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I belive the photo referred to is http://www.zonaeuropa.com/weblog200405252.jpg which clearly shows someone wearing a British uniform - certainly no stars and stripes. See here for comparison.

As far back as 1981, the British Royal Navy tested a top secret weapon system called 'Laser Dazzle Sight,'(LDS). and they used it during the Falklands War where high speed, wave-skipping Argentinean pilots, met a dazzling array of laser beams designed to blind them.

According to this Royal School of Artillery paper 'The most likely choice of lasers for a dazzle weapon would be
Argon (458 - 515 nm, blue/green) or Ne YAG freq doubled(532 nm, green).'

According to the Federation of American Scientists In the 1970's it was claimed that Chinese soldiers were blinded by Soviet-built laser systems during the China-Vietnam war. During the Iran-Iraq War, over 4,000 Iranian soldiers sustained injuries due to Iraqi laser systems. Throughout the 1980's, the Soviet Union were long suspected of directing lasers at US spyplanes. Today anti-personnel laser weapons are inexpensive, sold openly by the Third World, have line-of-sight aiming, and are capable of producing catastrophic results if used against aircrews and sensors in flight.

In 1989 a US-USSR bilateral agreement imposed restrictions on the use of low-energy lasers. In 1989 the International Committee of the Red Cross called for multi-lateral controls.

On 13 October 1995 the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons (Protocol IV) was proposed. In 1998 it became international law but Human Rights Watch is concerned that the US is developing Dazzle weapons that do not cause permanent blindness and would circumvent the blinding weapons agreement.

Now while the threat from laser weapons are real, I think the odds are greater that a real terrorist would use a man portable anti-aircraft missle.

Dum dum. J00 are teh no7 sm4rt...
France
UK
Ya dumb fuck. lol.

So? You guys have been at it for over fifty years.w

- Did you see Mark Thomas last night?
- No, was it any good?
- Yeah, I videoed it if you want to borrow it.

The UK used DU in Phalanx CIWS on warships and 120mm tank rounds. The Phalanx rounds are now tungsten. The 120mm tank rounds (CHARM 3) are still uranium with a tungsten cutting tip, like they were in the first Gulf war.

Info (2002) on UK DU use here

Skynet is, amongst other things, the name of a major satellite communications network used by the UK MoD, about to reach the fifth generation.

I think they choose these names deliberately.

You tried a Sea Dart and you're still alive?

I knew they were obsolete, but I would have thought they could catch a Dodge.

Is Microsoft Software actually certified for safety critical systems?
Depends on what version of Windows they were running. Windows NT 4 (SP3) is the only version of Windows to have been evaluated against ITSEC criteria. It's unlikely they'd be running a certified product, however, as the second you apply a new Service Pack to the machine, it's no longer certified. Every evaluation I've been part of has been where a vendor has wanted to sell something to the Ministry Of Defence, and have needed to obtain certification under ITSEC or Common Criteria in order to do that.

The Germans killed 30,000 civilians in a terror attack on Rotterdam.

succesfully destroying 1 of 3 objectives

i was going to mention Wallis - was that a documentary or the 1954 movie? anyway, according to this they got 2 out of 3 dams, pretty good considering they had to fly a huge bomber 30 feet above a lake at a certain speed, and release the thing at just the right distance over enemy territory while under fire.

Two objectives were destroyed, one damaged.

Maybe you don't know this, but the EU nuclear forces (France and the UK) that can reach the US could be taken out by a first strike.

According to FAS and the Royal Navy the UK nuclear forces consist of the four Vanguard class SSBNs. The RAF no longer has nuclear weapons, nor does the UK deploy ICBMs.

Likewise, the French nuclear option (that can hit the US) consists of four SSBNs. Neither country has ICBMs anymore.

Assuming that only half of these boats are on patrol at any time we can take four of them off the board right away. We also have the means to engage and destroy the ones at sea.

It's also worth noting that the only two countries in the world that currently have the means to detect an inbound ballistic missile (reliably and with enough time to do anything about it) are the US and Russia. These are the only two nations in the world that can't be taken out with a first strike. It should also be noted that sooner or later we will have a missile defense system of some sort -- and it will (in all likelihood) be enough to negate the EU nuclear option (all the moreso when you consider the fact that we can easily destroy at least half of the EU nuclear force with a limited first strike). Are the UK/France really ready to invest the tens of billions that would be required to build a nuclear force that can't be taken out/negated (all the moreso to go after an allied country)? I doubt it.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that if it really came down to it we could take out a large majority (if not all) of the EU nuclear force -- if we really had to. You can't even put a dent in ours. Assuming that some of your nuclear force survived, you'd have the ability to hurt us very badly (not counting for missile defense). We'd still have the ability to utterly destroy you. Something to keep in mind...

Of course, I would also make the point that the chances of the US/EU fighting a war anytime in the future seem pretty far-fetched and I like most of my European friends ;)

LINK

"The explosion would destroy the virus!"

Not necessarily. Well-placed explosions can, demonstrably, cause considerable structural damage and yet be relatively safe for living organisms.

IMHO, this research tells us very little. We now know that viruses are not deadlier because there is a trade-off between lethality and contageousness. Wow. I'm sure we could never have figured that one out. Since viruses are subject to evolutionary pressures, it follows that their deadliness is what it is because there is an advantage to viruses in not being deadlier.

If we had learned why there's that trade-off, I might think differently. That would be worth knowing, as you could figure out ways to exploit that knowledge to create a synthetic immune response. This would not be a vaccine; it wouldn't program the human response system. It would attack the virus directly to produce a better trade-off.

(Reducing the lethalness of viruses, but causing them to spread that much faster, would not be useful - EXCEPT where a person is in an environmnetally-sealed contageous disease ward, where it's not going to matter to anyone else.)

You've got to understand the trade-off so that you can disrupt it. Maybe a virus is similar to a computer program, where the initial part of the code is in a fast, tight loop. Thus, when you put the copying code there, it spreads fast. Or, if you put the deadly protein code in there, it kills fast.

If this is the case, then the solution is simple. You want to create a "meta-virus" - a virus that genetically inserts code into viruses - where the code to be inserted is junk. It not only codes for nothing, but causes the reader to skip the remainder of the code. (ie: the genetic equiv of a goto.)

Looked up to see a Lancaster, a Spitfire, and a Hurricane in formation fly straight overhead. They then proceeded to land at Coventry airport.
Quite a surprise as there didn't appear to be any kind of air show on.. pretty magical!

Must have been the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. Now those guys have cool jobs.
I'm learning to fly at Biggin Hill and one day last weekend I arrived for a flying lesson just after they'd landed. The Hurricane was being pushed into a hangar, but there wasn't a hangar big enough for the Lancaster, so it had been parked at the 29 end of Runway 11/29. So as I'm taxiing out to the holding point for runway 21, I cross 11/29 and there to my right, maybe ten yards away is a Lancaster, just dwarfing the plane I'm in. I'd never seen one that close to before. Pretty impressive.

It was just a visit a month or so prior to the Biggin Hill Air Fair, so they do travel around to places when there aren't any air shows. Also they sometimes use airports if the place having an air show doesn't have a suitable runway.

One time I had a lesson cancelled because the BBMF, together with a Tucano, Hawk, and a Tornado, were taking off from Biggin Hill to do a flyby at the Eastbourne air show, so there was some serious historic and modern military hardware landing and taking off that day.

Oh my god! Please tell me you do really know that WW2 started in 1939! The invasion of Poland, defeat of France, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain. Ringing any bells?

Please notice that while the "goverment" may run on Microsoft the MOD is much more intelligent- their web site runs Linux/Apache. Guess who's more concerned about security?

Justin

From what I have heard, they have quite a lot of guns on Sealand, and are clearly willing to defend themselves from foreign invasion. Now, one might argue that they wouldn't last long against the SAS - but putting SAS soldiers lives at risk (given that the British courts have recognised Sealand's right to defend itself) should serve as a significant disincentive for any invasion (as would the risk that the British government could be taken to court for mounting such an invasion afterwards).

No need for anything as melodramatic as an assault by SAS or SBS teams. A frigate could reduce Sealand to rubble less than a minute without ever coming in range of anything Sealand residents might have to shoot back with, unless they've managed to get hold of Exocet missiles. I think in practice Sealand would be treated as a ship for the purposes of law enforcement - I seem to remember there was once a pirate radio station based on a ship in the North Sea, and they were shut down. And I don't think even a British court can give anyone the right to defend themselves from the British government!

Allegedly the gyroscopic effect of disks in early Nimrod anti-submarine/SAR planes made a noticeable difference to their handling.

What is 25 tons, has tank tracks, armor plating and a vicious streak a mile wide? the ultimate SUV of course!

Yeah... it was outside out the territorial waters, however the platform actually belong to the British Ministry Of Defence, so it was property of the British Government... and they could argue that it still is, since they have never formally relinquished sovereignty.

Just because somebody came along and said "I declare this independent" is not enough, try doing that in the middle of WestMinster, you wont be acknowledged by many people.

Of course, this is all arbitrary anyway, they could just pressure the ISP to stop providing the land microwave/satellite/radio/fibre link.

If they really wanted to go to town, they could prevent HeavenCo from trading anywhere in the western world if they proved they're an accessory to organised crime, copyright infringement etc. Let's admit it, there's no other reason why HeavenCo exists, the free speech argument seems pretty fickle, since you would be protected in the US or any half decent country anyway.

I think the owners of HeavenCo live in the US, the government could also pressure them for running illicit businesses.

At the moment, nobody appears to be bothered to Sealand, however I'm sure many governments are looking into how do deal with this 'problem' behind the scenes, at a recent G8 summit last year there was an item on the agenda on how to tackle international 'data heavens'.

I'm sure the NSA guys at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire (England) are very interested in HeavenCo's com links, what's the point of having a data heaven if all the information is being also feed straight into an intelligence agency? Fair enough they're using an encrypted link, however I wouldn't like to pit a puny 256K link against the powers that be, whatever strength of crypto being used.

The agencies would actually be pleased about this because they know the data going over the line has a good chance of being illicit, however say the same data was travelling over a standard US-UK backbone, it would basically be undetectable on the public net because of the sheer amount of traffic.

Infact just by using the HeavenCo service you're slapping a massive "look at me" label on your back... and as the crypto article pointed out yesterday, criminals just want to blend into the crowd, having your data pass through to an offshore server really makes you stand out from the either.

I wonder how HeavenCo processes its money? If money is basically being laundered into your account from some dodgy business outfit, that also raises some eyebrows.

Well, good luck to them, but I really don't fancy their chances, stuff like this has been around for years, however none of them have managed to escape the grasp of government control. And with SeaLand just being a stones throw off the English coast, I really don't like their chances.