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China DOES own Taiwan. If not them, who? USA? Recall that Taiwan is not a seperate country. It never declared independence

The Area 51 talk is ok as long as it doesn't get too heavy into the black choppers that don't go whup, whup whup... in the night.

First, since he US Government controls vast areas of Nevada's innards, attributing any Sci/Tech weirdness in Nevada directly to Area 51 adds fuel to the disingenuousness which obfuscates rational UFO discussions.

As a near lifer Vegas resident who has been on extensive adventures in Nevada, I've seen many an unusual light in the sky which defied easy explanation, and several contrails in the air that were extraordinary, but it is wise to allow Occam's Razor to rule the day. Simply, the government tests new and secret projects extensively out in dem dere hills pardner. Get used to it, don't go overboard with alien absurdities.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

Friday's cloudy weather made Bill O'Donnell (M.S., UNLV, 1995. Electrical Engineering Electrical gizmo builder for the Physics Dept) doubt the theory of static interference...

"Solar flares can produce and eject large numbers of charge particles, and usually the Earth's magnetic field deflects them before they enter the atmosphere," said chemistry and physics Professor Malcolm Nicol (Visiting Professor of Physics and Chemistry, Executive Director, UNLV High Pressure Sciences and Engineering Center )..."But if they are very large, they have been known to destroy the electronics systems in satellites and cause other problems down here."

This sort of rules out known natural causes, but the dense cloud cover may have been reflecting electronic game playing up and over the intervening mountains and down into the Las Vegas valley.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

Paul Oei, an electronics engineer with the Los Angeles office of the FCC, said keyless entry systems operate on unlicensed frequencies. The devices can fail when they are near an antenna emitting high radio frequency energy...

he recalled hearing about an incident years ago in which garage-door openers stopped working in an area when Air Force One was nearby.

"Who knows what the military could be using at any given time?" he said.

Yes, who knows...but Mr. Bush's millstone in the War on Terrorism's hypocrisy as he stumbles into complexity, Pervez Musharraf, may have stymied an assasination attempt with a device similar to this.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org ...said military technology could easily be responsible for Friday's phenomenon. One such operation is jamming, which involves the release of electromagnetic energy to interfere with an enemy's radar detection capability...

Pike noted that particularly in Nevada, the military has a number of unacknowledged programs in jamming and radar and high-powered microwave weapons...

"The military is certainly capable of fibbing about these things," Pike said. "But, for the military to have done it, they would have to have seriously miscalculated the effects of some test."

Pike makes it sound like the chances of the government seriousl

The Area 51 talk is ok as long as it doesn't get too heavy into the black choppers that don't go whup, whup whup... in the night.

First, since he US Government controls vast areas of Nevada's innards, attributing any Sci/Tech weirdness in Nevada directly to Area 51 adds fuel to the disingenuousness which obfuscates rational UFO discussions.

As a near lifer Vegas resident who has been on extensive adventures in Nevada, I've seen many an unusual light in the sky which defied easy explanation, and several contrails in the air that were extraordinary, but it is wise to allow Occam's Razor to rule the day. Simply, the government tests new and secret projects extensively out in dem dere hills pardner. Get used to it, don't go overboard with alien absurdities.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

Friday's cloudy weather made Bill O'Donnell (M.S., UNLV, 1995. Electrical Engineering Electrical gizmo builder for the Physics Dept) doubt the theory of static interference...

"Solar flares can produce and eject large numbers of charge particles, and usually the Earth's magnetic field deflects them before they enter the atmosphere," said chemistry and physics Professor Malcolm Nicol (Visiting Professor of Physics and Chemistry, Executive Director, UNLV High Pressure Sciences and Engineering Center )..."But if they are very large, they have been known to destroy the electronics systems in satellites and cause other problems down here."

This sort of rules out known natural causes, but the dense cloud cover may have been reflecting electronic game playing up and over the intervening mountains and down into the Las Vegas valley.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

Paul Oei, an electronics engineer with the Los Angeles office of the FCC, said keyless entry systems operate on unlicensed frequencies. The devices can fail when they are near an antenna emitting high radio frequency energy...

he recalled hearing about an incident years ago in which garage-door openers stopped working in an area when Air Force One was nearby.

"Who knows what the military could be using at any given time?" he said.

Yes, who knows...but Mr. Bush's millstone in the War on Terrorism's hypocrisy as he stumbles into complexity, Pervez Musharraf, may have stymied an assasination attempt with a device similar to this.

from the RJ Article (hyperlinks added):

John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org ...said military technology could easily be responsible for Friday's phenomenon. One such operation is jamming, which involves the release of electromagnetic energy to interfere with an enemy's radar detection capability...

Pike noted that particularly in Nevada, the military has a number of unacknowledged programs in jamming and radar and high-powered microwave weapons...

"The military is certainly capable of fibbing about these things," Pike said. "But, for the military to have done it, they would have to have seriously miscalculated the effects of some test."

Pike makes it sound like the chances of the government seriousl

Do we really need this stuff? I could see arguments for more communications hardware up there, but hypervelocity weapons and lasers?

Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program, long range missiles, calls the US "The Great Satan," and would no doubt love to nuke, in order: Israel, the US.

Libya had had a secret nuclear weapons program for years, long range missiles, a history of terrorism. It was only the example of Iraq, diplomatic pressure from the US & UK, and Libya's hope to rejoin the civilized world that is causing them to drop it. Will they reverse course? Who knows.

North Korea has had secret nuclear weapons program for years, claims to have nuclear weapons now, has long range missiles that could reach the US. This is also a country with which the US is still technically at war. It has pursued expensive nuclear weapons programs while it let as many as 2,000,000 people starve to death over the last couple of years, conducted experiments with chemical weapons on prisoners, and other atrocities.

Pakistan has developed nuclear weapons, long range missiles, and is in danger of falling under the power of Islamist extremists.

Space based defense probably won't help much against Al Qaida's nuclear weapons, if they really have them, but maybe space based surveillance capability will be useful.

Brazils leftist government has been making anti-American noises and has publicly indicated an interest in nuclear weapons. They already have some of the most advanced capabilities in South America.

There are a number of other countries pursuing nuclear weapons, some of which may be hostile to the US.

What we could put in the field now may be good enough against the wacko nations like North Korea. We've waited long enough.

Actually it is technology and progress that has given us the ability to selectively kill so effectively, that the last 60 years have been among the most peaceful (statistically) in history.
Are you on crack? Or the ones who modded you up? Go and read about some wars, dumbass.

Where do you come from?

Switzerland.

I think it's paranoid to assume everything has been tampered with.

You remember all those nice pictures of the mobile WMD sites ? Were we the only ones not buying it ? ... oh wait, there's France and Germany too....

Additional phased array radars, AN/FPS-115's, were built in California (Beale AFB) and Massachusetts (Otis AFB) expressly for the purpose of missile warning. Later, another was built along the Gulf Coast to take over the AN/FPS-85's missile warning role, leaving the old beast to its original task, tracking satellites and space junk. The radar that took over the FPS-85's missile warning role has since been decommissioned.

Additional phased array radars, AN/FPS-115's, were built in California (Beale AFB) and Massachusetts (Otis AFB) expressly for the purpose of missile warning. Later, another was built along the Gulf Coast to take over the AN/FPS-85's missile warning role, leaving the old beast to its original task, tracking satellites and space junk. The radar that took over the FPS-85's missile warning role has since been decommissioned.

It seems to me that if an organization is truely 'terrorist' then experts should not be supporting or advising them.

Ah, but who decides when an organization is truely 'terrorist'. I support the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), who are fighting for independence from Indonesia in Aceh, a northern province on the island of Sumatra. The people of Aceh have been subject to the most appaling treatment by Indonesian security forces -- ranging from rape to torture and murder.

However, the Indonesian government -- which represents the most populous Muslim country in the world, and has friendly ties with the USA -- has declared GAM to be a terrorist organization. Therefore, under the provisions of the Patriot act which were recently ruled unconstitutional, I was committing a crime by supporting GAM, even though this support was aimed toward helping to secure basic human rights for the Aceh people.

Ultimately, the problem is this: 'terrorist' is a highly-subjective, value-laden label; in fact, so much so that no sensible law should legislate against 'terrorist organisations'. Instead, legislation should be aimed against specific acts. Of course, we're unlikely to see such reformed legislation; the current US adminstration appears to have a liking for the 'flexibility' which the designation 'terrorist' carries with it.

Right, same reason I'm not worried about PATRIOT II (aka Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004).

No, no, they're on Sunrise Valley, south of the Toll Road. With a lot of other things out in Dulles, Manassas, and Gainesville. Ah, wait, sorry, you said three-letter agency. I thought you were talking about AOL.

The complex in Reston north of Sunset Hills and just east of Town Center Parkway is CIA; allegedly it was the office of development and engineering, but I have heard -- from admittedly random sources -- that a lot of CIA's HR activities are there, too. For years, CIA job applicants were instructed to send their resumes to a PO box in Reston, so that makes sense.

The big green building in Chantilly off Rt. 28 is NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office, which controls the spy satellites etc. The NRO is and isn't part of the CIA. Depending on how you choose to look at it, it's either independent or not.

In any case, this stuff is hardly secret; the NRO has a sign out front (Rt. 28 actually looks onto the back of the building), and their address is on their website.

At 12 miles altitude, that would have to be a big gun to hit it with bullets.

Better get one of these.

Cruise missiles are a pretty concrete example of our current overwhelming aerospace tech superiority.

You may argue that they're not relevant to space applications, but the military is looking to soup them up a bit. How about the sub-orbital intercontinental/hypersonic cruise missiles that the US military is developing to reduce dependency on foreign airfields when deliver explosives to various locations.

They're aiming for demonstrations of a mach-12 delivery system by 2012.

There are images of targets pre and post bombing, if that's what you'd like, from the campaign itself, at the 2003 Public Eye archive.

Bombing nowadays is way more accurate than it was in WWII. It's worth noting that there were lots of problems with Iraq's infrastructure pre-invasion. (Due to the previous government's response to sanctions, to wit: spend the money on new weaponry, bigger palace complexes, suicide bombers in Israel, and our bank accounts in other countries.)

Apparently you have not heard about the 4th Infantry Division. Thye have just this type of system -- its called Force XXI.

A part of this system called Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade-and-Below (FBCB2) does work just like a standard top down view on the battlefield. With your UAV's looking down at the battlefield, you can see the enemy position on the map in real time, direct units to engage the target, and destroy the enemy. A Command and Conquer style RTS does exist. Its a great thing. There are computers everywhere all the way down to the vehicle. This links them together woth full ability to Im back to their leaders what they see, what they do, etc.

Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade-and-Below (FBCB2) and Gps together are the RTS portion of the new digital Army. For more information see Global Security

SPC Gruhn
United States Army

a lot of war is already like a video game, and killing is so much easier when you don't have to look at your enemies face when you kill him and his family

Funny, I bet the 156,000 troops in Iraq would have a different opinion.

You have a good point, land-based long range missles take a lot of the human factor out. But I think you're missing the real point. They're purpose is just as much about protecting our troops as is it inflicting damage. One way or another we're going to strike - so would you rather do it safely? I would. And if you were a member of the US Armed Forces you would too.

You would do better to complain about the accuracy of the weapon instead of it's destructive power. (That being said, these weapons have amazing accuracy.)

On any Google search, you're going to get some irrelevant results. If your eyes are closed, that's all you'll choose to see. But on the search I gave you, the first three pages also held:

US investigates space bomber

Pentagon planning for space bomber

Bush plans 'space bomber'

Pentagon planning for space bomber;
Documents show how X-plane could be used by military

NASA Brings Back Plans To Fly X-37 Demonstrator In Orbit for 270 Days

A Defense Agenda for 21st Century Warfare

Check them out, Mr. Coward.

What do you mean return to the moon? We've never been there.

Joe

No, people die. In the military more so than in the general population at a young age. Even when not in combat the military is not a good place to be if you want a long life. A soldiers life expectancy is significantly lower than the general population even in peacetime. Moreover training accidents occour at a fairly high rate. For instance accidents including vehicles in the army motor vehicle pool resulted in 225 fatalities in the years 1987-1998 Source, and the marines had 193 non-combat related fatalities from 1999-2003 Source. So yes more people are dying in Iraq but at only a couple times the rate of death that occours in the military even in peacetime.

Between 1995 and 2002, the proportion of counterfeit bills that were digitally created grew from 1 percent to 40 percent

Correction: The proportion of counterfeit bills detected grew. I'm guessing that digital copies aren't as good as what the professionals use, and they're more easily detected -- the well made bills stay in circulation. Here's a cool pdf from the GAO that illustrates many types of counterfeits, including the superdollar.

This website clearly shows that the American military probably killed (cause the government doesn't count) 40000 Iraq troops while losing only 482 American troops. That is a one hundred to one ratio. And our troops weren't killing some guys with hunting guns or low end assault rifles like what would happen in a modern American revolution. These Iraq soldiers were highly trained paid professionals. If they would have fought in the manor that Americans would have to in order to fight the government, it easily would have been a 200 to one ratio. With that ratio 500000 soldiers could kill 100000000 people. But that assumes that the government would fight a modern civil war with ground troops. Instead they would probably send tomahawks and bombs from the sky (stuff that you can't defend yourself from with anything at the gun store).

When our forefathers fought their war of independence, they had nearly the same equipment (technologically speaking) as the British they were fighting. Now the populace is so far behind. The military would win. That's why we must act now from keeping things from becoming another civil war.

from here "Its unmatchable speed is its high point, making it invincible. The supersonic speed imparts it a greater strike-power as well. Possessing stealth characteristics, the 6.9-meter cruise missile weighing three tons has a range of 280 km. Its another outstanding feature is that it is highly accurate and can be guided to its target mainly with the help of an onboard computer. This has been established by the test-flight. "

It is an impressive development. But, so far, kudos largely to the Russian.

The BrahMos, a derivative of the Yakhont, was developed by a joint venture between India's Defence Research and Development Organisation and Russia's NPO Mashinostroyenia. Yahont is supersonic (Mach 2.5) with a range of > 300km. The modificiation to 280 km is mainly to bypass the nonproliferation treaty. Any missile with range > 300 km are considered to be strategic and Russia does not want to get into hot water by exporting that openly and thus enter the joint development.... It is reasonable to expect that the Indian contribution is more on the target recognition, seeker head rather than the aerodynamics side... They still have quite a long way to catch up. There are lot of know-how (processing technology, material selection etc) to be discovered.

There's also the interesting fact that Japan is the only country in the world to have a foreign military base in its capital

Your military tourism handbook is defective.

For starters, there's Yongsan Army Garrison in Seoul.

How about Navy? There's NAVEUR headquarters in London, with several more scattered around, some suburban.

Kuwait and Riyadh also come to mind, although that second is declining...

I'm bored with chasing down links, so I'll just add that there are plenty of foreign military bases in Baghdad.

There's also the interesting fact that Japan is the only country in the world to have a foreign military base in its capital

Your military tourism handbook is defective.

For starters, there's Yongsan Army Garrison in Seoul.

How about Navy? There's NAVEUR headquarters in London, with several more scattered around, some suburban.

Kuwait and Riyadh also come to mind, although that second is declining...

I'm bored with chasing down links, so I'll just add that there are plenty of foreign military bases in Baghdad.

There's also the interesting fact that Japan is the only country in the world to have a foreign military base in its capital

Your military tourism handbook is defective.

For starters, there's Yongsan Army Garrison in Seoul.

How about Navy? There's NAVEUR headquarters in London, with several more scattered around, some suburban.

Kuwait and Riyadh also come to mind, although that second is declining...

I'm bored with chasing down links, so I'll just add that there are plenty of foreign military bases in Baghdad.

>>The international press (for example the press in my country, Austria)
>Before I go any further, I just want to compliment you on your country's Glock pistols...great stuff! :-)

Yeah, well we make other great stuff too.

The cannon in the former link was point of great controversy here in the early 90s because Austrians sold those to Iraq AND Iran during the First Gulf (Iran-Iraq) War. You know, because we are a Neutral country.
Trust an Austrian when he calls something hypocrisy. We know that in and out.

>(Just out of curiousity, are you allowed to own >them?)
It's the standard sidearm for our police.

It is rather hard to get a weapon license (which allows you to OWN a firearm, and transport it to the gun range or hunting grounds), and almost impossible to get a "weapon carrying permission" which allows you to carry it on your body.

If you have one of those permissions, it's no problem to have a Glock though.

Nah, I don't have a link to that picture (I've got it on CD, but I'm not sure if I can redistribute it). But I did dig up some more info... I think it was the TARPS program (photo gallery), but it might have been an improvement on it. My image was 4x+ more detailed than this one - altitude, slant angle, and camera all play a big role in determining this. It wasn't really my project, but I got the picture because my computer was the only one that had enough RAM to hold the entire image at once. It might have been a similar program, like TARS and ATARS (see how I'd get confused?!) - we were just a subcontractor that handled the recorder interface and didn't get a lot of mention in the press.

They have computers in North Korea?!!!

They are called the Sound Surveillance System (SOUS), word was that it could detect Soviet subs leaving their North Sea bases from the US.
You can find more information here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/sosus .htm

My Dad used to work at GEODSS and they tracked space junk and other objects all the time. Apparently it is at least something to be concerned about when deciding whether to put this in geosynchronous orbit or place it on the moon.

Nitpicking aside, as other posters have commented, I can't help thinking that the military that is most vunerable to this is...wait for it...THE AMERICAN MILITARY. I mean, we invest billions of dollars into developing weapons systems based around sophisticated electronics, and now there's a weapon that, for a few thousand $, can potentially destroy them. If I were a country afraid of an American invasion (i.e. just about anybody who dares to disagree with King George II), I'd definitely invest in E-bombs.

It also talks about the molten bus and how the US military steam shoveled all of the remains and debris into a mass grave.

The entire "The Dawn of the E-Bomb" does not have a word "bus", nor "grave". Are you reading something else?

The super weapon was made to destroy everything in its path.

Most weapons are like that. The "humanism" of this one, is that the "path" is fairly narrow. Seriously, the more precise the weapon, the more humane it is. War is hell -- one way or the other, but the smaller the number of innocent bystanders, that might die while I destroy an objective, the better.

This is typical for neocons though...

Had to come to this, did not it, you pinky tree-hugging homo terrorist!

From the article:

The truly prepared, or merely paranoid, will want to consult Carlo Kopp's "Hardening Your Computing Assets" at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/rep ort/1997/harden.pdf.

I've didn't see anyone calling Clinton a murdering terrorist when he sent cruise missles into Iraq after the inspectors were kicked out.

"Land Warrior Initial Capability" (LW-IC) was supposed to be the first step in a long process of networking soldiers together. Each fighter would get equipped with a small, 500 megahertz computer running Windows 2000, a radio, a customized rifle and a helmet-mounted display eyepiece. All of these would be linked together. And all that a soldier sees or says could be sent to each other or to headquarters.

and the findings were:

the system was deemed 'unreliable' and unlikely to survive the rigors of combat

You seem to have forgotten about the Boeing 707 fuselage in the desert south of Baghdad, where Iraqi defectors say Saddam trained Al Qaeda terrorists how to highjack planes with small knives.

Well, they do have WMD

Sun Tzu said that the best way to win is to disrupt your opponent's strategy.

If you buy the theory that current American military strategy is constant and sustained long-distance bombing (eg: hyperwar), then it stands to reason that the only way to defeat this is to get rid of the devices that help guide this tactic.

This needs to be done in orbit. There's probably going to be a cold-war style conflict up there, unless the American military can fuel this potential conflict into mass paranoia and use that to justify a pre-emptive strike on the Chinese. That'll be tricky with all of the Western nations out there trying to play nice with China trade-wise.

These new systems are only a couple years away from roll out for uses such as small airport radar coverage but wild possibilities abound including using cell phone networks to track speeders, terrorists or even individuals walking on city streets.

I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the applicability in detecting stealth aircraft. The idea of using cell tower transmissions to do this has been floating around for some time now: http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2001/e20010 619stealths.htm

Hmmm, it is good logic when you consider that WMD did infact exist and were documented by not only the UN SC but other international human rights groups. Check here for an unbiased documentation of Iraq's former WMD program.

Not that I agree with you about the U.S. State Department, but would Amnesty International be any better? And trust me, the people in "the infamous camp X-ray" aren't there for violating copyrights.

</joke>

No, seriously. People really do seem to think that there's some functional difference between having 10,000 warheads compared to 1,000. Maybe there is, but it's definitely not as simple as "we're 10x as powerful!". Maybe we have some advantage in that we're geographically pretty spread out, but it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to hit all the sites. Check out this, for example.

some points about how difficult it is to harm an airplane with EMP weapons.

The pilot that repeativly straffed friendly troops in Afganistan was out of is skull on speed. Here is an article on it.

The same is going on in Iraq. Quote from this article:

In the LAST Gulf war more than half of all American pilots used amphetamines to keep them going on long missions. And they did the same in the latest war in Iraq.

Speed and cigarettes have been a part of the standard rations since WW2.

Especially if companies like FedEx figure out how to eliminate the pilots on cargo planes.

Then there would be no on-board pilot to override the remote hijacking....

This means that we are only half of the market. The other half would still be there if we stopped spending tomorrow.

Another thing to consider is that the edge of technology would probably not be pressed as hard without the military spending. The Internet was NOT on the drawing board until the military put it there. Would a civilian version ever have evolved?

After some searching I found the original highres DMSP satellite images plus additional footage on GlobalSecurity.org.
Greetx, Erik

it's a little different when you look at hte contrast of N. Korea vs. S Korea. Here, the same people on different sides of a line, and s. korea has got a booming economy that really shows.