the Hudson river, created by a war profiteer who was at one time the world's largest arms dealer. Bonus points for the amazing accompanying photos by Shaun O'Boyle, whose site Modern Ruins has been featured on the blue previously.
posted by jonson on Nov 17, 2007 - 14 comments

"It is a horrible device nonetheless, and you are forced to wonder what the world has come to when human ingenuity is pressed into service to make a thing like this." Raytheon says, "The system is available now and ready for action." [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Sep 20, 2007 - 188 comments

The first armed robots have hit the streets of Iraq and are now hunting evil-doers with high-powered M249 machine guns. The robots are called SWORDS, which stands for "Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System". Army focus groups apparently preferred this acronym over the more obvious PUBE (Predatory Unmanned Battle Engine). The robots are currently being piloted through the streets of Bagdad using remote control. According to an interview on CNET with Chief Army Scientist Thomas Killion however, the army soon plans to make the killing machines fully automatic.
posted by infini on Aug 3, 2007 - 88 comments

Make love not war? The Pentagon confirms that it was researching the possibility of a "gay bomb" that could "turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting." BBC discusses this and other unorthodox U.S. weapons proposals.
posted by madamjujujive on Jun 9, 2007 - 86 comments

Fancy high-tech crowd control beams? Nah. Silly String is what our troops really need.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 9, 2006 - 20 comments

Six places to nuke when you're serious
posted by lupus_yonderboy on Aug 9, 2006 - 75 comments

"The neutron bomb has to be the most moral weapon ever invented." -- Sam Cohen, inventor of the neutron bomb. [an article by Charles Platt on boingboing.net]
posted by iffley on Aug 19, 2005 - 53 comments

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.
posted by dsquid on Jul 12, 2005 - 38 comments

You got your Outkast in my Sun Tzu Weaponry, military, and war footage set to music. Although the author believes Enya did the song Adiemus, the target practice video is kind of interesting. I couldn't find any videos set to Peace Train, however.
posted by joaquim on Dec 1, 2004 - 13 comments

"Weapons of Mass Destruction", you say? Question: If Iraq is the vicious rat and North Korea the furious pygmy of WMD threats, where is the 800 pound gorilla? Answer - "...law enforcement officials worldwide have seized 40 kilograms of Russian-origin uranium and plutonium since 1991. Stanford researchers have also estimated that only 30 to 40 percent of the nuclear material stolen from facilities in Russia and other territories in the former Soviet Union are ever recovered by authorities." the collapse of the Soviet Union left vast stores of Nuclear weapons and weapons grade plutonium and uranium, and stocks of chemical and biological warfare agents lying about at dangerously underfunded facillities scattered through the vast expanse of the ex-Soviet realm. "Russian stockpiles of weapons and materials are the most likely source for terrorists attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction", said US Senator Richard Lugar, Republican chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. An international effort to destroy these stores of ex-Soviet WMD's is currently funded at a tiny fraction of the estimated cost of a possible US invasion and occupation of Iraq. (more inside)
posted by troutfishing on Mar 16, 2003 - 10 comments

Iraq: How Saddam hides the smoke and the guns This account is from an Italian paper and appears in an Israeli site that sums up materials pertaining to the Middle East. Of course I am not able to verify its authenticity, nor would anyone, given the "hidden" nature of the man being interviewed. But it does suggest what the Bush administration and many pundits have been saying or implying for some time now.
posted by Postroad on Jan 24, 2003 - 49 comments

"All this costs money. It costs more than we have." One year ago today, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned of a "subtle and implacable" adversary whose "brutal consistency...stifles free thought...and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk." It wasn't freedom's obvious foes; he was referring to waste in the Pentagon. The DOD uses so many different financial systems and interfaces it won't have auditable books for another five to 10 years. It still manually enters purchases made with electronic purchase cards. It fires whistleblowers who call attention to shady missile defense deals. And every year, it completely loses track of a quarter of the world's biggest military budget.
posted by mediareport on Sep 10, 2002 - 7 comments

"The old doctrine was that nuclear weapons were far too big and nasty to use, and now they've moved towards developing nuclear weapons they can actually use". On the aniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, does the development of 'low-yield nukes' threaten to blur the distinction between conventional and nuclear warfare.
posted by gravelshoes on Aug 7, 2002 - 29 comments

One Hell of a Big Bang -- Studs Turkel meets Paul Tibbets the pilot of the Enola Gay. It's a great, though-provoking and disturbing interview to read on Hiroshima Day.
posted by LMG on Aug 6, 2002 - 40 comments

J. Robert Oppenheimer, watching the first mushroom cloud rise above the American nuclear test heartbreakingly codenamed Trinity, said: "Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds." Today, a half century after the first use of atomic weapons, in the birthland of the sacred text Oppenheimer quoted, 12 million people could die at once in a nuclear exchange.

Ah, Shiva as each of us...one hand on The Button, the other writing: "The only way to live humanly - still - is in resistance to war. The prevention of war, in the nuclear age, must be a central purpose of every person's life."
posted by fold_and_mutilate on May 28, 2002 - 58 comments

Iraq Calls Bush's Bluff on Weapons Scrutiny. Former U.N. Weapons inspector Scott Ritter claims that Iraq's new attitude toward inspections might undermine attempts to end Saddam Hussein's regime.
posted by Ty Webb on Feb 11, 2002 - 8 comments

More ammo for the "U.S. brought it on themselves" crowd, courtesy of the New York Times.

"One report obtained by Dr. Zilinskas from the government is "Development of `N' for Offensive Use in Biological Warfare." `N' was the code letter for Bacillus anthracis, the germ that causes anthrax. Another is "The Stability of Botulinum Toxin in Common Beverages." The germ-derived substance is the most poisonous known to science."

Seems that the United States has been selling instructions for the creation of bio-weapons.
posted by Yelling At Nothing on Jan 12, 2002 - 4 comments

spooky - in the house [movie link] "We explained our situation and the guy [in the gunship] said, 'Where are you?' and we showed him, and he said, 'Where are the bad guys?' and we showed him that. There was a pregnant pause for a couple of seconds, and then he said, 'You need to move back 18 feet.' " -dragon's breath. cone of fire.
posted by roboto on Oct 18, 2001 - 25 comments

The G-Rated War: Blowing Smoke, Pipe Dream, or The Real Hashish?
I want to spin antiwar arguments a slightly different way. Previous threads have been quite dim. This Cnn chat transcript focuses on the use of non-lethal weapons, the need to separate innocents from terrorists and separate terrorist networks from Islamic states, and the interviewee is as much as suit as they come. You could cut a diamond on that crew cut. I have several questions: 1) Is the US military actually going to use non-lethal weapons, or is this the new "smart bomb?" 2) Do the 'pacificists' among us consider this to be pacificist? 3) If you do favor peace over war, do you think this is a good compromise between peace and war, or is the issue by definition binary? More > >
posted by rschram on Oct 3, 2001 - 11 comments

21st Century Warfare I've been waiting for the new issue of G2mil The Magazine of Future Warfare to be posted to get Carlton Meyers' line on all things post September 11th and it's an all-you-can-eat buffet chock full o'links from a former Marine Corps officer--an anti-imperialist, anti-military/industrialist contrarian extraordinaire. Check out the special war supplement and assess the military options in Afghanistan before you launch into a by jingo paean to what he refers to as Tom Clancy fantasies about the Rangers. Do some extensive research in the magazine's back issues to read articles like Demobilize The US Army, 21st Century Battleships - the U.S. Navy's greatest need, why China can't invade Taiwan--not to mention the $$$ saving concepts like the B-747 bomber...& his line on National Missile Defense? The irony is that, if a workable NMD system is ever fielded, it only guarantees that a better method of delivery would be used, like a civilian airplane, ship, or truck. Tons of drugs are smuggled into the USA each year, can NMD stop that dangerous cargo? Almost two million people illegally cross America's borders each year with un-inspected luggage, can NMD stop them? Why spend billions of dollars each year on NMD while ignoring the real dangers? That was from July...
posted by y2karl on Sep 29, 2001 - 16 comments

Sen. Biden may scotch missile defense. Didn't see any mention of this on the main American news sites I checked, as they celebrate Bush's recent policy triumphs in Congress and wink at his fleeing for his ranch for a month. Even stories about his future challenges don't refer to this, which seems important to me. You can bet the rest of the world is more interested in this story.
posted by aflakete on Aug 3, 2001 - 3 comments

USA's Depleted Uranium Weapons

1 in 7 Gulf War veterans suffer from Gulf War Syndrome, including a high incidence of birth defects, respiratory, kidney and liver problems. There are outrageously high rates of leukemia and severe birth defects among Iraqi civilians. Now Israel uses DU weapons against Palestinians. After DU weapons were used in Kosovo, Italy wants to know why Kosovo veterans are getting cancer. Still the pentagon insists that "... we do not believe it poses any significant health risk." Does anybody in the US give a damn?
posted by snakey on Jan 23, 2001 - 22 comments

A Scourge of Small Arms "The root causes of ethnic, religious and sectarian conflicts around the world are of course complex and varied, typically involving historical grievances, economic deprivation, demagogic leadership and an absence of democratic process. Although small arms and light weapons are not themselves a cause of conflict, their ready accessibility and low cost can prolong combat, encourage a violent rather than a peaceful resolution of differences, and generate greater insecurity throughout society--which in turn leads to a spiraling demand for, and use of, such weapons."
posted by Calebos on May 31, 2000 - 7 comments