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Of course, it doesn't work...

The CCD needs to be of high-resolution (greater than 15 megapixels) alongside with zooming lens and a 24/7 staff of camera operators in order to garner sufficient pixel details necessary for adequate facial resolution.

Don't forget, the best evasion technique against this cutup is a simple New Orlean masquerade mask.

Oh yes, want night-time survelliance and target-elimination? Don't forget a infrared laser with remote-control software-adjustable variable beam-width lenses.

Come on... Slapping a 2 megapixel and a fixed lens together isn't going to cut it.

start shooting down satellites

You mean like the Ronald Regan's failed "Star Wars" the National Missile Defense (NMD) that planned to put weapons, and start the arms race in space.

Or maybe George W Bush's "Son of Star Wars?" Which is the same thing only scaled down.

Uranium may well be available on Mars, but I can't imagine they will have the facilities to mine it.

Most people aren't aware that there are dozens of Soviet-era nuclear reactors whizzing over their heads every day. These full-fledged reactors (not RTGs) powered the RORSAT naval radar surveillance satellites. Over 30 were launched. A couple accidents sent the reactor cores crashing to earth (most famously in Canada in 1978), but most remain in parking orbits that will decay within a few hundred years.

If they're looking for a fuel source, cleaning up that orbiting nuclear waste would be a good place to start. (Each satellite only operated for a few months; I'd be surprised if they used more than 1 millionth of the energy available in the fuel.)

BTW, The later models ejected the cores on shutdown for increased safety, releasing the liquid sodium coolant into space. These coolant drops account for a large fraction of orbiting space debris that threaten other satellites today.

Same as the Americans. BTW, maybe this boatie is roaming the gulf of Mexico, targeting Crawford, Texas, who knows? Nuclear umbrellas should be for all or for nobody, I agree with the India position. Thanks to the current American admistritration, we'll have a nice arms race soon, but unlike in the Cold war era, everybody plays. Of course, nukes for nobody would've been oh-so better (sigh).

The USAF already has concrete bombs. They contain no explosives. They use kinetic energy to destroy the target and are useful for attacking air defense sites in populated areas.

It has probably been supplanted by the NCIC database, which is used by law enforcement agencies in every jurisdiction.

M.A.T.R.I.X. appears to go far beyond what's in NCIC, which is a database of wanted felons or felony suspects. It essentially is an implementation of Total Information Awareness on the state level. It figures that Bushie's brother Jebuzon would be overseeing its implementation, but the article also states that Sen. Bob Graham-- a presidential candidate and a leading critic of the federal government's handling of the intelligence they had surrounding the 9/11 attacks-- was also consulted while this system was being created.

it was originally slated to become a piece of TIA.

This is interesting if only because funding for the TIA was cut by Congress in the 2004 Defense Appropriations Act and killed by the Senate's 2004 defense appropriations bill recently.

Does this mean that TIA will be built through the back door with many much smaller projects instead of one massive project? The smaller projects could be linked and analyzed via a separate piece of analysis software. Commercial business intelligence and data-mining tools could probably do the job with a little modification.

It sounds a little like the title of that old Don Henley song, Building the Perfect Beast.

> Said machine was supposed to track all world trade through
> monitoring the buying and selling of every citizen on the planet...
> These could be seen by infrared scanners at 'special verification
> counters' (cash tills, to you and us).

so, now we can finally all rest assured,
since it was all just a fiction... OR CAN WE...!? :-\

>> ECHELON :
http://www.echelonwatch.org/
http://www.fas.or g/irp/program/process/echelon.htm

ECHELON attempts to capture staggering volumes of satellite,
microwave, cellular and fiber-optic traffic... This massive
surveillance system apparently operates with little oversight.

>> TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/

The goal is to track individuals through collecting as much
information about them as possible...

The project calls for the development of ultra-large all-source
information repositories, which would contain information from
multiple sources to create a 'virtual, centralized, grand
database.' This database would be populated by transaction
data contained in current databases such as financial records,
medical records, communication records, and travel records as
well as new sources of information. ...biometric technology
to enable the identification and tracking of individuals.
DARPA has already funded its 'Human ID at a Distance' program,
which aims to positively identify people from a distance
through technologies such as face recognition or gait recognition.
A nationwide identificationsystem would be of great assistance
to such a project by providing aneasy means to track individuals
across multiple information sources.

TIA Report to Congress May 2003.
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/m ay03_re port.pdf

Congress Report Executive Summary and FAQ May 2003:
http://www.darpa.mil/body/tia/TIA%20ES.pdf

TIA System Description (PDF, 4.5 MB):
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/tia/ti asyste mdescription.pdf

Poindexter's August 2002 Speech:
http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/poindex ter.html

???

The Kansas Cosmosphere Museum has "a U.S. space artifact collection second only to the National Air and Space Museum and the largest collection of Russian space artifacts found outside of Moscow, the Cosmosphere's Hall of Space Museum is uniquely positioned to tell the story of the Space Race. By focusing on the human story of space exploration--and punctuating that story with one of the finest collections of international space artifacts in the world--the Museum places space exploration in a broad historical context and presents the story of the Space Race in a way that no other museum in the world can."

Of course, there's also Area 51.

Yes. Larger groups are easier to hit.

"- US foreign policy? Osama just makes stuff up: at once point he raved about the US having attacked countries with H-bombs." You may want to study a little event called WWII"

You are the one who needs to study it. If you did, you will find that there was nothing called the H-Bomb involved in it at all. The H-Bomb was in fact invented in 1948, years after World War II ended.

I see the Usama is not the only guy who has no idea what he is talking about.

Then there's also the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) going back to the Reagan years. This site has some more information on it. I wish I could remember more specifics, but hasn't there recently been an announcement that the US was going to test munitions in 2006 or 2007 that when in actual production are to be launched from orbit? Given the clear military interest (and spending) on the NASP, perhaps it became a black project and never was actually cancelled. Or maybe I should hunker down in my backyard bombshelter with my aluminum foil hat.

Tell me you're not that naive. Until 1997, we didn't even know the how much was being spent on inteligence. It took a FOIA lawsuit by the Federation of American Scientists to get the CIA to release the "black budget" figure. The CIA then announced the figure for 1997 - $26.6 billion (yes, billion with a "b.") The FAS then forced the release of the 1998 aggregate intelligence figure - $26.7 billion.

Anybody who knows anything about government budgeting will know this figure is a lie. Most federal programs get an automatic 10% annual budget increase. Any increase of less than 10% is called a "cut" (remember the mid-90s Democrat Goebbels-worthy "Medicare cuts" campaign? Same thing.) Had the CIA's budget only increased by $0.1 billion, we would have heard a hue and cry about the intelligence budget being "cut."

The point is, they're lying about the amount of the budget even when a court ordered its release. Having been given essentially a blank check, who says they won't (or haven't) implemented TIA already via the "black budget"?

Tell me you're not that naive. Until 1997, we didn't even know the how much was being spent on inteligence. It took a FOIA lawsuit by the Federation of American Scientists to get the CIA to release the "black budget" figure. The CIA then announced the figure for 1997 - $26.6 billion (yes, billion with a "b.") The FAS then forced the release of the 1998 aggregate intelligence figure - $26.7 billion.

Anybody who knows anything about government budgeting will know this figure is a lie. Most federal programs get an automatic 10% annual budget increase. Any increase of less than 10% is called a "cut" (remember the mid-90s Democrat Goebbels-worthy "Medicare cuts" campaign? Same thing.) Had the CIA's budget only increased by $0.1 billion, we would have heard a hue and cry about the intelligence budget being "cut."

The point is, they're lying about the amount of the budget even when a court ordered its release. Having been given essentially a blank check, who says they won't (or haven't) implemented TIA already via the "black budget"?

Tell me you're not that naive. Until 1997, we didn't even know the how much was being spent on inteligence. It took a FOIA lawsuit by the Federation of American Scientists to get the CIA to release the "black budget" figure. The CIA then announced the figure for 1997 - $26.6 billion (yes, billion with a "b.") The FAS then forced the release of the 1998 aggregate intelligence figure - $26.7 billion.

Anybody who knows anything about government budgeting will know this figure is a lie. Most federal programs get an automatic 10% annual budget increase. Any increase of less than 10% is called a "cut" (remember the mid-90s Democrat Goebbels-worthy "Medicare cuts" campaign? Same thing.) Had the CIA's budget only increased by $0.1 billion, we would have heard a hue and cry about the intelligence budget being "cut."

The point is, they're lying about the amount of the budget even when a court ordered its release. Having been given essentially a blank check, who says they won't (or haven't) implemented TIA already via the "black budget"?

Tell me you're not that naive. Until 1997, we didn't even know the how much was being spent on inteligence. It took a FOIA lawsuit by the Federation of American Scientists to get the CIA to release the "black budget" figure. The CIA then announced the figure for 1997 - $26.6 billion (yes, billion with a "b.") The FAS then forced the release of the 1998 aggregate intelligence figure - $26.7 billion.

Anybody who knows anything about government budgeting will know this figure is a lie. Most federal programs get an automatic 10% annual budget increase. Any increase of less than 10% is called a "cut" (remember the mid-90s Democrat Goebbels-worthy "Medicare cuts" campaign? Same thing.) Had the CIA's budget only increased by $0.1 billion, we would have heard a hue and cry about the intelligence budget being "cut."

The point is, they're lying about the amount of the budget even when a court ordered its release. Having been given essentially a blank check, who says they won't (or haven't) implemented TIA already via the "black budget"?

Tell me you're not that naive. Until 1997, we didn't even know the how much was being spent on inteligence. It took a FOIA lawsuit by the Federation of American Scientists to get the CIA to release the "black budget" figure. The CIA then announced the figure for 1997 - $26.6 billion (yes, billion with a "b.") The FAS then forced the release of the 1998 aggregate intelligence figure - $26.7 billion.

Anybody who knows anything about government budgeting will know this figure is a lie. Most federal programs get an automatic 10% annual budget increase. Any increase of less than 10% is called a "cut" (remember the mid-90s Democrat Goebbels-worthy "Medicare cuts" campaign? Same thing.) Had the CIA's budget only increased by $0.1 billion, we would have heard a hue and cry about the intelligence budget being "cut."

The point is, they're lying about the amount of the budget even when a court ordered its release. Having been given essentially a blank check, who says they won't (or haven't) implemented TIA already via the "black budget"?

That's just it. For the most part, they can't do things like this because spending is allocated by Congress.

What do you think was going on during Iran-Contra? After congress outlawed the funding of US backed terrorism, the CIA continued thier operations using money from serveral sources, including private donations and selling cocaine

No agency would attempt to piss off Congress like that.

See the same links in reference to this statement.

Now that's what I call spin!. Bravo!.

Djindjic was receiving major financial backing from the US. He also handed over Milosovic to the US against the will of the people of his country. Furthermore, he was allowing major Serbian companies to be bought and taken over by foreign, particularly american, companies. Dissolving of Yugoslavia was again done against the will of the people. Kostunica was head of Yugoslavia and he was against US policy. So dissolving of the nation into its two autonomous regions stripped whatever control Kostunica had.
Djindjic was assassinated, but I doubt that had anything to do with the US. That was because of his ties to organized crime.

Bill Clinton did not "help turkey" ... Finally I would not take the word of a socialist party web site as the absolute word on any issue let alone this one.

So dramatically increasing arm sales to Turkey as the oppression of the Kurds was reaching its zenith is not considered "help"?
Here are some non-socialist links.

Mostly to fight drugs. Again I disagree with the policy but he inherited that one too.

The US has been giving the Colombian government millions in support, Clinton just increased it to billions. And no astute person takes the war on drugs seriously. Since US involvement with Colombia, drug shipments from Colombia to the US have increased year after year. The Colombian government officials, and especially their associated para-militaries, have openly admitted their drug trafficking. The real policy in Colombia is supporting facist drug-runners against marxist drug-runners (and letting the peasants in the middle get crushed).
Ironically, this support may now stop completely under the Bush Jr. administration because Colombia has not granted total immunity to all Americans from prosecution in the ICC.

Please don't mention East Timor without also mentioning Kissinger, perhaps the most evil war criminal of all time.

The Clinton administration increased weapons sales to Indonesia as the oppression and murder of the East Timorese peaked. The US also tried to prevent the UN from doing anything to stop the murders being carried out by its client state.
Kissinger.

The sanctions ... . he did ease them up a bit.

Do you have a source to verify that?
You may not like socialist sources, but that's better than having no source at all.

Why waste political clout when you know you are going to lose?

To try to save peoples lives.

Now that's what I call spin!. Bravo!.

Djindjic was receiving major financial backing from the US. He also handed over Milosovic to the US against the will of the people of his country. Furthermore, he was allowing major Serbian companies to be bought and taken over by foreign, particularly american, companies. Dissolving of Yugoslavia was again done against the will of the people. Kostunica was head of Yugoslavia and he was against US policy. So dissolving of the nation into its two autonomous regions stripped whatever control Kostunica had.
Djindjic was assassinated, but I doubt that had anything to do with the US. That was because of his ties to organized crime.

Bill Clinton did not "help turkey" ... Finally I would not take the word of a socialist party web site as the absolute word on any issue let alone this one.

So dramatically increasing arm sales to Turkey as the oppression of the Kurds was reaching its zenith is not considered "help"?
Here are some non-socialist links.

Mostly to fight drugs. Again I disagree with the policy but he inherited that one too.

The US has been giving the Colombian government millions in support, Clinton just increased it to billions. And no astute person takes the war on drugs seriously. Since US involvement with Colombia, drug shipments from Colombia to the US have increased year after year. The Colombian government officials, and especially their associated para-militaries, have openly admitted their drug trafficking. The real policy in Colombia is supporting facist drug-runners against marxist drug-runners (and letting the peasants in the middle get crushed).
Ironically, this support may now stop completely under the Bush Jr. administration because Colombia has not granted total immunity to all Americans from prosecution in the ICC.

Please don't mention East Timor without also mentioning Kissinger, perhaps the most evil war criminal of all time.

The Clinton administration increased weapons sales to Indonesia as the oppression and murder of the East Timorese peaked. The US also tried to prevent the UN from doing anything to stop the murders being carried out by its client state.
Kissinger.

The sanctions ... . he did ease them up a bit.

Do you have a source to verify that?
You may not like socialist sources, but that's better than having no source at all.

Why waste political clout when you know you are going to lose?

To try to save peoples lives.

"Sheesh, what is it with this story to bring all of the russians out of the woodwork to proclaim the power of their space program?"

We ended up using their engine.

In addition to the U.S. military base and Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, I seem to recall that there is an NSA/CIA/DIA electronic signals intercept and listening station at Guantanamo.

From the book ''The U.S. Intelligence Community''
At Guantanamo Bay, Cuba are more than 100 members of the Guantanamo Naval Security Group Activity. Employing an AN/FRD-10 antenna system, the unit intercepts Cuban and Soviet military communications in and around Cuba and the Caribbean Basin.

It seems more likely that jamming an Iranian satellite signal would come from the American dishes at the Guantanamo installation than from Cubans.

The Soviets/Russians also had a major electronic signals listening station at Lourdes, Cuba (its largest foreign military base) that was aimed at intercepting American telephone calls and computer communications, but the Russians shut it down in 2002 after pressure and inducements from the USA. The base was set up after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

...a craftsmanly Russian program defeated a sophisticated genetic algorithm from NASA.

This is not the first time something craftmanslike can beat something sofisticated. Even thought the following examples are strictly hardware, the general idea is the same.

The battle between a simple, craftmanlike approach and sofistication was once again seen in the early sixties, in the race to get a man into space. The russians fielded the Vostok, a design born more out of solid craftmanship than anything else. It's very simplicity was a strenght, allowing it to undertake missions up to five days long, while the american attemt at a longdurationflight in the highly sofisicated Mercury lasted just under a day and a half, leaving Gordon Cooper in a virtualy dead capsule (having to eyeball his attitude thru the windown and manualy fire the retros). Granted, one reason the US had to go for sofisication is that their rockets simply couldn't lift as much as russian rockets... but whereas derivatives of the Vostok still flies (as unmanned recoverable satelites), the line that breed the Mercury is dead.

Sofistication is well and good, but many times a less sofisticated but better crafted designs / programs can outperform it. Sofistication for it's own sake is usually not worth the tradeoffs.

The Phalanx CIWS can take out more than one missile each. Additionally, when the "vampire" call (anti-ship missiles inbound) comes in, they aren't going to sit around waiting for them to come within range of the CIWS. They're going to be shooting at them with AMRAAM's from F-18's and F-14's first.
Also, what are you going to be launching them from, mister smart guy? You think your launch platform is going to survive more than five minutes after you launch the first missile? Think again. ASM's may be "cheap", but launching them isn't like firing an SA-14 SAM. Take, for example, the Exocet. It's over 17 feet long and weighs over 1800 pounds! You have 3 choices: air, land, or ship launch. Air launch? You can have 2 per plane and those will be military aircraft, not Cessnas. Also, you will lose those planes soon after launch, as an AEGIS will be wiping out anything without a good IFF ID seconds thereafter. Ship? ain't gonna be no rowboat you launch from- it's going to be an expensive craft and likely military in origin. And again, you will lose whatever sea assets you field to an AEGIS (or whatever else is handy). Ground? Sorry, you'll never be able to get close enough to hit a carrier group without them 1) taking out your first wave of missiles, then 2) pounding the snot out of you with whatever assets are handy.

Honestly, do you really think the US Navy hasn't already run a bazillion variations of your scenario? They've been working with ASM threats since the freakin' sixties. Nothing you can think of would ever surprise them. Armchair tacticians...

The Phalanx CIWS can take out more than one missile each. Additionally, when the "vampire" call (anti-ship missiles inbound) comes in, they aren't going to sit around waiting for them to come within range of the CIWS. They're going to be shooting at them with AMRAAM's from F-18's and F-14's first.
Also, what are you going to be launching them from, mister smart guy? You think your launch platform is going to survive more than five minutes after you launch the first missile? Think again. ASM's may be "cheap", but launching them isn't like firing an SA-14 SAM. Take, for example, the Exocet. It's over 17 feet long and weighs over 1800 pounds! You have 3 choices: air, land, or ship launch. Air launch? You can have 2 per plane and those will be military aircraft, not Cessnas. Also, you will lose those planes soon after launch, as an AEGIS will be wiping out anything without a good IFF ID seconds thereafter. Ship? ain't gonna be no rowboat you launch from- it's going to be an expensive craft and likely military in origin. And again, you will lose whatever sea assets you field to an AEGIS (or whatever else is handy). Ground? Sorry, you'll never be able to get close enough to hit a carrier group without them 1) taking out your first wave of missiles, then 2) pounding the snot out of you with whatever assets are handy.

Honestly, do you really think the US Navy hasn't already run a bazillion variations of your scenario? They've been working with ASM threats since the freakin' sixties. Nothing you can think of would ever surprise them. Armchair tacticians...

The Phalanx CIWS can take out more than one missile each. Additionally, when the "vampire" call (anti-ship missiles inbound) comes in, they aren't going to sit around waiting for them to come within range of the CIWS. They're going to be shooting at them with AMRAAM's from F-18's and F-14's first.
Also, what are you going to be launching them from, mister smart guy? You think your launch platform is going to survive more than five minutes after you launch the first missile? Think again. ASM's may be "cheap", but launching them isn't like firing an SA-14 SAM. Take, for example, the Exocet. It's over 17 feet long and weighs over 1800 pounds! You have 3 choices: air, land, or ship launch. Air launch? You can have 2 per plane and those will be military aircraft, not Cessnas. Also, you will lose those planes soon after launch, as an AEGIS will be wiping out anything without a good IFF ID seconds thereafter. Ship? ain't gonna be no rowboat you launch from- it's going to be an expensive craft and likely military in origin. And again, you will lose whatever sea assets you field to an AEGIS (or whatever else is handy). Ground? Sorry, you'll never be able to get close enough to hit a carrier group without them 1) taking out your first wave of missiles, then 2) pounding the snot out of you with whatever assets are handy.

Honestly, do you really think the US Navy hasn't already run a bazillion variations of your scenario? They've been working with ASM threats since the freakin' sixties. Nothing you can think of would ever surprise them. Armchair tacticians...

They also have really good sprinkler systems.

Looking at the thumbnail for this pic I can't help but think "OMG! It's destroying San Francisco!" :-)

That's nothing. Take a look at the Stealth Fighter materializing from the deck!

--

Looking at the thumbnail for this pic I can't help but think "OMG! It's destroying San Francisco!" :-)

That's nothing. Take a look at the Stealth Fighter materializing from the deck!

--

Holy shit US $5 billion, thats a lot of bread. Well I am sure the government bean counters know what they're doing. At least this likely created a lot of jobs for american companies struggling in todays economy. I for one feel better knowing that we are following through in our plans to adjust the size of our carrier fleet, as it should help us with future nescessary military plans.

Holy shit US $5 billion, thats a lot of bread. Well I am sure the government bean counters know what they're doing. At least this likely created a lot of jobs for american companies struggling in todays economy. I for one feel better knowing that we are following through in our plans to adjust the size of our carrier fleet, as it should help us with future nescessary military plans.

"I never had sex with that woman"

Looking at the thumbnail for this pic I can't help but think "OMG! It's destroying San Francisco!" :-)

Here is a hell of a lot of images of these things:

Pictures

Do consumers have the right to spy on the government?

How will they stop us.

...being installed at a cost of nearly $200,000...

I think this guy suffers from this.

"At least six people were killed and 57 injured."

I'm not really worried about the nick name or name of the project, which will obviously change over time and budgets (senior citizen was another name supposedly used). But regardless of that there seems to be credible evidence supporting the fact of a hypersonic aircraft in use today. Whether it will be acknowledged ever remains to be seen. But a hypersonic spy aircraft would be quite useful and could replace the now defunct SR-71 program.

A plane this fast has got to have tremendous spy potential. Remember the U2?

Actually, we already have a hypersonic spyplane: the SR-71

GMD

Here ya go, as of 3 years ago.

And here as of Jan '99.

The Federation of American Scientists should have the info you're looking for...it may take some digging...their info-base is huge...

The first hypersonic plane useable as a bomber was actually proposed 20 years ago by President Reagan. See here or here for a description. Notice that the picture in the BBC article and the pictures on the referenced web sites are essentially identical. Also read the following quote from the second link I provided:

"We're talking about the speed of response of an ICBM and the flexibility and recallability of a bomber, packaged in a plane that can scramble, get into orbit, and change orbit so the Soviets can't get a reading accurate enough to shoot at it. It offers strategic force survivability -- a fleet could sit alert like B-52s."

(By the way, the program was abandoned because (1) the technology was too hard and (2) ICBMs gave us all the international strike capability we need.)

Cue rant . . .

Actually it's the 20mm component of the former Objective Individual Combat Weapon program, part of the Small Arms Master Plan, now dubbed XM29. Essentially this weapon combines a variation on the G36C for underbody (almost a submachinegun) with an overslung semi-automatic 20mm explosive round (grenade, really) that can be set to burst at a given range by pointing at the object to burst upon, then increasing the range up a meter or down a meter.

There are some problems with this when compared to the M16A2 / M203 40mm underslung grenade launcher combination currently in use (or increasingly the less successful M4/M203 combo).

First of all, the 'normal' rifle portion (the G36C) sports a barrel so ridiculously short that the rounds do not exhibit the fragmentation behavior desired. A 10" barrel is insufficient for accelerating a 5.56x45mm round to the point where it can be truly effective in outdoor combat. The M16 family used a 16" barrel for a good reason - there's a full 75~100m/s muzzle velocity advantage over the 11" Colt Commando. Many sections of the Armed Forces have refused to or have been extremely reluctant to adopt the 14" barreled M4 for this same reason. Size does matter here, because longer barrels mean the bullet is in a sealed chamber being accelerated by explosive gases for a longer period of time and 10" is simply not enough.

Beyond this, there are many questions regarding the utility of the 20mm explosive round component itself. Everything from fears regarding any failure of the electronics system to, again, lethality. The single-shot breach loading M203 40mm grenade launchers currently in use provide an effective fatality radius of approximately 5m, and will wound most individuals within 15 meters of impact. The 20mm grenade, however, is the minimum size of projectile which can carry a useful explosive load and is loaded with circuitry to boot. The fatality radius is 1~2m with a 5m wounding radius. On the other hand it is far more accurate than the M203, but US soldiers are nothing if not well trained.

Current plans are for 45,000 units at a cost of $10,000 each (several times the cost of an M16/M203 combo) by 2009, and the general idea currently is to outfit active squads with one such weapon each.

The SAMP also includes a potential replacement for the Mark 19 Automatic Grenade Launcher (uses special high-power 40mm grenades) called the Objective Crew Served Weapon that utilizes 25mm grenades. This one may show significant merit as the possibility of an infantry-portable automatic grenade launcher is simply too good to pass up.

--Ryv

At least the rifles aren't running Windows yet.

Oh ya ? OICW

Ok, that thing doesn't actually run win CE. Yet. But i now understand why is goverment so afraid of hackers. Ping flood, anyone ?

Thats the next frontier of e-voting.. machines dont take bribes.. After all, what do they contribute? Lies, sweetheart deals for the ultra-rich and megacorporations like Enron, with our money. The US military budget is the biggest gravy train that ever existed. And it is loaded with pork..individual politicos pet projects, often ones that don't make sense from a common-sense viewpoint. (but which do help important politicians constituencies, or, fantasies of world domination) Like this recent mini-nuke deal, which was basically welfare for the weapons labs because we already have enough mini-nukes (I heard that we were making them till 1993) to last us several world wars over..IMO we don't need to make new ones for quite a while.. Or the 'missile defense' program.. trillions for a technology before it has been demonstrated that it even works. In fact, repeatedly, it has been demonstrated that it doesnt work. See http://www.fas.org. And now the right-wing goons at the American Enterprise Institute want to outlaw NGOs like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU! See http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0306a ntingo.html No wonder Bush was so hot to get into office even when he lost by > 600,000 votes. Can't let that happen..he and his friends might have to get real jobs for once in their lives.. BTW, did you know that last year, Microsoft was one of the biggest contributors to the Republican party? Bend over, America!

(FYI, first poster is in quotes, Guppy06 is in italics)

"who knows if the next one is China?"

Perhaps, but I wouldn't bet on it happening this particular century. They're still trying to figure out how to marry Western technology to Middle Kingdom culture. So long as they rely on Western-esque technology, they'll always be at a disadvantage compared to Western cultures. They're going to have to develop their own native technology again, something uniquely Chinese (or at least east Asian

I really don't see how they are trying to marry Western tech to Middle Kingdom culture. China is a very technologically advanced nation. They've had nuclear bombs since the 60's, they've got ICBMs, orbital rockets, etc. They seem to be adopting and improving on Western tech just fine.

"Yet i don't think china could gasp the key to victory here by having space mission that denotes quite a bit of nothing in military terms"

If you can put something in orbit and safely de-orbit it, you can build an ICBM.

I'm pretty sure their manned space program doesn't have much military significance. It's a national pride thing. China has had ICBMs since the very early 80's and they've been commercially launching satellites with their Long March rockets for several years.

"forget the whole lot on spy satellite, they are of no significant use on a direct confrontation of two nuclear-powered countries"

*cough**sputter* What?!?!! And just how the heck are you supposed to know what to target with your nuclear weapons? Guess? Close your eyes and point at a map? Send Gary Powers over there with a U-2?

Actually a China has already got spy sattelites anyway, so this isn't really an issue. But ICBMs would typically just be targetted towards cities and major military installations where they know the location of anyway.

I don't see why everyone thinks we will have a war with China. It's pretty ridiculous. We are on very excellent terms right now, and our economies are too interdependant on each other to go to war. Taiwan isn't something we'd risk a nuclear war over. It is not that important to the US. Sure, our government has said that we'd defend Taiwan against and invasion, but that's just a bluff. In the event that China did invade Taiwan and the U.S. did threaten war, China would probably back down. They aren't braindead. The Chinese wouldn't risk a losing nuclear war with the U.S. Nuclear war is a bad thing that nobody wants. Notice that despite all of their problems and differences, the Cold War never went nuclear.

Shame nobody ever told China that they needed a space program to build ICBMs.

I'm almost positive my Driver's License doesn't have my SSN tied to it.

Here in NJ it is. In fact, all a cop needs is your license plate number and she can get the name, address, social security number, race, height, eye color, car model, year, points, warrants, details of every violation, etc for the primary driver. A check can then be done in the National Crime Information Center database to see if you have any federal warrants or other flags on your identity. The NCIC information is, naturally, indexed by SSN (along with other indexes).

Don't believe me? Listen to a police scanner some time (assuming you live in a state like New Jersey where it's legal). They read out all the info right there unencrypted over publically accessible frequencies.

I honestly can't rember if I had to give my SSN when I got my driver's license.

I believe that some time after 9/11 a federal law was passed requiring a SSN to be provided at license renewal. You might not have renewed yet, but you will soon enough.

I bought my first two fiarms with a check, but they were pistols which had to be registered with the government anyway. That registration does -not- have my SSN on it either. In fact it doesn't even have my driver's license number on it. I'm in Michigan, YYMV.

Don't be so naiive. If you have guns, chances are you have an FBI file. Your name and address (and preferably your birthday) is enough to access that file, and that file connects to all the other pieces of information you were referring to. SSN, DL#, etc.

When filling out the ATF required form for a background check there is a section where you can put your SSN in to "speed up your background check and insure accurate responses".

Well unless you lied on the form, you can be sure that the government used that extra time to find out your SSN. That part's not even that hard, assuming you don't lie on your taxes, anyway.

China has had ICBM's that can reach anywhere in the US for over 2 decades now. They don't need an expensive manned space program now for cover. www.fas.org