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I thought theorem checking was one of the applications that AI was being touted for. Just doing a quick check, there seems to be a large number of articles (like this one, which goes back a bit: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fu...) written about this very topic.

Rather that rely on a limited number of mathematicians, all of whom seem to know Professor Mochizuki, how about running his proof through these AI tools to see if they can validate the proof?

Hi, My name is Euclid Pascal-Poincaré, Professer of Mathematics at the Nigerian Institute of the 409 Theorems. Nobody has ever had a thought as brilliant as yours my friend. And I should know, since I have received the fields medal three times, as the youngest (age 7), most successful (age 22) and oldest (age 57) awardee. The idea of applying an AI proof machine which could obviously solve the problem to a proof that is obviously too easy for it would be something that our institute would pay dearly for. Your place is guaranteed.

I have a research lab and $1,500,000 (One billion and ifty million dollars) and twelve beautiful virgin assistants waiting for you in Nigeria. All you have to do to claim your position is to wire $432 + $71422 (four hundred thousand and twenty two pounds to) to UK Bank: Nat West, Sort code: 60-16-03 Account number: 73754900.

I am looking forward to greet you at our newly built facility with it's four hundred swimming pools and banks of tens of mechanical calculating machines.

I thought theorem checking was one of the applications that AI was being touted for. Just doing a quick check, there seems to be a large number of articles (like this one, which goes back a bit: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fu...) written about this very topic.

Rather that rely on a limited number of mathematicians, all of whom seem to know Professor Mochizuki, how about running his proof through these AI tools to see if they can validate the proof?

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(OP) Almost all of the nuclear tests that involved delivery of a "payload" (i.e. not underground) were conducted by the Defense Nuclear Agency (under the Department of Defense). The Atomic Energy Commission technically owned the bomb cores but not the bombs proper which were still under the control of the military, along with the planes that delivered them (that got a little fuzzy after the "pits" could not longer be removed... I think that started with the Mk 6). Granted, several of prototype bombs were not weaponized (Ivy Mike had a small refrigeration plant attached to it) but they were still managed by the DoD. Here's a link to the DNA's Ivy brief (for Ivy Bell's, Ivy Mike, etc.).

So we're probably both right. The tests were under the DoD/DNA and they definitely would have had to approve release but the DoE/AEC almost certainly had to sign off as well.

apowercap just came to mind. if you want small, high voltage caps, try tdk.

50kV is closer, but still at least 1/400th the "many megavolts" you want to create. And they're 10,000pF or below.

also, again, glass vial enclosure full of sulfur hexafluride.

I refer you to this report from the Air Force Materials Laboratory, specifically page 12, which shows a DC breakdown voltage of just over 200kV for a 2" gap in SF6. It's hard to have a 2" gap in a wallwart that isn't much bigger than that. That's one fifth of a megavolt; much less than your "many megavolts". And, as someone else pointed out, you have to get these megavolts out of the wallwart, so you can't enclose the entire system in SF6.

The fact remains, creating a "many megavolts" output from a wallwart sized device will be a technological feat that you can profit from. Your desire to destroy other people's stuff because they dare leave an outlet open for you to plug into is hardly necessary, or even a positive attribute.

It was discovered that the amount of mistakes on code worked on during those pushes went up dramatically, and especially tellingly - during the last 4 hours of those 14-16 hour days, frequently working all weekend as well for up to 2 months.

And that's why USAF air craft mechanics do not work more than 12 hours per day, even during combat. Their bosses/officers, who will ultimately fly the planes, don't want them falling out of the sky due to simple and unavoidable mistakes. (It's amazing what management with true buy in will do to boost common sense in said management.)

And that's realising that even 12 hours is pushing it. Sixteen? Forget about it.

It is the presumption that fails. The pentagon is a military installation, they don't use the civilian police. They use Military Police.

Again, he passed the guy being escorted, but didn't follow the guy. There is a presumption it was out of the building, odds are it wasn't. You don't just let guys leave after a security breach, even released to the police. You interview them.

Also, he referred to security. Again, this is a military installation, it would have been a couple of Marines, or MP. Not "security" which only really exists in non-military bases.

Finally, there are huge signs indicating the handling of sensitive (not classified) material beside the restrooms, I know, I used a restroom in the Pentagon.

All in all, it sounds more like your friend made up a yarn using information he gathered from the signs at the Pentagon, and then told his story to garner a little more personal attention. It's an old tradition, mixing what could happen with what did happen.

Real confidential information typically doesn't leave confidential rooms in the Pentagon. Basically there is a guard at the entrance door. You can walk in, but you can't really take much into the room. You can leave, but not with anything. The entire room is in a Gaussian cage due to the TEMPEST fears. If you really want to know how it really works, read the document.

You don't get to carry classified info to the toilet. Even couriers need it locked up before leaving the reading rooms.

I don't completely agree, you have to define what it is classified as:

  - Top Secret

  - Secret

  - Restricted

  - Public

RESTRICTED hasn't been a thing in the US since WWII. There is a CONFIDENTIAL level however. Also, there are many, many other security markings that may be placed on a document, even if it isn't classified, that modify how it may be distributed. You may be also interested to learn that there is no official comprehensive list of all markings and what they mean as each branch or program may designate their own marks that are defined in the Security Classification Guide of the program that is generating the material. See DoD manual 5200.01 for an overview of the widely used marks.

Just stating Classified doesn't really tell much about how sensitive it is.

And anything that isn't classified at all should be handled as if it's Secret.

Treating the information as SECRET means that it may only be transported by courier or over SIPRNet. This is an unreasonable precaution to take for material that is merely sensitive. Also, marking something as SECRET without the proper authority (either as directed by an Original Classification Authority or the material is generated from a previously classified source), is just as much of an issue as improperly stripping marks off of previously classed material.

In general, if something is sensitive but unclassified it is marked (U//FOUO) and may be transmitted encrypted over the internet.

Here's the tech:
http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/Ge...

Here's the math:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/v...

Huh ? Does that mean that right now, code that is developed for one agency, doesn't get reused by another ?

In many cases, yes, though I'm not sure of the number of cases in each. For example, most code developed by the DoD is by default Distribution D, which doesn't allow distribution to other (non-DoD) government agencies.

I would LOVE to see what the DODI 8510.01 RMF C&A package for this deployment would look like. Hell, the Ports, Protocols, and Services mapping alone would be breathtaking. (And, frankly, very useful for us mortals to study to find the other privacy backdoors the geek press hasn't cottoned on to yet.)

Let me clarify that last. To gain certification and accreditation to deploy a new software or hardware technology to a DoD network, you have to fully disclose all long-haul network access, down to which ingress or egress ports (or service numbers) using what transport protocol. All of them. So Microsoft's "phone-home" bullshit would have to be completely, explicitly, and accurately mapped.

*happy dance*

Well, a geek can dream.

http://www.gizmag.com/stronger...
http://www.gizmag.com/flash-ba...

There is a patent application from 2008:

https://patents.google.com/pat...

But then there is a .mil evaluation:

http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc...

Probably. But the US ARMAMENT RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND ENGINEERING CENTER did an evaluation of the process and gave it positive -- but not perfect -- marks in 2011.

http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc...

Enjoy!

• Secrecy, flagging, and paranoia: adoption criteria in encrypted email
• How to make secure email easier to use
• Why Johnny Can't Encrypt and Why Johnny Still Can't Encrypt
• Views, reactions, and impact of digitally-signed mail in e-commerce
• Usability of security: a case study

I'd love to don an airtight suit and try to walk/crawl on that river.

According to these documents, I'd displace .0092 m^3 (9195 cm^3) of mercury (yes, I weigh in at nearly 125 kg).

By using the largest values for foot, calf, and thigh volumes, the second document tells me that I could stand up in the mercury, and that it would come up 15% of the length of my thighs or so.

Assuming I'm vaguely rectangular when I'm supine (41 cm wide by 183 cm tall), I'd float in 1.2 cm of mercury.

use the same names for evil shit that already have these names to divert attention away from them, a classic CIA technique.

http://minerva.dtic.mil/

See Katy Perry's "Prism" as another example - name something extremely popular as the same name of your spying program

I'm not surprised. I wrote a paper back in 2003, Techniques for Cyber Attack Attribution, that listed a LONG list of ways to do attribution. This sounds a like a variant combining "modify transmitted messages" and "matching streams" via timing (see the paper).

Real anonymity is HARD. If someone wants to attribute you, it's hard to prevent.

Common screwup. Those are all atmosphere-rated decibel figures. Underwater decibel figures are listed at 61.5 dB louder than their atmospheric equivalents. 250 dB underwater is 188.5 atmospheric.

Adjusting your above examples to be underwater figures, we get:

271.5 dB 2.0 earthquake
296.5 dB 5.0 earthquake
309.5 dB atom bomb
371.5 dB loudest volcano

I'd think it obvious that an air cannon isn't going to produce sound levels equivalent to an atomic bomb. And actually one would expect an underwater atomic bomb to be much louder than a surface one, far more of the energy is going to go into creating a gigantic oscillating bubble. And lastly, your cited atomic bomb figure is only for the 16 and 21 kiloton bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Modern thermonuclear weapons are generally three orders of magnitude higher yield than that. A large thermonuclear weapon in deep water will create a bubble on the order of magnitude of a kilometer in size, which will then oscillate in a series of collapses and reexplosions. The oscillating bubbles created by air cannons are practically microscopic by comparison.

The US Postal Service already does this... ...snip...

Meta-data is not secret, not private, not protected. .....snip...

False military meta-data is classified secret or higher.
Its classification is a study in why meta data is interesting
and I suspect shows why it is both an invasion of privacy and a powerful tool.

The document that contains the COLLECTED set of meta data that
maps units, individuals, locations and postal delivery information is classified.

Anyone with family in the service knows that they can sent to
PFC Joe Soldier APO/FPO/DPO and it gets delivered.

See: https://www.usps.com/ship/apo-...
Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
And see: http://www.dtic.mil/whs/direct...

The classified document is classified not because of the the individual line entry
it is "the collection of meta data entries" that gets stamped. Apparently some of
the locations of some of the units are classified a little or a lot. Layers of routing contain layers
of security management for each of the associated documents.

Unlike SMTP mail there are no progress stamps.... for good reasons.

The analysis of the security risks associated with these documents predates
modern large data analysis tools. And may need to be reconsidered in light
of modern statistical analysis. i.e. Local agencies that have the tools to collect
meta data could use that equipment under the guise of training to spy on family
of active duty service and pose a national security risk. This risk IMO is inherent
in both phone and other digital connection data.

To speculate further is foolish for me....

This never happens.

The thing is, we'd have to assume then that the equipment you just stated was not damaged in the EMP. If that's the case, then yeah, they could just fly a freaking helicopter or drive a van to the fault. Also, I dislike people who just randomly quote binary search algorithm and toss nothing with it. If you thought someone would just have a single person walk the entire line, I have a bridge to sell to you. I apologize for assuming that both of those points would be obvious.

How do you know that? Have these machines been tested? What is the basis?

Oh well the military already has tried pacemakers versus EMPs. And typically during planned extended outages, like hurricanes, life support patients are typically taken elsewhere. You'll be surprised what you can find within the public domain from the US military.

And you know this how? It's not like we've ever experimented with living on another planet or anything.

Sure we have (by approximation, anyway):

1. Astronauts living in the Space Station start losing bone and muscle mass after a few weeks.
2. Researchers living in isolated conditions in Antarctica start suffering depression and other mental problems after a few months.
3. Volunteers living in BioSphere 2 found that their biological life support systems failed and they had to 'abandon ship' after 24 months.

Note that all three of the above represent "easy" scenarios, where help and/or an emergency return to Earth is always minutes, hours, or days away. On Mars (or en route to Mars), help from or escape to Earth would not be a likely option.

I didn't arbitrarily define anything. The rules regarding confidential government information are well known and you can fucking google it.

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/direct...

Actually according to military studies, emp weapons don't have that much effect on pacemakers, probably due to the shielding provided by the liquid composition of the body (my theory not the papers, I didn't read it fully).

http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA242990

Pacemakers are fine.

I'm sure the "disruption, not damage" thing is going to be very reassuring to the guy with a pacemaker.

The military has actually looked into the effects of EMP on pacemakers. The conclusion is that there is minimal, if any, risk.

Pacemakers are typically hardened against this sort of thing. Link

This is the T-38 trainer. It's not a combat aircraft. The T-38 is fast and modern looking, but the first flight was in 1961. Back then, one in five fighter pilots died in accidents, without any help from the enemy. In the 1950s and 1960s, fighter pilots were viewed as expendable. It's not a career choice for the timid.

The T-38 has killed many pilots. Good ones. Four astronauts, four of the USAF Thunderbirds. Yet fighter jocks like to fly it. It's not as bad as it used to be - the original engines were unreliable.

The ejection seat has saved many T-38 pilots. The T-38 ejection seat blasts through the canopy to get the pilot out. There's a big spike on top of the seat to punch through the canopy.Here's the 1990 redesign for a canopy that will resist bird strikes. "The seat mounted cutting blade is virtually ineffective in cutting through materials which comply with Bird collision resistance." So toughening up the canopy meant a new ejection system. Fighter planes, which have tougher canopies (they're expected to be shot at) have such systems, which usually involve explosives shattering or releasing the canopy. The T-38 is just a trainer - no armor.

The T-38 later got an ejection seat upgrade with zero-zero capability (you can eject while parked on the ground, which is useful if you have a fire during engine start or a bad landing), and that seems to have a new canopy disposal system. They had to give up the tiny bit of luggage storage the T-38 had. One of the original Mercury astronauts (they were issued T-38s as personal transportation) was able to find a case that would just fit the T-38's space under the seat. But for a few weeks, he wouldn't tell the other astronauts where he got it.

Nothing about this machine is vaguely high tech or new. Linked to is a basic how to put together by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA208249

And during WW2, the were used in the US, UK, FR, and DE for were attached to vehicles to provide a fuel source.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator#Origins

Don't just assume, work it out from some real data. According to the US Army, you can survive an explosion just a few feet away with no lung damage if you don't get hit with any debris:
        http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA286212

In another posting, I worked out that if you turn a body into gas at room temperature, you get about 100m^3 of gas. Alternatively, consider that the 12kg of non-water "dried pork" has as much energy as 48kg of TNT. (Since the energy density of "dried pork" at (4 kcal/g) 4 times that of TNT (at 1 kcal/g)
  http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/old%20physics%2010/chapters%20(old)/1-Explosions.htm
Its enough energy to vaporize the remaining 66kg of water without raising the temperature too much.

But the real issue is how fast does a phaser do it's work? If it takes a few seconds to "Vaporize," there won't be a shock wave at all. On Star Trek, we see the victim glow for a few seconds, then disappear. Unless you're in a tiny room, you might only get a gentle breeze as the gases flow by. That's important, because otherwise those hand phasers would set everything around the target on fire. As I calculate it thermodynamically, turning a body to gas requires very little net energy - in fact, about 120MJ gets released. The trick is somehow the phaser has to make the reactions happen quickly, but not too quickly.

What I appreciate most about the Star Trek hand phaser is how it maps out the region to apply it's mechanism to just impact the target and nothing around it. There'd have to be some excellent imaging software so that the phaser ray is applied in just the right pattern, and to recognize when to stop so it doesn't burn the wall behind the victim. To do so, it must recognize when the phaser ray has disintegrated the back edge of the victim.

The Argentine subs 'wreaking havoc'?!!? Argentina had TWO subs total. The 1st sub, the ARA Sante Fe was used to land some commandoes then later was caught on the surface by a helo and was too stupid to dive and so damaged by the helo's rockets and depth charges that it had to be beached on the coast with the crew later being captured. The 2nd sub, ARA San Luis, did patrol and did make three attacks on British ships but never hit ANY targets and were counter-attacked for over 20hours. The sub was in bad shape as its fire-control systems were completely down requiring all attacks to be calculated and launched manually. There were problems with torpedoes, equipment, etc. Argentinian submarines didn't do much and didn't effect the outcome of the war at all. Now the British had three subs in the area with 2, the HMS Spartan and HMS Splendid being mainly used as successful scouts of the location and movement of Argentinian naval vessels. And the 3rd sub, the HMS Conqueror, not only engaged but also sunk the Argentine Cruiser ARA General Belgrano with heavy loss of life. It did this using WWII vintage straight-running torpedoes instead of modern torps. It easily left the scene while the Belgrano sank. After the loss of the Belgrano, all Argentinian Naval ships stayed within 12 miles of the Argentine coast for the rest of the war. The Argentinians on the Belgrano and escorts had no idea the Conqueror was even there until her torpedoes stuck. Where as the British surface ships could detect and defeat the Argentine subs and were not detered by them at all. Argentinian subs - did nothing to really help their side and in fact lost half of their sub fleet while doing no damage to any British vessels but British subs had no losses, sank an enemy cruiser after which the entire Argentine Navy stayed within 12 miles of their own shores never venturing out to even hint at engaging the British. British subs sinks one cruiser and the Argentinians give up the entire naval engagement/war. Heck, just the threat of British subs in the area of the Falklands kept Argentine merchant vessels from the area denying any sea-lift / support from Argentine ground forces. Source: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA279554

Yet I noticed a stark absence of the actual "proof" he claims to have.

Reminds me of one of my uncle's, a psychologically diagnosed pathological liar; always claims to know the information you want, and always has some bullshit excuse on why he can't tell it to you.

Only a child or invalid would accept "We have the information to prove our claim, but we can't show it to you" as a legitimate response.

Or a sucker.

I think that General George Washington was wiser than the people that you get your ideas from.

In a letter to one of his officers written in 1777, Washington wrote that secrecy was key to the success of intelligence activities:

"The necessity of procuring good intelligence is apparent and need not be further urged-All that remains for me to add is, that you keep the whole matter as secret as possible. For upon Secrecy, success depends in most Enterprises of the kind, & for want of it, they are generally defeated, however, well planned...." [letter to Colonel Elias Dayton, 26 July 1777]

The issue isn't that the national intelligence leadership isn't willing show anybody, and almost certainly isn't that they have no proof. They simply won't show you - CanHasDIY, and people similarly situated. Why? Because you have no security clearance, you have no "need to know" based on the rules of handling classified information, you have no responsibility that requires it, you perform no oversight of them.

Being a citizen and a voter is not a magic pass to personally supervise federal employees, nor does it entitle you to know all of the nation's secrets. You get to vote for your Congressional representatives, and inform them of your views. You can even volunteer for them, or form groups to lobby. But it is up to the representatives in Congress to pass the laws governing government activity, and to perform oversight of the government. That is it, unless you actually have a job that entitles you to greater responsibility in that regard as recognized by law and regulation. If you don't like that, you can always run for office.

Now as to evidence, I might be able to help a little, but no more than is in the news:

Snowden leaks give edge to U.S. rivals, officials say

Among the disclosures from Snowden that were published in the Washington Post and the Guardian was that Skype, the Internet calling service, was among the systems that provided data to the NSA's secret PRISM database. That disclosure contradicted a widespread belief that calls made via Skype were difficult or impossible to intercept.

Some suspected terrorists the NSA was tracking are no longer using Skype, U.S. officials said. Others have stopped using email, said one U.S. official who has been briefed on the damage.

"The Skype thing was really bad," the official said.

The full damage from Snowden's revelations has yet to be seen. I think that neither General Washington, nor Benjamin Franklin - a spymaster in his own right, would be amused.

George Washington: Spymaster and General Who Saved the American Revolution

Upon his appointment as Commander-in-Chief on June 15, 1775, Washington immediately began efforts to build an intelligence capacity to assist in obtaining information on the British Army. He accomplished this by creating, directing, and managing spy networks, along with deception, and misinformation efforts in order to mitigate and offset the British military advantage. An additional benefit of serving in the British Army was Washington’s appreciation of their military capability. He knew at the outset of the American Revolution that he could not defeat the British Army in Europe

The ars article is light on details, but it looks like the author is leaning towards training a neural net to do the pattern matching since he mentions http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA320924

I probably wouldn't go the FFT route since a neural net or wavelets probably work better...but I also haven't done anything of the sort in the past 5-10 years, so maybe things got better. You're looking at the audio signature to determine lean fuel?

We're going to see semi-autonomous fighter aircraft. The F-35, at $236 million per unit, is just too expensive to deploy in quantity. Autonomous landing and autonomous refueling have already been demonstrated for the F-16. The F-16's targeting system is already partly automatic. It's not far away. Even if manned aircraft are better in combat, there won't be enough of them.

There will be a remote operator, but their job will be to decide what to kill. They'll turn on Master Arm, select a target, and pull a trigger. Then the computers will take over.

Another possibility is the autonomous wingman. Some planes have pilots, but they're the squadron leaders. The rest are autonomous. This is very likely to happen soon, since DoD has been testing it for about ten years.

The Mossbauer effect is for gamma rays, x-rays, and "nuclear events". It doesn't preclude classical physics from use in GPS satellites at all. The frequency change from the Doppler shift is the only real difference to be calculated between relativistic and classical; hardly a game-breaking calculation.

Here's a paper from 1996 pointing out that:

The pseudorange measurement can be regarded from two points of view. On the one hand,
pseudorange is simply range, once the clock offsets are removed. As described in the previous
section, the ranges measured by a moving observer are foreshortened by the (gamma) factor. For an
SV speed of 3.87 km/sec, (gamma)-1 is 8.33x10^-11". The range is typically about 30,000 km. The error
incurred neglecting the (gamma) factor is 30,000 km multiplied by 8.33x10^-11" - that is, 2.5 millimeters.
Close enough for government work.

Lest you think that 2.5mm is a big deal, the US Government GPS site says:

Higher accuracy is available today by using GPS in combination with augmentation systems. These enable real-time positioning to within a few centimeters, and post-mission measurements at the millimeter level.

Clearly other people posting about nanometer accuracy in GPS would be flabbergasted to find out that GPS is not the shining beacon of accuracy they were led to believe.

In general, I agree, but robots don't have to "conceive" of decommissioning people in order to be dangerous.

The default state in robots is that they have no concept of saving human life. You virtually never see humans working near robots in industry, its just too dangerous.

So we have the opposite of "conception" as the default, and nobody seems to worry about mandating safety of life as the starting point, or even recognizing it as a need, except when reading science fiction, where is is merely hand-waved into existence. Industrial systems today rely on humans shutting off the robots when there is a need to approach them, not the other way around.

The military is actually ahead of industry in this regard. The US Defense department is worried that autonomous weapons might be developed with no human decisions in the loop, and has preemptively banned such.

http://www.cio.com/article/722182/Stop_the_ITU_Taking_Over_the_Internet_Warns_the_European_Parliament http://www.dtic.mil/biosys/hscb-mp.html

The TPF-I was an infrared interferometer that did most certainly use optical interference. Several designs were suggested but they all involved actual light from each telescope being collected and allowed to interfere at the combiner. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA484941

LISA also involves sending light (laser light in this case, not astronomical light) along two different paths and optically combining it. http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~veronica/CaJAGWR/info/general/shaddock.pdf

Theoretically you don't require a fibre optic link (some TPF proposals didn't have one) if you can send the light through free space, but you still have to send the actual light from each telescope to a combiner. That will not work over distances like the diameter of Earth's orbit, as the OP suggested.

If you do any work with information systems, then you are out of compliance.

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/857001m.pdf

I’ll be driving the author of that article next week to the annual WWII glider pilot’s reunion. It was called snatch pickup or “the snatch”. About 1-in-8 WWII gliders were launched this way: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA516653 The tow plane’s winch grew out of airmail pickup in the Alleghenies, with the goal posts first used by the Marines in 1927 (there’s a display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps). The physics of a 1946 launch of a 25,000-lb cargo glider into flight: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-3584.2009.00190.x/abstract A towed variation retreived telemetry tapes off tracking ships after rocket shots in the 1950’s, and a mid-air version caught spy satellite film. Today only aerial-towed banners are picked up this way.

Where is the drone flown by a LISP control law program ??

Oh, yeah, and it's not a drone but there were certainly a number of military robots developed by IS Robotics and others using realtime Lisp variants in the 1990s. e.g.:

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA399584

The Real-Time Dynamic Languages contract consists of three separable efforts:

1. Evolutionary Design of Complex Systems (EDCS) (CLINs 0001 and 0002).
2. A Behavioral Programming Approach to Adaptive Autonomous Control (SAFER) (CLIN 0003).
3. Adding an Active Vision Head to the M4 Robot (CLIN 0004). ...
The portable Common Lisp subset used to develop the software is based on previous work by iRobot on
L, a Common Lisp subset that currently runs on 68000-based machines. L was carefully designed and
implemented for use in small, embedded processors operating under real-time constraints; it is currently
in use on a number of walking, tracked, and wheeled robots being developed by iRobot.

The memory management system for L has been redesigned, making use of recent research results by the
garbage collection community, particularly in the area of real-time garbage collection.

I'm not sure why this big push towards "the One True Airframe" exists in current aircraft design philosophy.

The "One True Airframe" design philosophy dates back to at least 1960 courtesy of then-Defense Secretary McNamara when it was known as the "TFX" airframe. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a440831.pdf has a decent write-up of why it was politically impossible to get the Armed Services to accept a plane designed using a common airframe.

I did a little research on some of the claims in the article;
From the article;

It was there, in 2000, that he first got inspiration for Juliet Marine and the Ghost ship. Sancoff was sitting in a conference room when he heard the U.S.S. Cole had been attacked off the coast of Yemen by a small boat loaded with explosives.

The USS Cole was attacked while in port tied up along a jetty refueling. All of it's radars and weapons systems were down and the ship was defenseless. An innocent looking small boat moved up to the hull and exploded. That was a port security failure and nothing to do with the weapons capability of the Cole. Referring to that incident in the context of massed small boat attacks is bunk.

From the article;

I looked at the Fleet Battle Experiment Juliet Final Summary Report and nowhere did it mention a high number of losses due to small boat attacks. Even if the statement is true, Juliet took place 9 years ago and I bet there has been a lot of learning and experimentation since then.

Now lets look at the technology. In general it works by a propeller spinning so fast it creates enough low pressure behind the propeller to boil the water and create water vapour which reduces drag along the rest of the sponson. Here are a few issues;
1. The way a propeller works is that it pulls in water that is approaching the propeller at one velocity and ejects it at a higher velocity from the back of the propeller. This creates a low pressure area behind the propeller. If the velocity differential is enough the low pressure is enough to lower the boiling point of the water and cause it to turn to water vapour. This large velocity differential in generally obtained when a vessel is accelerating or decelerating. There is a point at which the velocity of the ship approaches the maximum velocity of the water ejected from the propeller. This will decrease the low pressure to a point at which cavitation will stop.
2. Propeller cavitation is very hard equipment. I know the chief engineer on a ferry and he cringes every time he feels cavitation. He knows that they just spent thousands of dollars on propellers, bearings and shafts just because some sod at the helm didn't slow down at the right time. Anyone who has traveled on a ferry has experienced cavitation. It usually occurs during docking and the whole ship shakes. When propellers cavitate is is not a smooth process. Bubbles of water form on the back of the propeller, detach and then water slams back in. This causes damage to the propeller. How long can the new ship go before expensive overhauls? Drag racers are rebuilt after every run, is it really feasible to use that same model on a warship? It may work on torpedoes but they are one use weapons.

The article makes several references like "to reach very high speeds at relatively low fuel cost." The question is relative to what? A conventional boat attempting 100 knots or a 30kt destroyer. If comparing with a high speed boat they may be less but pound for pound it is a lot more than a DDG. If the range of one of these vessels is only a few hundred mile it will be difficult to get in theater and spend much of it's time sitting next to a ship refueling.

I love the following statement;

Its fuel efficiency means it has greater range and can run longer missions than conventional boats and helicopters.

There is always an issue when using relative terms; in general they are meaningless.Technically speaking a 1% increase in range is longer. What is the actual difference in range and is it enough to self deploy? The military does not expect a helicopter to self deploy, hence the need for helicopter carriers but it does expect its ships to self deploy. Sure the navy could use a cargo vessel to carry the new s

Nothing, absolutely nothing, matters more at winning wars than logistics. The lethal fighting force is but the edge of a vast engineering and distribution network. Or, if it is not the edge of such a network, it is soon a defeated lethal fighting force.

I spent six years in the U.S. Air Force flying a desk. To this day people are shocked that the only time I flew on a plane was a civilian airliner, and I never saw combat.

When I was in, the USAF was around 300,000 Airmen. Around 10% was aircrew, which includes: pilots, navigators, crew chiefs, AWACS computer guys, etc. It took the rest of the USAF to handle the rest: feed the troops, get them to where they need to go, ensure their computers were working correctly, tracking millions of bullets, bombs and missiles, tending to medical needs, paychecks, etc.

Just goes to show how bloated the US military is and how the military budget could stand to take a slashing.

I was going to bring up some figures to show that you are totally wrong and that the ratio has been improving as the military gets leaner, but you are correct. The trend is more and more support troops. According to the military's figures, it is more like 25% fighters, 75% nonfighters, but the Air Force might be skewed a bit since a jet has a lot more power than 1 man on the ground.

Long PDF here. Too long for me so I just read the conclusions starting at page 77.

Well, you could say why are we still dragging java around when we have C#, or Scala etc. There is nothing wrong with keeping something around when it still works, and sometimes (ie often) the latest, coolest thing isn't as great as the advocates claim.

As for Ada, this report says why :

Yet Ada is more difficult to learn and does not provide as many convenient built in features for data formatting and input/output

so if you have a lot of IO data formatting, then you would want Cobol.

Actually, that's not the purpose of IO in US doctrine. Even MISO (formerly PSYOP) is defined as conveying selected TRUTHFUL information to a foreign audience. That's the whole point.

Not only that, but we're often fighting adversaries that propagandize and indoctrinate extensively, and routinely target US audiences via the media to serve their own purposes.

So you can stop being ashamed, now, since "lying" isn't the purpose of IO. If you want to learn about what IO actually is, see: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp3_13.pdf

The DPRK or Iran may not be able to completely destroy the USA, but they could do significant damage our infrastructure by using as few as two nuclear weapons to blow a critical wound to the USA in the form of an electromagnetic pulse. All that would be necessarily to do so would be a medium-range missile that shoots the payload 50 miles above the surface of the earth along both the northeast and southwest coasts. Most of the economic engine of the USA would grind to a halt. The damage done would cost trillions of dollars, many years, and millions of lives.

High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Microwave (HPM) Devices: Threat Assessments

By DOD definition http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/520001r.pdf FOUO documents can't be classified.

I can see how a classified document might get a FOUO marking...

Well you'd be wrong. Only unclassified documents can get FOUO. Classified information, by definition, is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act so FOUO would never occur with classified info.

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/520001r.pdf

Paragraph AP3.2 -- AP3.2.1.1. "For Official Use Only (FOUO)" is a designation that is applied to unclassified information that may be exempt from mandatory release to the public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)...

When under way, I'd have to agree with your doubts. Did a little reading, and from what I can tell maintaining 20 knots (at least for the ships I read about) would get somewhere between 15 and 24 feet per gallon. That said, these carriers don't shut their engines off, and the efficiency is obviously going to drop to zero if they are stationary... http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=593 http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA231847&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Ellsberg surreptitiously copied 7000 pages of stuff and started privately disseminating it to people who generally were not cleared. This started a long time before the issue came before the court. It would be hard to make any kind of argument that his employment with the RAND corporation (by which means he obtained access to the material) somehow entitled him to do this.

In addition, you may be unaware of the contract that those who obtain security clearances sign with the government.

http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/520001ph1.pdf

The key point is that the exclusion against dissemination never expires. Only the declassification of the material permits its dissemination.