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DA Form 6 form does not answer his question on HOW to allocate the schedule.

Correct, but not very helpful.....

How much you think a pad of those costs?

Nothing. ALL Army forms are available in PDF format. The advantage of a piece of paper is that you don't need a computer to operate it. This comes in handy in places like foxholes, which typically lack electricity.

FWIW, AR 220-45 tells you HOW to use the form. This took me, oh, 10 seconds to locate via google. FWIW, here's a PDF copy of the reg. Of course, I'm not a cynic who condemns all things military because they are military. Oh, and I guess I should say that I'm a Major in the Army and have used the DA 6 for most of my adult life to do things like this.

A little more searching will probably turn up either a standalone program implementing the duty roster, or a spreadsheet. The paper forms become tedious to maintain for large groups of people, or when maintaining a separate rotation for weekdays and holidays/weekends (which is common), but are VERY fair in allocating duties. More importantly, they are AUDITABLE, so anyone can look at the roster form and determine that the duties are being assigned fairly.

Mr. Bush was in West Virginia on the third leg of a series of trips he has made to military installations in as many days. (emphasis mine)

Should be modded as funny: DA Form 6

I don't see how the writings of a former Army Lieutenant Colonel and West Point instructor, on the subject of military history, quite qualifies as a "rant site".

Perhaps "rant site" was a poor choince of words on my part, although "killology" does seem deliberately sensationalistic. The basic problem I have with the style of that site is that it's intended to sell things. That last seems to be a pretty full speaking calendar for a "West Point Instructor". Perhaps a better request would have been for a non-commercial citation.

As to what actual West Point instructors had to say about S.L.A. Marshall, I was able to find a Journal reference:

I largely agree with Garland's comments regarding Marshall's suspect methodology. I, my peers and fellow West Point instructors are fully aware of recent literature, appearing in a variety of forums, that effectively debunks Marshall's methodology. I agree that Marshall's data were not properly obtained in the scientific sense. Garland should rest knowing that US Military Academy cadets are not required to spout Men Against Fire dogma before graduating.
MAJ Kelly C. Jordan, USA, 2d Infantry Division,Republic of Korea
from the letters section of the journal Military Review

I don't see how the writings of a former Army Lieutenant Colonel and West Point instructor, on the subject of military history, quite qualifies as a "rant site".

Perhaps "rant site" was a poor choince of words on my part, although "killology" does seem deliberately sensationalistic. The basic problem I have with the style of that site is that it's intended to sell things. That last seems to be a pretty full speaking calendar for a "West Point Instructor". Perhaps a better request would have been for a non-commercial citation.

As to what actual West Point instructors had to say about S.L.A. Marshall, I was able to find a Journal reference:

I largely agree with Garland's comments regarding Marshall's suspect methodology. I, my peers and fellow West Point instructors are fully aware of recent literature, appearing in a variety of forums, that effectively debunks Marshall's methodology. I agree that Marshall's data were not properly obtained in the scientific sense. Garland should rest knowing that US Military Academy cadets are not required to spout Men Against Fire dogma before graduating.
MAJ Kelly C. Jordan, USA, 2d Infantry Division,Republic of Korea
from the letters section of the journal Military Review

Changes in sound pressure level (measured in dB) do *not* correspond with perceived volume (loudness). The parent poster is correct; a 10dB increase is twice as loud.

A Google search for 'double loudness decibel' or something similar will turn up dozens of links, here's one from the Army Corps of Engineers:

1E.3 Working with Decibel Values

The nature of the decibel scale is such that the individual sound levels for different sound sources cannot be added directly to give the combined sound level of these sources. Two sound sources producing equal sound levels at a given location will produce a composite sound level that is 3 dB greater than either sound alone. When two sound sources differ by 10 dB, the composite sound level will be only 0.4 dB greater than the louder source alone.

• a 3-dB change is just perceptible,
• a 5-dB change is clearly perceptible, and
• a 10-dB change is perceived as being twice or half as loud.

A doubling or halving of acoustic energy will change the resulting sound level by 3 dB, which corresponds to a change that is just perceptible. In practice, this means that a doubling of traffic volume on a roadway, doubling the number of people in a stadium, or doubling the number of wind turbines in a wind farm will, as a general rule, only result in a 3-dB, or just perceptible, increase in noise.

There are a number of factors that affect how sound propagates outdoors. These factors, described by Hoover and Keith (1996) , are summarized below.

Yeah, my work used to be programming, and flying was my hobby. Now, flying is my work and programming is a hobby.

Go to flight school for FREE!!

The system was called Land Warrior not Urban Warrior. you can visit the site and see it listed under programs. The link however is bad.

FAS has a brief overview of the old project specs though.

that the process of extracting hydrogen for use as fuel is its self polluting...

Hydrogen production from biomass, though promising, is still in the early research and development phase. Basically, biomass includes all organic substances, such as plants, wood chips, bales of straw, liquid manure, and organic wastes. Currently, there is no commercially available process for producing hydrogen from biomass, but the method is to use a high-temperature process to convert biomass into hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

I am no chemist, but biomass from organic substances is polluting....

/*Is there a CHEMIST in the house?!*/

WE still pump the most funds into designing NEW ways to kill people. How are we any better?

The US is better because these new ways to kill people are better ways to kill people, ways that inflict less "collateral" damage than at any time in the history of the world. GPS guidance, terrain contour mapping, infrared signature targeting: all of these are funded because they make weapons more lethal to those being targeted, not innocent bystanders. And in some cases, these new weapons don't even kill people! (Check out the U.S. Army's new various non-lethal weapons technology here.)

No matter what you say, improving weapons is a noble goal, because force is still regrettably necessary to maintain some semblance of order and security in this world, and crude force is becoming altogether intolerable now that media attention makes even small conflicts front-page news around the globe. New weapons must be more precise than ever before, and must do their jobs more reliably and thoroughly than ever before.

Investing money into gross tonnage nuclear bombs with dirty radioactive residue and crude delivery vehicles is the OPPOSITE of the US plan. Attempts by non-superpower countries to create strategic nuclear weapons are completely illogical on several levels. Most importantly, it shows that such countries do not understand the prerequisite for strategic deterrence and its stabilizing corollary, Mutually Assured Destruction: only balanced nuclear arsenals are MAD-deterred. The crude nuclear weapons under construction throughout the world today are not strategic in nature (yet), because they lack delivery vehicles. The only thing they have succeeded to accomplish is destabilizing the world's nuclear balance, and creating incentive for the world's remaining superpower to actually deploy a missile shield system!

If you want to "win" in today's world, win with your economy, not strategic weapons. Don't waste your time and national resources developing weapons that won't be used and have no strategic deterrence value. President Kalam seems to understand this now, which is why I think he is advocating technology education and has great concern for students in India. I hope his message is heeded.

At the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center they have the original Sonic Wind 1 rocket sled. They also have a video loop of some of the test runs of this beast.

Remember that Sonic Wind was all about trying to determine what would happen to a pilot who ejected at speeds greater than Mach 1 - so the occupant of Sonic Wind 1 was sitting on the front of the sled without any windscreen.

In the video, as the craft exceeds Mach 1, you can see the shock waves (a.k.a. sonic booms) forming off the craft, including one forming off the pilot himself.

That always gets me.

[...] Could soldiers be screened for homosexuality?

Meaning that homosexuals would be rejected or that they would have priority? In ancient Greece, some divisions of the army were composed primarily of homosexuals. The reasoning was that the bond between them would make them fight harder when they saw the others in danger. So this is an issue that swings both ways (pun intended, har-har).

In most countries a soldier's sexual orientation / preference is not an issue (one way or the other), though.

I think that screening based on predisposition to kill (if it turns out to be something you can identify genetically) would be a lot more likely.

RMN
~~~

I did a little more searching on the "psychopath versus professional soldier" issue, and found an article claiming statistics: 4% of an army's troops are psychopaths, yet they provide 50% of it's combat power.

http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/systems/jupit er/photos/jupiter%20size%20comparison.jpg

See if you can break that link..

• Big things- the large scope of war includes many effects that guys with toy guns can't attempt to replicate. In actual combat, these situations will be rare, but are critical to practice.
  
  Battlefields you cannot visit or recreate (downtown Bagdad...). More opponents than you have volunteer college kids. Many more civilian bystanders than you can hire as actors.
  
  Air-launched missiles blasting through buildings. An M1A1 rolling through a fighting position. Half the squad inhaling poison gas and needing an airlift evac.
  
  
• Small things- Paintball, and to a lesser extent MILES and even training rounds suffer from different ballistics than actual weapons. They produce "false training", where a person can be conditioned to expect guns to behave less effectively than they really do. An M16 can be fatal from 1km off- no paintball players would think of engaging targets from such ranges. Laser systems can get the range right, but have other problems- you can't really glue optical sensors onto every surface of a person that might be shot at, and the protectiveness of soft cover is exaggerated. An M249 can tear through the walls of a residential home, but training lasers never will.
  

"5. I am not aware of a United States chemical or biological weapons program. Perhaps you could post more information."

I've been reading books about U.S. government activities since I was serving in the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam war. At that time, the government was lying to U.S. citizens about what we were doing at the base at which I was stationed in Thailand. I was shocked that the U.S. government would so easily lie, and I began to be interested in knowing more.

I've put together two articles that collect links about mostly hidden violent U.S. government activities. I've been amazed at one of the responses I've gotten: Most people have very little knowledge of U.S. government violence, even though the U.S. government has killed more than 3,000,000 since the Second World War.

The U.S. government is a world leader in biological weapons, although you don't hear about that much any more. Try visiting the U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command. The site says, "The operational capabilities of the command include the safe, secure, storage of chemical weapons at the eight United States stockpile sites at Anniston Ala., Blue Grass, Ky., Edgewood, Md., Newport, Ind., Pine Bluff, Ark., Pueblo, Colo., Tooele, Utah and Umatillla, Ore." Most of the site is not accessible to people like you and me who pay taxes to support this. The site is written to show only the mostly defensive activities.

However, the U.S. government is heavily involved in EVERY kind of weapons manufacture. For example, see the October 29, 2002 article in The Guardian US weapons secrets exposed.

The U.S. government has a long history of encouraging and perpetrating violence. For example, see US sent biological weapons to Iraq in 1980s.

I've pulled together some links in two articles: History surrounding the U.S. war with Iraq: Four short stories and What should be the Response to Violence?

The response to violence should be to study why it occurs to make sure that you are not contributing it, and to fix the underlying problems, rather than engage in more violence. Peace cannot happen overnight. If there have been years of trouble-making, it will take years to correct. Since the present violence in Iraq began more than 50 years ago, it may be necessary to have 50 years of attempts at peace to correct it.

This is total bullshit. Keynote Systems was performing DoS attacks themselves on the sites and then reporting it as a slowdown. Just try and /. the Army Home Page and see what happens. There aren't enough users in the /. community to make a dent in it. Don't believe me? Try it.

The simulation Van Riper was involved with was Millenium Challenge 2002. It was a poorly-executed experiment in futuristic warfighting possibilities. There was no relationship between that simluation and an Iraqi invasion- it assumed the existence of weapons that haven't been built yet, and it also assumed that only a handful of guys commanded the whole US fleet.

Their results weren't valid for 2007, and they certainly don't apply to 2003. Van Riper protested that MC02 was scientifically bankrupt, and he was right. It was so inaccurate that no predictions about actual combat should be based on it.

in the last Gulf War more American soldiers died in training and motor vehicle accidents than actual combat.

That is correct. For a while the ratio was 3 accidental deaths per 1 combat casualty. (And of the combat casualties, more than 1/5 were friendly fire) The US army has lost more men in a single day of training than were killed by Iraqi forces in all of Desert Storm.

In the years since, the Pentagon has tried to recatagorize some accidental deaths as somehow combat-related. (Which isn't completely invalid, as the threat of attack forces people to pay less attention to normal safety)

The US military is currently in the process of ensuring that they won't have to do this again in the next war. There's a whole alphabet soup of DoD programs to expand their communications capabilities: Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion (FCW article), Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite system (Fed of Amer Scientists site), Joint Tactical Radio System (Army site) and more.

I don't know about the military forces of other nations, but the US Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) makes a distinction between legal and illegal orders:

UCMJ, Section 14c(2)(a)(i)
Inference of lawfulness. A order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.

Aside from that, you can take a look at what the US US Army training on the UCMJ has to say about illegal orders:

Illegal Orders

Definition: Orders that do not relate to "military duty." They do not:

• Accomplish a military mission or
• Safeguard or promote morale, discipline, and usefulness of soldiers and
• Directly connected to good order in the Army
• There is no obligation for a soldier to obey an illegal order. However, soldiers disobey at own risk.

Your Response to an Illegal Order

• Clarify the order with the superior (You might have misunderstood!).
• Next, inform the superior that you believe the order is illegal.
• If the illegal order stands, request to speak with the company commander or a higher-level commander.
• Finally, disobey the illegal order if necessary.

There are many, many soldiers in the miliary who do not want to be there right now. Let me introduce you to something called "stop loss." Soldiers who were about to go on terminal leave and be done with their time of service are told they must stay, for up to a year more. I have two very good friends who were about to come home...until 3 weeks ago that is. Both of them are Captains in the Army and both of them see this as an unjust and immoral war.

Stop Loss info

I can't remember what combustion gases are used in the Airbourne Laser, but the big daddy of chemical lasers is at HELSTF is very powerful (megawatt range - actual number is of course classified). It is a Deuterium-Floride (DF) laser, called MIRCL.

I have good friends that worked at HELSTF for years. They tell some pretty interesting stories. Some are funny (the local ducks liked the 'heavy water' storage pond - they floated higher), to scary (during one test firing, a moth was accidentally caught in a side-lobe of the beam - the resulting plasma ball blew a hole through a big instrumentation rack).

You are right that a solid state laser would be a better deal. There is at least one, named SSHCL, under research now for the US Army. It is a baby compared to MIRCL though. It is only a 10 kilowatt laser. Just big enough to punch holes in light armor at short distances.

The type of laser I think that has the most promise is a Free Electron Laser (FEL). It is all electric, tunable, doesn't require environmentally iffy fuels, and should be scalable up to really high powers. Back around 1989, the government was going to build a BIG ground based FEL at White Sands Missile Range near HELSTF. It would have dwarfed MIRCL in power output. It is shame. Had they built it, we would now have all sorts of interesting high-energy laser research and applications, including a possible cheaper and more reliable means of space access.

I.V.

I can't remember what combustion gases are used in the Airbourne Laser, but the big daddy of chemical lasers is at HELSTF is very powerful (megawatt range - actual number is of course classified). It is a Deuterium-Floride (DF) laser, called MIRCL.

I have good friends that worked at HELSTF for years. They tell some pretty interesting stories. Some are funny (the local ducks liked the 'heavy water' storage pond - they floated higher), to scary (during one test firing, a moth was accidentally caught in a side-lobe of the beam - the resulting plasma ball blew a hole through a big instrumentation rack).

You are right that a solid state laser would be a better deal. There is at least one, named SSHCL, under research now for the US Army. It is a baby compared to MIRCL though. It is only a 10 kilowatt laser. Just big enough to punch holes in light armor at short distances.

The type of laser I think that has the most promise is a Free Electron Laser (FEL). It is all electric, tunable, doesn't require environmentally iffy fuels, and should be scalable up to really high powers. Back around 1989, the government was going to build a BIG ground based FEL at White Sands Missile Range near HELSTF. It would have dwarfed MIRCL in power output. It is shame. Had they built it, we would now have all sorts of interesting high-energy laser research and applications, including a possible cheaper and more reliable means of space access.

I.V.

I can't remember what combustion gases are used in the Airbourne Laser, but the big daddy of chemical lasers is at HELSTF is very powerful (megawatt range - actual number is of course classified). It is a Deuterium-Floride (DF) laser, called MIRCL.

I have good friends that worked at HELSTF for years. They tell some pretty interesting stories. Some are funny (the local ducks liked the 'heavy water' storage pond - they floated higher), to scary (during one test firing, a moth was accidentally caught in a side-lobe of the beam - the resulting plasma ball blew a hole through a big instrumentation rack).

You are right that a solid state laser would be a better deal. There is at least one, named SSHCL, under research now for the US Army. It is a baby compared to MIRCL though. It is only a 10 kilowatt laser. Just big enough to punch holes in light armor at short distances.

The type of laser I think that has the most promise is a Free Electron Laser (FEL). It is all electric, tunable, doesn't require environmentally iffy fuels, and should be scalable up to really high powers. Back around 1989, the government was going to build a BIG ground based FEL at White Sands Missile Range near HELSTF. It would have dwarfed MIRCL in power output. It is shame. Had they built it, we would now have all sorts of interesting high-energy laser research and applications, including a possible cheaper and more reliable means of space access.

I.V.

It's really amazing to me that the question is even arising; take a look at the archived project page for the Delta Clipper ; this is such an obvious solution, low cost, high sustainability, and it's really cool. Aside from the blowing up thing, of course.

While they claim that the X-series they are currently working on is just the latest incarnation, that's a bunch of crap; the big contractor corps just don't like the idea of a cheap spacecraft.

It's either this or Prometheus; anything else is just a temporary solution.

I believe this is actually what the military does, but replacing the 8 yr olds with 18+ year olds. Well, they don't release the software, but they network hundreds of these things together and train. The hardware and databases are very expensive, so releasing the software wouldn't be all that effective.

As I recall, the US Federal Govt. required us to keep records of what was published/when to handle FOIA requests.

GOD. Which terrorists? Fuck, how about every gun-wielding nut south of Mexico? School of the Americas? Noriega? Rodriguez? Viola? Oscar Romero? They made a frikkin movie out of that one. Raul Julia was in it! RAUL JULIA!

I think we've diverted most of our attention eastward now, but I'm sure our guys haven't stopped raping children in our absence.

The US terrorist camp is called Fort Benning. It's in Georgia. And I just saw the flash intro on their web page and GOOD GOD is it the most HILARIOUS thing I have EVER SEEN. I don't want to divert the subject from the thousands of tragic deaths caused by terrorists in South America, but due to that masterful work of art I do believe that I will now piss myself in laughter at the next soldier I see.

Jesus Christ. You have got to see that shit. I swear to God that's actually there. What do you have to smoke to come up with something like that? I'm thinking varnish.

I just went through applying for a SBIR project, and while I anticipated the government to make a big meal about the submission, the format was in PDF, and I did all the work using OpenOffice. I realize this might not be the norm, but I successfully submitted a proposal to the US government using only OpenOffice and GIMP. I haven't been rejected yet, either ;) There are a lot of submission guidelines you have to follow, but using a microsoft product was never one of them along the way. I hear what you're saying, but I just went throught this, and its for almost a million bucks. Thats enough money to be "real" in my book!

Yes, and with organizations like OpenDWG, we wouldn't even have to argue much about file formats. I personally don't think parts libraries are an issue since so many manufacturers already offer free drawing files. Plus there are public efforts like CADD/GIS Technology Center which offer complete symbol libraries along with their CAD Standard. Many municipal governments offer standard site details, too. Our office spends more time trying to organize library details than we do actually drawing them.

The environment is ripe for open source CAD, we just need to get an enterprise level effort rolling!

That's a bad example since according to his bio, he had a degree in Bachelor of Engineering Sciences, and was thus actually an engineer and not some software "engineer" who somehow graduates without taking any math courses.

MILES gear depicted in this game is used at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin [www.irwin.army.mil], in California. Which is, by the way, in the desert.

The SmartTruck looks like something Mattel invented... Why they decided to put it on a truck cab instead of a modified Hummer is beyond me.

In any event, there is already a great vehicle system on the market: the Canadian Forces' Coyote, part of their LAV platform of vehicles (insert gratuitious Canadian army jokes here). This system is so successful that it has been picked up the US Army under the Stryker name. Plus, it has the advantage of looking like it belongs on a battlefield and not some kid's sandbox.

Some specs for the Coyote:
Length: 6.39 m
Width: 2.50 m
Height: 2.69 m
Maximum speed: 100 km/hr
Range: 660 km
Weight: 14.4 t
Gradient: maximum 60%
Side slope: maximum 30%
Minimum turn diameter: 15.6 m
Trench crossing: 2.06 m
Fording
shallow: 1.3m
deep: 1.0m
3 configurations:
Command (51 vehicles)
Battlegroup (120 vehicles)
Brigade (32 vehicles)
Armament:
25-mm stabilized M242 chain gun
7.62-mm stabilized coaxial machine-gun
7.62-mm top-turret mounted machine- gun
76-mm smoke/fragmentation grenade launcher
Sights:
Daytime optical
Thermal Imagery (TI)
Generation III Image Intensification (II)
Surveillance System:
Battlefield
Surveillance Radar
Thermal Imager
Daylight camera
Laser Rangefinder

Winch: Front-mounted 6,800 kg dynamic pull
self-recovery winch
Engine: 275 hp Detroit Diesel 6V53T
Transmission: 5 forward gears, 1 reverse
Transfer case: 2 speed
Suspension: Independent Rear 4 wheels
torsion bar
Front 4 wheels strut
Wheels: 8 wheels (4 or 8 wheel drive)
Tires: Michelin XML
Brakes: Power (air)
Electrical system: 28 V
Batteries: 2 x 12 V automotive, 6 x 12V
auxiliary
Alternator: 300 A

From the paper:
OZ was specifically designed to reduce, if not eliminate, the need to scan separate and fundamentally different flight instruments. [...] OZ presents information in a graphical fashion. As such, information is processed by the human visual system at speeds it uses to process images, speeds faster than those required to foveate and read dials and gauges and integrate numerical data. We are currently designing studies to measure the rate at which OZ transfers information to a pilot.
[...]we have recently found that trained pilots can simultaneously fly two simulators (each simulator with its own OZ display) executing different maneuvers, under severe turbulence conditions. This demonstration strongly suggests that OZ can be considered to be a single instrument that integrates all the information needed to fly the aircraft.

That is what you use electro-osmotic pulse systems for. He'd have to space these through the house, but further reasearch would be required.

I was Mech Infantry from 1996 to 2000 in the 1st Infantry Division. I've never seen this POS before. We used a UCOFT simulator (page 9) for regular gunnery training, and CCTT for company level training.

Although I can't find anything on the net to back me up, if I remember right, the UCOFT ran on VAX/VMS. The graphics were about up to the level of bzFlag.

CCTT is a fairly recent creation though. The graphics in CCTT are quite good, but the last time I got to play in one (1999) the AI was completely braindead. I believe the simulators in CCTT ran on Windows, but I never saw a BSOD to back this up.

The TRUELY comical simulator was the MACS. This POS was a Nintendo light-gun built in the shape on of M-16 attached to a Commodore 64. My company still had these (though they were RARELY used) when I left in 2000.

I was Mech Infantry from 1996 to 2000 in the 1st Infantry Division. I've never seen this POS before. We used a UCOFT simulator (page 9) for regular gunnery training, and CCTT for company level training.

Although I can't find anything on the net to back me up, if I remember right, the UCOFT ran on VAX/VMS. The graphics were about up to the level of bzFlag.

CCTT is a fairly recent creation though. The graphics in CCTT are quite good, but the last time I got to play in one (1999) the AI was completely braindead. I believe the simulators in CCTT ran on Windows, but I never saw a BSOD to back this up.

The TRUELY comical simulator was the MACS. This POS was a Nintendo light-gun built in the shape on of M-16 attached to a Commodore 64. My company still had these (though they were RARELY used) when I left in 2000.

Not all of us here are fat slobs, munching cheesy-poofs in front of the CRT! I spent the weekend with my Texas Army National Guard unit in the field. We're an infantry unit so there wasn't much sitting around the office. On Saturday night, I got a great view of meteor showers while I was doing a nighttime land navigation course. Speaking of meteors (and since that is our topic here), you're not out of luck if you don't make it out tonight or tomorrow. They've been falling in great numbers for the past few weeks.

Hmm Solaris will run and be supported on x86 in the next iteration. It will no longer be a free download but you will be able to get it. I guess Solaris based on the hehawing Sun gave for Solaris 9 x86 support and This page

Creative Uses for 9-11

"Today Americans would be outraged if UN troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow, they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there is an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being by their world government." Henry Kissinger, June 8, 1992, Evian, France,

"With roughly 100 new stories warning of terrorism in the mainstream media just today, the possibility cannot be ignored that the American people are being pre-conditioned to accept as real a terrorist event manufactured by our own government, a terrorist event no more real than those created by powerful leaders through the ages to sell an agenda to a populace which would otherwise not accept it." Dictatorship through Deception by Michael Rivero, First posted on New Republic Forum Xmas 'Eve 1999

Operation Garden Plot

Operation Garden Plot

ABC News: Operation Northwoods

Operation Northwoods

Operation Cable Splicer

If you happened to be looking at the rocket or shell at the instant the laser hit it, you could have your vision damaged from the reflected light.

But the Army has laser protection glasses it issues to it's troops www.natick.army.mil They were first used in Desert Storm by aviators (to protect against reflected laser designator light). I imagine that the glasses will be modified to protect against the wavelength used by the new weapon.

Links to pages with (blah, avi) movies:

http://www.marpac.dnd.ca/gallery/movies.htm
http://www-acala1.ria.army.mil/LC/cs/csa/aagatlin. htm

say "Front toward enemy" on them. The picture is vietnam-era; they might say "This side toward enemy" now.

A bit of Karma whoring here, wish I'd gotten online sooner so that people would see this much earlier:

TheHigh Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (so-called HELSTF). Let's see if Tom's webserver can survive this...This is the laser test facility for the army and navy at White Sands Missile Range. They've got the world's most powerful laser (MIRACL: Mid Infrared Advanced Chemical Laser) there.

Being developed for them, by Livermore by the same guys that are doing the National Ignition Facility is a solid state laser. It works.

Also at HELSTF, and the first functional laser weapon, is Tactical High Energy Laser (aka THEL, and I hate that URL, btw...)

Search TRW for more stuff on lasers as well as Lockmart and Boeing, of course.

Take a look at the THEL program. (Tactical High Energy Laser)

Now, how does it do it. (I've been involved with Airborne Laser advanced tracking research for several years, so I do know what I'm talking about.) Basically, if you can see it, you can hit it with a laser. Usually coarse aquisition of the target occurs through the use of some sort of radar. Based on this information, some sort of optical tracking device is aimed in the general direction of the target (think of it as a gimballed telescope that turns quickly and accurately). A camera behind the main aperture then picks up the image. At this point the target is probably less than 1 pixel big, but distinct enought to track. It then uses a fast steering mirror (FSM) to center the image on the camera. Next, it hands off image tracing to a fine track camera that can see more details of the image, which then controls the mirror to center the image even better. The laser, having been boresighted with the cameras during calibration, bounces off the same mirrors used to track and goes straight back at the target. The obvious problem is that the target will have moved a little bit, approx 2vr/c. Here v is the relative tangential (ooh big words, but should be unambiguius(sp?)) velocity, r is the distance to the target, and c is the speed of light. Using the appropriate algorithms (usually some sort of extended Kalman filter) you can predict pretty accurately where the target will be so that you can hit the part of it you want. There's a lot of other stuff going on (adaptive optics, stabalization, etc.) but that about sums it up.

After having recently run the BRL-CAD Benchmark (a good CPU-bound benchmark based on raytrace performance) suite on both Yellow Dog Linux and Mac OS X 10.2, we found that there is a significant difference between Apple's version of gcc and the gcc you can get "off the shelf".

This guy makes note that he recompiled gcc. I would have liked to have seen results using the same gcc, without recompiling (e.g. use the 3.1 that Apple ships compared with 3.1 on YDL).

When we ran our benchmark, Yellow Dog Linux was approximately 25% slower. That starts to push on a margin of difference that we care about. But, what was even MORE interesting was the fact that compilations took WAY longer with Apple's compiler than on Linux (1.5 hours compared to 22 minutes).

We gladly give up compilation time for run-time performance. But, then, the BRL-CAD Benchmark is almost completely CPU bound, and a good optimization loop will find lots of places in the code to try to optimize.

In either respect, that's a whole lot more time spent optimizing. I wouldn't be surprised that if he didn't recompile the compiler if things didn't work faster on OS X.

The Bay Model in Sausalio is a huge water based analog computer. Check it out at the army page or this VR view.

1. Mouse.
2. Cheese.
3. Catapult.
4. Airborne mouse.

Alternatively...

1. Mouse.
2. Tiny parachute.
3. 101st Airborne Division.
4. Airborne mouse.

Forget the military, there's a civil service component that goes with it. You get a decent salary plus paid housing and cost of living allowance. For Europe, go to the hiring agency and put your resume into the automated system. Then after it's processed, surf the site for jobs. Even though you're in Europe, you won't be paying European taxes.