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My guess would be pretty sure. Because if they did, they'd need to train on it. And with sub-meter satellite imagery, I'm guessing that it would be hard to hide the sort of large-scale artillery practice that would be needed in order for the troops to learn to fire them. If you look at US Army training, it's massive. The supply lines you need for artillery are pretty large, and if you want to practice shooting them, you need a lot of space for that. You can't learn to dial in a gun if your shots are falling into the jungle, and you don't know where. This is what we're talking about. And one gun won't do it - you would want dozens and dozens to hit Seoul. And for those, you need trained crews, and likely several of them so you can rotate them on and off. For cannon crewmen, we require 7 weeks of training, including simulated combat and live fire. If NK is doing that, I think we'd notice. If they're not, then no matter what they're getting or making for weapons, they're not going to be terribly effective.
 
That said, that's all speculation. I hope we find out the truth after a peace, rather than through a flare-up of the war.

Long ago, college dorms were more like Army barracks. Now they are private apartments.

The Army does it

You are complaining about wages that meet what a Police officer makes, without any of the requirements. Wages that are more than double what a person who enlists in the Military. And you try to excuse that with the "dead end" job excuse which can be applied to EVERY POSSIBLE ENTRY LEVEL JOB!

While we are at it, why is it okay for Government workers to Unionize, but Military people can't? Oh my, there is a convincing argument which translates to ALL GOVERNMENT JOBS.

I doubt that any of that will sink into your brain bucket. You will probably retort with the same argument again, and I'll simply ignore it. You have not convinced me of anything but your own ignorance and bias and I doubt you ever could.

Not quite true. Go talk to a Officer Recruiter, not the Recruiter in the mall that is trying to find qualified bodies to enlist.

"A college graduate with at least a four-year degree"
http://www.goarmy.com/ocs.html

Its been a while since I spoke to an officer recruiter and I was a CS major at the time but what I was told was accredited 4 year degree program (i.e. BS or BA) and at least a 2.0 GPA (C). I am curious as to what you mean by the previous being "not quite" right. Note "accredited", the creationist museum people would not count, even deeply religious Texas denies accreditation to them.

This is a farce unlike any seen on this planet for more than a thousand years.

Spoiler alert: It ends badly.

That's putting it mildly.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/55749

Btw, if you're looking for a job, the Army NG is looking to fill Internment-Resettlement Specialist positions.

http://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/browse-career-and-job-categories/legal-and-law-enforcement/internment-resettlement-specialist.html

FM 3-39.40/50 Internment and Resettlement Operations: http://standeyo.com/NEWS/12_USA/120522.FM-3-39.50.pdf

Don't worry. Those men with machine guns pointing down at us from the guard towers and razor wire will be there to protect us...from...something really scary, I'm sure. Like 7-yr-olds operating unlicensed, unregulated, cardboard-box lemonade stands in their driveway that aren't even inspected by the local health dept., don't provide free contraception to employees (5-yr-old sisters), or registered as a for-profit business with the IRS (shudder). Oh, the horror!

"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie"

~ The Who - "Won't Get Fooled Again"

Strat

Not offensive at all, it's an interesting perspective - but the fact is in a first world country as long as you are in the military you are housed, well fed, and you and your family get health care.

I know this is a recruiting site, but the Army claims the average total compensation package for a service member is about $99,000. That's solidly in the middle class.

http://www.goarmy.com/benefits/total-compensation.html

http://www.goarmy.com/

Find an Army recruiter, sign a contract, go through basic and MOS school, pass the security checks, get posted somewhere that gives you access and be a traitor.

http://www.goarmy.com/

There are some great US Army programs to become a US citizen. Any foreigner can sign up and fight for America and earn their citizenship in the process. One of the programs i know of is MAVNI, mostly for people who know languages other than english and people who know medicine.

http://www.army.com/enlist/mavni.html
http://www.goarmy.com/info/mavni
http://www.defense.gov/news/mavni-fact-sheet.pdf

If you'd like a job securing gasoline for lawnmowers, you're welcome to sign up.

Good point. However, the US military does use the .com tld for some things -- goarmy.com for example. Mostly recruting, propaganda, etc *i think*. AFAIK, most military email correspondence is with a .mil tld, but how many "average janes and joes" would think to notice that?

I was a 98C(now it's 35N) in the US Army until recently and did a tour for No Such Agency. I remember visiting the museum with my grandparents and getting hassled by the cops when grandpa took some photos of their welcome sign. It was super interesting - the Civil War wing especially. Who knew there was a signals intelligence field or cryptographic enterprise in Lincoln's era?

Funny how some in Congress are so outraged about the violence in video games, but when it comes to 'Shock & Awe' and bombing countries back to the stone age, they have absolutely no compunction about it.

Maybe if they could just use it as a recruiting tool for the military, they would be on to something....wait, um nevermind.

America's Army doesn't appear to have evil robots.

Most likely places like this are all around you, but here's a website locator for a branch office nearest to you.
Alternately, you can find a lot of the paperwork online.

Careful, though, the time commitment's been getting longer lately.

Most likely places like this are all around you, but here's a website locator for a branch office nearest to you.
Alternately, you can find a lot of the paperwork online.

Careful, though, the time commitment's been getting longer lately.

What's worse is that carbon fiber composite wings and fuselages lose all structural integrety if they are ever damaged and an attempt is made to patch it. With metal you can just weld a patch over a hole and you're good as new.

Uh no.

The aluminum sheet metal used in aircraft is hardened. You can cut it, you can put holes in it, but you can't weld it. That destroys the heat treatment and leaves a soft area, which will rip if stressed.

With composites it's one scratch and time for a new plane.

Not necessarily. The Apache helicopter is made from composite materials. It can soak up amazing amounts of damage and still make it home. And there is a repair procedure.

Sign up here: http://www.goarmy.com/

As if your rights came to you just because you cried loud enough. You have the right to complain because others (hint: utmost patriots) do their DUTIES to secure them. No other reason. Not nature, not God, not journalists or bloggers or protesters. Only people with guns willing to put themselves between you and harm.

Since you're so gungho to protect the country you served in the military. I know I did, my mos or military occupations speciality was 11B, small arms specialist or infantry. Those with my mos are some of the ones on the frontline being shot at.

Perhaps, if you (like me) are too selfish to be like these true patriots - soldiers, cops, firemen, etc.. - and put our lives on the line for the sake of others, perhaps our patriot duty, when we have nothing helpful to say, is not to continually carp and complain, but rather to STFU.

I was a soldier but I guess you weren't, so who's more patriotic?

(For those thinking to mod me Troll or Flamebait, look up the word sarcasm)

> So you're in support of the enforceability of indentured servitude? No wonder you're in favor of DRM.

Trying to equate slavery with indentured servitude is alone quite a stretch; trying to equate either of these with DRM is an absolutely crock of shit. The former two are absolutely matters of life and death, the latter (DRM) is an insignificant detail to a largely affectless area of human interaction.

Absolutely, 100% I should be able to offer my services as a well-treated, housed, fed, respected indentured servant for a limited term of service. In fact this is how almost every single modern military operates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Foreign_Legion
http://www.goarmy.com/
http://www.marines.com/

etc.

You will find that you will commit to some number of years of service (e.g., servitude) and that there are penalties for breaking this initial contract. If you feel you are mistreated or that the other side (e.g., the Air Force for example) is not living up to their part of the bargain, you go before a court, argue this, and have the contract annulled. It happens literally nearly every day.

Welcome to the real world, where there are bullets and pain, not just quibbles and bitching about whether you can play your iTunes on your Network Walkman.

Please: do not equate slavery with DRM. You insult yourself and the actual atrocities of real slavery, which still exists quite in a quiet proliferated fashion in our world. Women are kidnapped and sold into horrible sexual slavery. Political prisoners are sold as slave labor into desolate wastelands to mine and work as loggers. The world is a fucked up enough place without your demands that freely accepted terms of contract should be able to be willy-nilly ignored if you feel like it. You place far too high an importance on your "fair use" to listen to something that can be found for sale in the ITMS for $0.99 USD and not enough on the vast chain of consequence that wanton disregard for contracts would incur.

That's why American servicemen pry AK-47s out of dead Iraqi fingers, and toss their M-16s in the back of the HMV. Drop the AK-47 in the sand, kick it around a bit, pick it up -- it goes "bang" every time.

Videogames are indirectly teaching young people "violent" behaviour?!?!?

The primary activity of the Army is train young people to kill. Give them lots of hard experience with and remove all reservations about killing.

Not to mention torture, nay, "interrogate".

http://www.goarmy.com/JobDetail.do?id=152
Human Intelligence Collector (97E)
Some of your duties as a Human Intelligence Collector may include:

Conducting debriefings and interrogations of HUMINT sources in English and -foreign languages-
Performing difficult interrogations

Do the millions of ex-military people suddenly forget all their violence when coming back home? Doesn't look like it.

http://www.courttv.com/news/2005/0210/armydoctor_a p.html
Army doctor who killed wife and daughters delays parole hearing

http://www.courttv.com/news/2005/0805/soldier_ap.h tml
A soldier who returned from Iraq nine days earlier apparently shot and killed his wife and then himself

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,89236, 00.html Army officials have recommended a court-martial for a Purple Heart recipient accused of stabbing his young wife 71 times with knives and a meat cleaver.

The Army is needs of lots of violent, nay, "energetic", young people to kill people overseas, nay, "defend america". They pay salaries, promise bonuses, honors, and train assassins.

http://www.goarmy.com/

And they have their own videogame - America's Army. http://www.americasarmy.com/

Videogames are indirectly teaching young people "violent" behaviour?!?!?

The primary activity of the Army is train young people to kill. Give them lots of hard experience with and remove all reservations about killing.

Not to mention torture, nay, "interrogate".

http://www.goarmy.com/JobDetail.do?id=152
Human Intelligence Collector (97E)
Some of your duties as a Human Intelligence Collector may include:

Conducting debriefings and interrogations of HUMINT sources in English and -foreign languages-
Performing difficult interrogations

Do the millions of ex-military people suddenly forget all their violence when coming back home? Doesn't look like it.

http://www.courttv.com/news/2005/0210/armydoctor_a p.html
Army doctor who killed wife and daughters delays parole hearing

http://www.courttv.com/news/2005/0805/soldier_ap.h tml
A soldier who returned from Iraq nine days earlier apparently shot and killed his wife and then himself

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,89236, 00.html Army officials have recommended a court-martial for a Purple Heart recipient accused of stabbing his young wife 71 times with knives and a meat cleaver.

The Army is needs of lots of violent, nay, "energetic", young people to kill people overseas, nay, "defend america". They pay salaries, promise bonuses, honors, and train assassins.

http://www.goarmy.com/

And they have their own videogame - America's Army. http://www.americasarmy.com/

I invite you to sign up and test your theory.

But don't blame me if you lose more than your left nut.

It is baffling that adults are so self-righteous about artificial violence in video games while in real life they are doing a damned good job of teaching their children that violence is a great way to solve your problems.

... I hear that the US Army is hiring!

http://www.goarmy.com/

Some geeks might even be able to swing an enlistment bouns...8)

Here.

The better question is does this make "America's Army" illegal?

The USSR had a conventional army that at least in numbers and reliability of equipment far surpassed that of the USA

We used to have a joke, which was true, when I was in the US Army that went along the lines that if we ever went into combat we'd grab the first AK47 we saw and use it instead of an M16. Even clean an M16 can jamb on you whereas you could fire the AK with it dirty. Some may ask what did I do saying this, my speciality was Infantryman (11B)

You are guarenteed international responsibility and incredible excitement.

You are guarenteed international responsibility and incredible excitement.

http://www.goarmy.com/flindex.jsp

About a year ago, I was talking with a US Army recruiter about enlisting in the US Army. I got as far as MEPS. I passed the ASVAB and the physical, but they denied me enlistment after the security interview, which started out as a 10-page written questionnaire.

I answered "yes" to several questions that they wanted me to answer "no" to, but there were two that especially seemed to require a lot of "further clarification":

1. On the last page, just before a long affirmation about "this knowledge is true to the best of my knowledge and belief...", etc., etc., there was a question about like "Have you ever [...] misused [...] an information-technology resource?" I said "yes", and mentioned something that hadn't made my teachers happy during high school, about nine years before; I later found out that the high-school's disciplinary records have been destroyed from that time. However, if you think about it, downloading an illegal copy of a popular song off KaZaa is a forbidden use of an information-technology resource; I suspect the majority of the kids who did that stuff in Abu Ghraib had been regular KaZaa users...
2. The other thing was that I had visited a professional counsellor or therapist several times, all within a year or two, plus or minus, of the computer-related incident. They decided to totally misread the examining doctor's statement for something that was not in the record, and disqualify me as medically unfit by reason of depression (apparently). Of course, perhaps a college graduate who wants to join the Army is crazy. It may be that anyone who wants to join the Army has a little something wrong with them...

4 more years of stop-loss in the military

I can't speak for all branches, but when it comes to the AF, I don't see it, what with programs like Blue to Green and all.

OK, but how do I register with the Republican party so I can get my QUID PRO QUO job. Do I have to work for Halliburton?

I'm afraid the good paying Halliburton jobs are taken, at least until Ayman al-Zawahri creates a few new openings -- in the necks on the next two unfortunate contractors who couldn't find a safe state-side job in Bush's economy.

But the way things are going, the Republican party will ensure you a job if you GO ARMY!

Elmer Krause was killed :(

Do your part:
United States Marine Corps
United States Army
United States Navy
United States Air Force

For your buddy or whoever is interested. I was one of these unhappy IT'ers. I quit 3 years ago and am now flying the CH-47 Chinook Helicopter for the Army. Below is a link to the program, you can sign up as a civilian and are guaranteed a slot a flight school. Feel free to email me with any questions......plus, being an ex-programmer in the Army is ultracool because they are starved for quality IT ppl.

WO FLIGHT PROGRAM

Edward (and yes, I actually will see your mail if you send it to slashdotspam@stardotstar.org)

What is your source for this claim? Who is this "they"? The Pentagon? The NSC? The Whitehouse?

The US armed forces have lawyers attached at many levels of command who provide legal guidance as to the conduct of war.

American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines are all trained in the law of land warfare and the Geneva Conventions, and our procedures take them into account.

You need to also keep in mind that the protections of the Law of War and the Geneva Conventions have conditions, violation of which can forfeit a protected status.

The "example" you give shows that you don't know what you are talking about.

I think games like this would be a nice change of pace from the standard "one-man army" type of games we've been seeing for a while

What about the US Army's An Army Of One slogan? Besides, if it's not the one man army thing, then you end up directing stuff, tanks, fighters, supply stuff, etc. Then it's a strategy game. If you want that, try Starcraft.

I spent five years in the Army as a 98C, which isn't exactly IT, but since we're the "tech guys" of the MI branch, we ended up setting up and administering all of the classified systems in our unit. We were running a secure LAN on systems based around WinNT (though we switched everything but the domain server to 2000 when no one was watching) and Solaris. All of the hardware was COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) - most of our laptops were hardened Panasonics (CF-48's, I think). We did have some custom software for what we did, and I ended up writing several largish apps while I was deployed to Afghanistan.

As for IT training, we had some in AIT (Advanced Individual Training - job training), but most IT type training we did at our units. My OIC (Officer In Charge) made sure to send everyone he could to as many classes as we could, and most of the people in my section were pretty close to being either CCNA's or MCSE's (or both). The actual IT people (74 series like someone mentioned above) had even more training than we did. Of course I suppose it depends on where you're assigned - my unit always had way more money than we could ever spend (I was in special ops).

So to answer the original question, yes there is some exotic hardware/software out there (usually for very specific purposes), but the majority of the military uses the same stuff as civilians.

Too true. Fortunately they haven't tried to stop kids from joining the army when they are seventeen. Much better to give them the real thing rather than virtual immitations.

And they get paid for it too!

The US Marines: the military branch for those who couldn't play with the big boys

The Army is a .com too, as is the National Guard.

I really like one of the police departments in my area.

If the .govs and .mils feel like they need to be .coms, why the hell does anyone think actual companies would want anything else? Does anyone here know of any .edus that use .com? I think the .orgs seem to stick to .org pretty well. Come on- if I want info on something, I'll find their site and look for info there, not do a separate .info search.

• Army
• Navy
• Marines
• Air Force

Laid off by a dot-com? There's a place for you in the military. All the services are recruiting actively right now. And they need smart people.

To make this explicit for the boys in the back row firing spitwads at each other: groups with enough resources snap up their names in every major TLD "to avoid confusion." Adding more TLDs without controls over who can use them is unlikely to change this, and will probably result in little effect except that the registrar business will become a little more profitable as a larger block of names has to be purchased every time a new movie, breakfast cereal, or presidential candidate is launched.

Furthermore, so long as the Big Two browsers default to .com, that TLD will be the only noospheric real estate attractive to groups interested in reaching a general public instead of us nerds. If you need proof of this, looks at what an organization with its own TLD uses.