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If you want to read an excellent discussion of reactor vs. weapons grade plutonium (though there isn't much information on Pu238 for thermoelectric generators) go here: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/intro/pu-isotope.htm

Methods used to make the two isotopes (weapons grade Pu239 vs. thermoelectric generator Pu238) are quite different.

Pu239 is produced from U238 when it absorbs a neutron and decays to Pu239.

Pu238 is produced with U235 through a chain of neutron absorptions and decays.

U238 is the more common form of uranium and is not the kind used for uranium weapons. Relatively pure U235 is what is frequently called highly-enriched uranium (HEU) and is the kind used for weapons.

What about North Korea? After all they have some knocking around http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/dprk/nuke-plutonium.htm and a swap for food is always a good idea when trading with North Korea and it will help arms control.

Napalm bombs on Japan killed even more civilians than atomic weapons in Japan.
From globalsecurity.org:

"On 21 March 2000, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea issued a memorandum detailing records of "criminal acts against humanity" committed by United States troops during the three-year Korean War (1950-1953). The DPRK report stated that the United States killed peaceful citizens by indiscriminate bombing and naval bombardment against urban and rural areas in the North. According to the DPRK, from 11 July to 20 August 1951, more than 10,000 United States planes had conducted over 250 air raids on Pyongyang, dropping as many as 4,000 bombs, killing 4,000 civilians and wounding 2,500 more. From 11 to 12 July 1952, 400 United States planes dropped more than 6,000 napalm bombs and time-bombs, killing 8,000 civilians, including women and children. "Town and country were reduced to ashes and several million peaceable inhabitants killed", the Permanent Representative of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Li Hyong Chol, said. According to the DPRK report, Napalm and other bombs dropped by United States war planes totaled more than 600,000 tons, which was 3.7 times the 161,425 tons dropped over Japan during the Pacific War."

Also

"A single firebomb dropped from an airplane at low-altitude was capable of producing damage to a 2500-yd2 area. In targeted Japanese cities, napalm bombs burned out 40% of the land area. In a Japanese residential neighborhoods with wood and paper houses, there was no way to fight the fires. On March 9 and 10, 1945, US forces dropped more than 1,500 tons of napalm bombs, all produced at Rocky Mountain Arsenal, on Tokyo. The resulting firestorm destroyed enormous sections of the city."

See also http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tokyo.htm where it states:

"Estimates of the number killed range between 80,000 and 200,000, a higher death toll than that produced by the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki six months later."

It took not one but two atomic bombs to convince the Japanese to surrender, and this was AFTER the horrendous firebombing.

Firebombing cities accomplished its purpose. From http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWfirestorm.htm :
"A wave of terror radiated from the suffering city and spread through Germany. Appalling details of the great fire was recounted. A stream of haggard, terrified refugees flowed into the neighbouring provinces. In every large town people said: "What happened to Hamburg yesterday can happen to us tomorrow". After Hamburg in the wide circle of the political and the military command could be heard the words: "The war is lost"."

So I ask, who are the terrorists?

The expansionistic prisoner of war torturing invaders, the ones dropping the napalm bombs on the invaders' civilian population, the ones ordering the dropping of napalm bombs, or the ones that voted into power the people that ordered the dropping of napalm bombs?

At some point citizens ARE responsible for the actions of their leaders. And yes, War is Hell.

Your right, the device was a probably a KY-58 but it looked exactly the same as the KG in the aircraft. I did my first 10 years in avionics.The last 8 was doing maintenance on the Contingency Airborne Reconnaissance System Through that device we sent messages and looked at classified pages while deployed. Computer security for your basic office computer used to be abysmal. The average 2E2 had no real computer security training other than the completely obvious.

www.airforce.com is a PR site. Ever see any bases or email addresses with a .com? The airforce uses .af.mil even public affairs would know that.

Flight plans for a presidential visit would not be sent via email. Its funny,but you read what some dork tells you and its instantly 'true'. But when Master Sergeant Charles Tubbs, chief of media relations at RAF Mildenhall, said: "There has not been any verified security breach that warrants any action." you ignore it. I'm sorry, but in PR speak what he got was: "We checked it out there wasn't a security breach. We can't stop everyone from sending you something." Then he was told by the comm sq "Here are some things you can do to help." I'm sure he got personnel information, spam and people asking for information. What I find hard to believe is anything that is 'classified' or 'sensitive' reached him.

The USAF started tightening its security when I was in. They had come to realize how much information could be pieced together from various sources each part harmless but together they were harmful. This is a problem in any large organization. They hadn't yet thought about blogs. Where dumb asses are willing tell you anything you want to know. I have worked in the corporate world now for 9 years, the air force even then was far more security aware than some of the Bozo's I've met.

Wikipedia has several close matches that are currently available. Fused aluminum oxide is pretty close.
Fighter jets occasionally use sapphire windows. The Joint Strike Fighter uses one for instance.

Gee I'll leave the cell sites up in Afghanistan and listen into any large congregation cell phones that are of any real terrorist that really plotting something bad and then send in a HARM to finish the job.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/agm-88.htm

!HAVEFUN!

http://www.aerosml.com/galleryML866.htm
http://www.dezeen.com/2007/12/11/aeroscraft-ml866/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4242974.html
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/haa.htm

This document http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/space_weapons/a-history-of-asat-programs.html has some good information, to my knowledge. It also reflects my understanding that programs like the almv program were stopped because of political considerations rather than technical problems. This article http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/almv.htm seems to reflect the same.

Of course we are talking about budgets and politics and there will be spin. Anyone who actually knows in high detail what has happened, is happening and what current capabilities exist, wont be posting here. I feel comfortable saying that the US military has successfully demonstrated that it has the capability to take down satellites in the past. I also feel comfortable with the idea that modifying an sm3 to do the same and then testing such is not a huge mistake because it gives away too much to the Chinese. But everyone is entitled to their opinion - I'm just sharing mine.

Back in the 70's and 80's both sides had ASAT weapons available, or were in testing. The Soviet Union had their orbital satellite killer. Fired atop a Proton booster, it would make orbit and line up with it's target, close and detonate it's warhead, turning it into swiss cheese. The USAF had a more flexible ASAT missile that looked alot like a supersized Phoenix air to air missile. It was tested on one target with a spectacular skin-skin kill as a result before the politicals kicked in and put a moratorium in place to keep the peace. One upshot of the ASAT weapon is that it could hit targets on a moment's notice. The USSR killsat you could dodge, as long as you had the fuel to do it. Neither of these could hit the geosynchronous birds, they were tailored to go after recon and commsat snoopers.

USN's Standard SM-3 missiles are their new Black and Decker tools of fleet defense. They pulled a preproduction bird off the table, loaded a ASAT seeker on it and sent it on it's way.

A little bit more on the new theater missile interceptor;
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/sm3.htm

So you don't have to guess (though you were definitely in the ballpark...)

From http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/e-305.htm:

NROL-21 was launched into a 351 x 367 km orbit with a period of 92.9 minuntes and an inclination of 58.5 degrees.

Most of those points are valid, but you forgot to check your facts at the end:

"...[Iran's] continuing defiance of the world community -- no, not just the US -- on its nuclear processing.

Who's wearing a tin foil hat now?

The five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) and the de facto unelected member of the UN Security Council (Germany) are not the world community: they are just six out of about 200 countries in the United Nations. Making Germany into a de facto member of the "permanent member" group of the UNSC is not exactly something in line with what the world community wants. Discussion on adding more non-Western large regional powers such as India, Brazil and Nigeria, as well as Japan, has been going on for some time. Three of the present five permanent members are Western - the de facto adding of Germany to this group is only making the power imbalance worse. So who is defying the world community?

As for the sanctions and threats to bomb Iran back into the Stone Age, check out the opinion of the 118 members of the Non-Aligned Movement:

The ministers welcomed the cooperation extended by the Islamic Republic of Iran to the IAEA including those voluntary confidence-building measures undertaken, with a view to resolve the remaining issues. They noted the assessment of the IAEA director- general that all nuclear material declared by Iran had been accounted for. ... The ministers reaffirmed the inviolability of peaceful nuclear activities and that any attack or threat of attack against peaceful nuclear facilities, operational or under construction, poses a great danger to human beings and the environment, and constitutes a grave violation of international law, principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations and regulations of the IAEA. ... The ministers strongly believed that all issues on safeguards and verification, including those of Iran, should be resolved within the IAEA framework, and be based on technical and legal grounds.

The UNSC is defying the world community by not recognising Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which states the inalienable right of Iran (and other signatories) to "develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes".

Check out the reality: five official nuclear weapons states are defying the international community - as represented by the NPT - by failing to

"pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control,"

as they are obliged to under Article VI of the NPT. As for unofficial nuclear weapons states, Israel, India and Pakistan are defying the world community by not joining the NPT. Israel is not even willing to state openly that it has 200-300 nuclear warheads.

And what does the regional "world community", close to Iran - those potentially most threatened by Iran (apart from the state with 200-300 nuclear warheads to defend itself with) - think of the situation?

LONDON, June 18 (IranMania) - Arab League secretary general has stressed that Arabian states are unanimous in their opposition to military attack on Iran and call for solving the differences on Iran's nuclear program through talks, IRNA reported. ... Mousa also criticized the performances of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and desc

In operation ivy bells the NSA used cable downtime in location A to install tap devices at location B. It seems likely that someone with a new fleet of submarines is expanding their tapping capabilities to new targets of interest.

well, you know that great Anti American people spy network set-up by the US government at AT&T headquarters, they now have a new listening post!

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/dsv.htm

I don't know where you got this information but this sounds outright stupid to me. Why wouldn't you use encrypted drives? That way the only thing you need to wipe are the keys. That should eliminate the need for any James Bond stuff to prevent capture. Unless you're suggesting all encryption is crackable.

I am suggesting precisely that. While it is still incredibly off-topic when compared against the original parent article (considering most people don't care or need to encrypt their data drives, and said encryption is totally irrelevant to the question of data recovery - just because you don't have a key to read it immediately doesn't mean the data files can't be recovered intact from a disk and later analyzed), yes, even "government grade" encryption is susceptible; I suggest you educate yourself a bit more before you start bandying about words like stupid - look into the details of the U.S. Navy EP-3E ARIES mid-air collision with a Chinese F-8 Finback. In their case, much of the data on the aircraft was encrypted, but this did very little to soothe the Navy's concerns... Fact is, they were fairly certain that the Chinese analysts stood a high probability of recovering vast amounts of sensitive data, encrypted and otherwise from the aircraft, as you can't possibly encrypt everything on the aircraft; too many of the surveillance and communication (not to mention flight control) systems on the aircraft demand or record data at rates far in excess of what an encryption/decryption algorithm can keep up with - crypto requires time and resources, neither of which are generally over abundant when it comes to air operations.

From GlobalSecurity.org:

After Sunday's collision, the 24-member crew had just minutes before making an emergency landing on China's Hainan Island to destroy sensitive information. This would include codes for encryption systems and the records of electronic intelligence that had been collected during the flight - both of which would be highly useful to a potential adversary.

The 19 "electronic warfare" technicians, working shoulder-to-shoulder at terminals back in the windowless fuselage, practice such destruction techniques under far less stressful circumstances. The first few minutes last Sunday morning - over water, hundreds of miles from the plane's base on Okinawa, and in the presence of armed and hostile jets - were undoubtedly palm-sweaty tense as the pilots struggled to regain control of the plummeting four-engine plane.

Even if the crew was able to destroy all the computer codes and electronic records of the flight, US military and intelligence services "will probably treat as compromised much of the equipment just to be on the safe side," says Smith, a former military intelligence officer. Using reverse engineering, for example, Chinese technicians will be able to gather important data on the receivers, radars, and other highly classified equipment used in gathering the "SIGINT" (signals intelligence) and "ELINT" (electronic intelligence). This could be the difference between victory and loss in time of war.

There is also this at DarkReading (originally from VARBusiness):

JUNE 16, 2006 | PORTLAND, Ore. -- In 2001, an American spy plane collided in the air with a Chinese fighter and was forced to land on Chinese island. Since then, researchers have been looking for a way to quickly erase computer hard drives to deny access to sensitive intelligence data.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta), working with L-3 Communications Corp. (New York), said they have developed a technique for quickly erasing hard-disk drives. The team reports development of a prototype fast-erasure system to prevent sensitive information from reaching enemy eyes.

At the time of the U.S.-China incident, there was no way the

Just a shame they test it in Scotland then - with lots of lovely depleted uranium. Aye, it's braw stuff. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3148853.stm

Let us rewind:

• 1990 - Facility at Dundrennan Range, Kirkcudbright announced http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12517010.300-scotland-to-host-rail-gun-testbed-.html
• 1995 - Velocities by 5MJ's performed http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel3/3330/9963/00472945.pdf
• 2003 - First sea trials at 1/8 scale http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2003/05/mil-030512-navsea04.htm
• 2005 - Commenced construction of the new test launcher facility at Dahlgren, VA, using old Army refurbished SDI launcher http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/emrg.htm
• 2007 - Delivery to Dahlgren by BAE of new system - 40 ton, "laboratory" version with removable rails - aiming for 32MJ (scaling to 64) http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/01/aprailgun070117/

And may, I draw you attention to this http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2004armaments/DayII/SessionI/01_Cilli_EM_Gun.pdf. Slides 12/13 are particularly interesting... ("use their test facility at no cost to US")

Just a shame they test it in Scotland then - with lots of lovely depleted uranium. Aye, it's braw stuff. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3148853.stm

Let us rewind:

• 1990 - Facility at Dundrennan Range, Kirkcudbright announced http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12517010.300-scotland-to-host-rail-gun-testbed-.html
• 1995 - Velocities by 5MJ's performed http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel3/3330/9963/00472945.pdf
• 2003 - First sea trials at 1/8 scale http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2003/05/mil-030512-navsea04.htm
• 2005 - Commenced construction of the new test launcher facility at Dahlgren, VA, using old Army refurbished SDI launcher http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/emrg.htm
• 2007 - Delivery to Dahlgren by BAE of new system - 40 ton, "laboratory" version with removable rails - aiming for 32MJ (scaling to 64) http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/01/aprailgun070117/

And may, I draw you attention to this http://www.dtic.mil/ndia/2004armaments/DayII/SessionI/01_Cilli_EM_Gun.pdf. Slides 12/13 are particularly interesting... ("use their test facility at no cost to US")

Interesting point.
Actually, I can't think of a reason why a nuke sub could not be so equipped with a electro-magnetic rail gun weapon?
Subs would need to firing a railgun-capable supercavitating projectile... http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/intro/supercavitation.htm
Then again... a sub-mounted rail-gun would certainly give away the sub's position underwater but at such hypervelocity projectile speeds, really there is not too much difference between air and water (other than the density but both are fluids) provided the projectile could maintain structure at speed. So much for leading a moving ship with your torpedo.

I can just visualize a future scene from the to-be-yet-made remake of 'The Hunt for Red October' here is a few decades...
The Sub's Weapons Officer having just fired the 'weapon', calls out to the Captain: "Time to projectile impact: Zero-Point-Zero-Five -Um, -NOW!!"...

advanced....hmmm better AG Engines, Not using steel cables, easier maintainability... http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/navy/ntsp/ look for (Advanced Arresting Gear(AAG) [MS Word])

Oh, don't worry - there is only some beryllium which evaporates and it's much lighter than the "Columbia space shuttle crash in 2003" - 10 times less trash.
Nevertheless, apparently, those were hydrazine propellant driven satellites.
Interesting site:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/kh-11.htm

But the point remains: "Nature will find a way" ie mutation will occur and it will occur in the host.

The goal should be filovirus eradication and vaccinating humans will not acheive that. Therefore, spending money (a lot of money) on only one part of the problem is a mistake.

But why is so much money being spent?

and for 'weaponization' http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11348

it appears the poster above has linked the Molniya orbits entry but missed a few things. Take a look at the "Uses" section

Molniya orbits are used by communications satellites, not spy satellites, For example, Wikipedia notes that the Sirius network uses similar Tundra orbits - this allows it 24 hour coverage of the US with only 3 satellites. Lots of data from spy satellites is relayed to the destination country using comm satellites in Molniya orbits. The interesting part of the Molniya orbit is the apogee, not the perigee.

Irrelevant example? My examples were globalsecurity.org's entire list of active US military reconaissance spacecraft. If you don't believe me, then by all means do your own research, find the orbit data, find some of it that supports your assertions, and reply with references.

"Fortunately, that one had an anti-missile system installed and the two missiles were distracted"

Do you have a source for this? From what I can find, the pilots were unaware of the attack until afterwards (but were a little confused by the missile exhaust streams). Israeli officials said the plane was not equipped with a deflecting device and put the misses down to poor aiming. With money lost due to people scared to fly due to terror attacks, I'ld think they'd want to advertise missile countermeasures to get people back on board feeling safer, but I guess at the same time they'd want to hide the exact methods to make it harder to adapt to them, so it could go either way.

This is far from strange. Once a nation is aligned with Pentagon interests, it usually becomes much more willing to do deals with US companies, and non-profits (who are otherwise highly suspect.) OLPC is a US initiative, started by a member of the US elite. Don't forget his father was a shipping magnate. His elder brother John continues to have an active role in implementing the psychotic policies of the US empire.

Fortunately there are differences of opinion amongst the elite which can open up interesting possibilities. Hopefully OLPC will survive.

I would love to see Cuba get a few hundred thousand of the laptops, or Venezuela, or China, or Iran.

I bought two with the G1G1 program, and once they arrive I'm going to start work on some educational games to help people figure why the world is organized the way it is.

Napalm is sticky gasoline, and that's legal. Well, at least the United States uses it in its wars. But interestingly, if you drop a person in burning napalm, he won't feel too much pain because the third-degree burns will kill all the nerves that would be otherwise sending pain signals. It's the guys who get splattered with a bit who suffer. I guess a giant laser beam would vaporize?

http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030810-napalm-iraq01.htm

Now, along comes the missile defense system. Your current stock of missiles is no longer a deterrent. What do you do? Give up? I think it would be more likely that you'd increase your stock of missiles until the missile defense system would be overwhelmed, regaining the stasis that was present before the missile defense system was deployed. The net change is an increase in total armament on both sides.

North Korea has had fifty years to build nuclear missiles. They bought Scuds from the USSR, essentially souped up V2s that the Germans built in a couple of years fifty years ago. Up until very recently they had managed very minor improvements on them, despite having a huge military budget and a paranoid view of the world and a long running high priority program. The missile they fired over Japan apparently broke up. They have a plan for a missile that could just about reach Hawaii, the Taepodong 2 but it has not been tested successfully. The US thinks it might take another decade to be ready.

The US and the USSR managed this in a few years after the end of WWII. Their nuke program is even worse - the device they tested had a suspiciously low yield, which means it might have fizzled - i.e. the fission primary detonated but the fusion secondary did not. Or they might have faked it with TNT. At best they have enough material for 2-6 weapons.

Basically they suck at WMD, despite being obsessed by it. Iran and Syria are even worse. I think they might be able to have a few 50's technology missiles each in a decade or so. But by that point, missile defense should be able to shoot them down.

A) Why would Japan, the second largest economy in the world, need to be under US patronage? If you not feeding your army you're feeding someone else's.

Because they have a pacifist constitution written by the US after WWII.

And trust me, if you read about what they got up to during WWII and what they could do technically now to China should they need to, and how much the Chinese people hate the Japanese, having the US handle their security needs doesn't seem like a bad solution.

Read this
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/japan/nuke.htm

Let's only consider official US military spending, leaving off, say, war supplimentals, nuclear weapons (they're in the DOE), veterans benefits, interest on accumulated war debt, and so on. Percent of world GDP spent on military: 2.5%. Percent of US PPP GDP ($13.3 trillion) spent on the military (direct, official spending only: $548.9 billion): 4.1%. Percent of world military expenses from the US: 48%.

Let's fact check your other numbers, shall we? Note that we're using nominal GDP and nominal military expenditures.

China: GDP, 2.68 trillion. Official military budget, ~$30B. Some China hawks speculate as much as 70B, although if you're going to allow for that, you need to allow for all of the US's hidden expenditures as well. Either way, that's 1.1-2.6%.

Russia: GDP, $979B. Official military budget, $32B. 1.8%.

Saudi Arabia: GDP, $446B. Official military budget, 31.255B. 7.0%.

India: GDP, $1.0T. Official military budget, $32.35B. 3.2%.

Iran: GDP, $212.4B. Official military budget, $6.3B. 3.0%.

Greece: GDP, $356.258B. Official military budget, $7.648B. 2.1%.

Congo: GDP, $7.094B. Official military budget, $93.5M. 1.3% (perhaps your way-off numbers were including private spending on paramilitary forces?).

Singapore: GDP, $132.155B. Official military budget, $10.58B. 8.0%.

North Korea: GDP, ~$40B (est). Official military budget, $5.2174B (2002 est). 13%.

Now, these are your hand-picked nations. We've already covered the US, China, Russia, and India. Let's cover the other large economies of the world, shall we? Let's complete the top ten:

Japan: GDP, $4.366T. Official military budget, $44.3B. 1.0%.

Germany: GDP, $2.915T. Official military budget, $38.5B. 1.3%.

UK: GDP, $2.399T. Official military budget, $69.8B. 2.9%.

France: GDP, $2.252T. Official military budget, $65.0B. 2.9%.

Italy: GDP, $1.853T. Official military budget, $34B. 1.8%.

Canada: GDP, $1.275T. Official military budget, $17B. 1.3%.

Spain: GDP, $1.232T. Official military budget, $15.7B. 1.3%.

Brazil: GDP, $1.068T. Official military budget, $9.9B. 0.9%.

Remember, when looking at these numbers, that the US's % is 4.1%. We're half of the world's military expenditures with only a quarter of the world's economy and twentieth of it's people. These are the facts.

Let's only consider official US military spending, leaving off, say, war supplimentals, nuclear weapons (they're in the DOE), veterans benefits, interest on accumulated war debt, and so on. Percent of world GDP spent on military: 2.5%. Percent of US PPP GDP ($13.3 trillion) spent on the military (direct, official spending only: $548.9 billion): 4.1%. Percent of world military expenses from the US: 48%.

Let's fact check your other numbers, shall we? Note that we're using nominal GDP and nominal military expenditures.

China: GDP, 2.68 trillion. Official military budget, ~$30B. Some China hawks speculate as much as 70B, although if you're going to allow for that, you need to allow for all of the US's hidden expenditures as well. Either way, that's 1.1-2.6%.

Russia: GDP, $979B. Official military budget, $32B. 1.8%.

Saudi Arabia: GDP, $446B. Official military budget, 31.255B. 7.0%.

India: GDP, $1.0T. Official military budget, $32.35B. 3.2%.

Iran: GDP, $212.4B. Official military budget, $6.3B. 3.0%.

Greece: GDP, $356.258B. Official military budget, $7.648B. 2.1%.

Congo: GDP, $7.094B. Official military budget, $93.5M. 1.3% (perhaps your way-off numbers were including private spending on paramilitary forces?).

Singapore: GDP, $132.155B. Official military budget, $10.58B. 8.0%.

North Korea: GDP, ~$40B (est). Official military budget, $5.2174B (2002 est). 13%.

Now, these are your hand-picked nations. We've already covered the US, China, Russia, and India. Let's cover the other large economies of the world, shall we? Let's complete the top ten:

Japan: GDP, $4.366T. Official military budget, $44.3B. 1.0%.

Germany: GDP, $2.915T. Official military budget, $38.5B. 1.3%.

UK: GDP, $2.399T. Official military budget, $69.8B. 2.9%.

France: GDP, $2.252T. Official military budget, $65.0B. 2.9%.

Italy: GDP, $1.853T. Official military budget, $34B. 1.8%.

Canada: GDP, $1.275T. Official military budget, $17B. 1.3%.

Spain: GDP, $1.232T. Official military budget, $15.7B. 1.3%.

Brazil: GDP, $1.068T. Official military budget, $9.9B. 0.9%.

Remember, when looking at these numbers, that the US's % is 4.1%. We're half of the world's military expenditures with only a quarter of the world's economy and twentieth of it's people. These are the facts.

The YF-12was a high altitude and high speed interceptor. It fired Air Intercept Missiles (AIM-7's)which are already aircraft in their own right. It did not drop free fall munitions at high speed.

See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/prc-vietnam.htm for one example of Chinese projection of power outside of her border.

A lot of people also say that Tibet was also an example of this, of course the PRC doesn't though.

The Sino-Indian War is an arguable example as well.

Now, I guess you could say that China wasn't going beyound her borders to "plant population-slumping drugs, take islands, and ensnare governments in heinous multi-hundred-year land leases." But they've certainly gone beyound their borders to acquire other things that they perceive to be in their interests. And, here is a history/politics lesson for you, they have sought their interests just like every other nation-state in the world is prone to do. That is the nature of a nation-state - to look after its own interests. Do a little research and you'll find that Chinese goals are to become a regional hegemony in order to balance US world hegemony (if you don't believe me say so and I'll dig out an old paper and find some citations to Chinese national policy plans which state this publically). They don't like US hegemony because it limits their regional aims. They likewise don't want world hegemony themselves because they see what it is doing to the US (look up imperial overstretch).

There's more Soviet space art here and here.

Which makes me wonder, what other coolness have the Russians been hiding behind their backs?

The amount of resources the US spends on the military is obscene, IMHO.

As I referenced in my /. post earlier this month
( here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=352789&cid=21263533 )

The US spends almost 60% of all global military spending, not counting the 2 undeclared wars, Iraq and Afganistan. That is $623 Billion out of a total of about $1.1 Trillion. The Iraq war is estimated to cost over 1.2 Trillion(ish), with about 500B spent so far. Those are direct costs - cash spent, and does not count indirect costs or opportunity costs or the human toll.

Some details can be found here:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm

and here

For me, I'm done keeping quiet. I'm done being polite. I'm done hoping that these wrongs will be corrected, eventually. I bring up the reality of what is happening in the US in common discussions with people. It makes people uncomfortable, as it should. Criminals are running the show, and no one has or will step to stop them. Now that the US has installed a chief lawman that is covering up past crimes, there is no more room for polite waiting and hoping things get better legally.

> Intended to replace the aging Ming-class submarines, the first Song-class submarine was launched on 25 May 1994 and started sea trials in August 1995. but did not become operational until 1998.

GlobalSecurity again. Do you do research before posting?

Wasn't this like late 2006 or something?

GlobalSecurity, most of the time a reliable source, says so.

Indeed we can:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/asw3.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_anomaly_detector

US Pilots have had this for a few years at least, it's called JHMCS, Joint Helmet Mounted Cueing System.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/systems/jhmcs.htm

I'm in a quandry. I see policemen beating lawyers on the streets in Pakistan. How should I be feeling?

That's a tough call. You should already be depressed, worried, upset, mad, and overall just frickin' pissed off at the terrible rape in the Congo (or even the U.S.), the starvation in Somalia (or North Korea, mothers dying around the world from a condition that can be treated simply and cheaply, incredible pollution in China and everywhere else, intense economic inequality in Latin America and how it's driving the obesity epidemic elsewhere in the world, the war in Iraq that will never end, and the spread of MRSA thanks to decades of using antibiotics too liberally.

This stuff in Pakistan is just more of the same. Please feel sad, perplexed, and angry.

The real question (which you missed) is this: what can you DO about it? Other than make snarky comments on Slashdot, of course.

In the Army it's called an FBCB2 (Force XXI Battle Command, Brigade and Below).

First off $6,500 (according to Wikipedia) is the Unit Cost of the RT-1523E (Current Version). It's like an internal cost to track how much each Company/BN whatever spends. Same as in the civilian world (or at least close). According to this http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/budget/fy1998/dot-e/army/98sincgars.html/ the average unit cost is more like $13,000.

And while $80k does sound like a lot, it really depends on how they go about procuring the system. If they are developing it, it's going to be INSANELY expensive. So $80k might not be too far off. This is because you are asking a company to create exactly what you want with the exact specifications, and be able to make as many as you originally ask for (and usually have an option of more). While the components might not cost that much, it's the Research and Development that really get the cost up.

They have started to change the process as of lately. They'll take COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) equipment, throw it in a ruggedized casing, put some Army encryption on it, and use it. That reduces the cost considerably. This method not only makes the process cheaper, it avoids the huge disparity between civilian capabilities and military capabilities.

On a side note, whoever said that Abdul (or some other stereotypical name) gets more bang for their buck from a cell phone and a bomb is absolutely correct. Killing people is easy and cheap. All armies are great at that. It's killing just the enemy and staying alive afterwards thats difficult and expensive. That's what our Army does better then most, if not all.

The Republic of China is under a persistent threat of a (Mainland) Chinese attack. United States has long ago promised to defend them, so we have to listen carefully (and take notes!), when the current rival — and an unlikely-but-possible future enemy — talks about any kind of war.

Sooner or later China may also decide to begin solving its (over)population issues by expanding into Siberia, whose population density was always far smaller (orders of magnitude smaller) than China's and is now shrinking dramatically. In 10-30 years China will either be purchasing or conquering that land from Russia — if there are any Russians left to notice that is...

Then, of course, there is a long-simmering tension with India, which has resulted in an all-out war as recently as in 1962. And then there is Vietnam, which lost a piece of territory to China, who invaded to, pretty much, punish it for interfering with the Khmere Rouge earlier — a "family dispute" among the Communist thugs.

And last, although not necessarily least, is the continuing (and officially regulated) hatred towards Japan — "justified" or not, it may well escalate into an armed conflict in a decade or two, when an internal crisis inside China may lead its leaders to seek an external war to unify the country. It may be harder for its neighbors to repel, than it was to deal with the desperate Argentinian regime in a similar situation...

The Republic of China is under a persistent threat of a (Mainland) Chinese attack. United States has long ago promised to defend them, so we have to listen carefully (and take notes!), when the current rival — and an unlikely-but-possible future enemy — talks about any kind of war.

Sooner or later China may also decide to begin solving its (over)population issues by expanding into Siberia, whose population density was always far smaller (orders of magnitude smaller) than China's and is now shrinking dramatically. In 10-30 years China will either be purchasing or conquering that land from Russia — if there are any Russians left to notice that is...

Then, of course, there is a long-simmering tension with India, which has resulted in an all-out war as recently as in 1962. And then there is Vietnam, which lost a piece of territory to China, who invaded to, pretty much, punish it for interfering with the Khmere Rouge earlier — a "family dispute" among the Communist thugs.

And last, although not necessarily least, is the continuing (and officially regulated) hatred towards Japan — "justified" or not, it may well escalate into an armed conflict in a decade or two, when an internal crisis inside China may lead its leaders to seek an external war to unify the country. It may be harder for its neighbors to repel, than it was to deal with the desperate Argentinian regime in a similar situation...

At 44MT, the FOAB would have been the second most powerful bomb ever detonated, coming in just after the Tsar Bomba. However, it's not quite that powerful. Not by an order of magnitude or six.

The American-made MOAB (Mother of all Bombs, or the more boring official Massive Ordnance Air Blast) weighs in at 11 tons TNT, and the Russian-made FOAB (Father of all Bombs, no official name given) weighs in at a whopping 44 tons of TNT. No, that's not kilotons or even megatons like the previous poster wrote, just plain tons. Not even close to even a puny nuclear weapon like the Hiroshima bomb (about 13 kilotons TNT). Not that I'd like to be in the neighborhood when either one of these babies goes off, though.

Here's some linkies for your clickification:
Mother of all bombs (GBU-43/B): wikipedia, Global Security, Discovery Channel snippet
Father of all bombs: wikipedia, the Guardian article, YouTube

Yeah... except the law is now restricting anything over 190,000MTOPS, which is about 36 P4's working together according to Intel. There is NO laptop in the world that is even close to that level of performance. Quit your uninformed bashing.

And yet, they've changed it because they realized that things change way too quickly. Not to mention that you're wrong about what they measure... it's not TFLOPS. It's not even FLOPS at all... it's MTOPS, or "Million Theoretical Operations Per Second". And it was just revised in 2002, in response to changing technology. A supercomputer is NOT a hard-line definition. According to numerous sources, it's a relative definition. HTH, HAND

And yet, they've changed it because they realized that things change way too quickly. Not to mention that you're wrong about what they measure... it's not TFLOPS. It's not even FLOPS at all... it's MTOPS, or "Million Theoretical Operations Per Second". And it was just revised in 2002, in response to changing technology. A supercomputer is NOT a hard-line definition. According to numerous sources, it's a relative definition. HTH, HAND

(More on the IBA.)

Yes, there are newer and better things out there. And many troops are wearing them already--or were when I was in Afghanistan last year. Presumably more have them now. Could they get the newer and better stuff to the troops faster? Perhaps. Look into it. Make a valid argument. But stop trotting out the old "troops can't get any armor" BS.