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I guess you're talking about this:
  http://www.nationaldefensemaga...
The article dates back to 2000, and I haven't heard about it since. I wonder if it was vaporware... Have you seen anything more recent?

I take it you're joking, right? Electric subs are actually a problem for the US navy because they're quiet. http://www.nationaldefensemaga...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Not me, but my thesis adviser became the Technical Director for JSIMS, which ran through +/- $1B before the pentagon pulled the plug. He is not shy about mentioning that fact.

http://www.nationaldefensemaga...

Yeah, OK, I can agree that thorium is probably the way to go for standing reactors. But not for transportation needs. We are gonna need fuels for cars, planes, trucks, and trains. Running 1000 mile extension cords is PROBABLY not the way to go here .

What I'm hoping for is some form of pulse-charging track built into roadways, so that electric vehicles could maintain charge while traveling and even arrive at their destinations with a surplus of energy.

But when it comes to practical transportation liquid fuel reigns supreme today. Ammonia has been proposed as an alternative for vehicle fuel, though it has its problems, such as being only half the energy density of gasoline. And it would be stinky and hazardous in a new way. But it does provide liquid fuel while taking carbon out of the equation altogether. Elemental hydrogen is really dangerous but some form of solid encapsulation to ensure its slow release would help.

Barring some Jetsons miracle invention, I think the eventual winner for cars and airplanes as oil and gas runs out might be the very same gasoline and jet fuel. All you would need is an economical and massive source of heat or neutrons to separate hydrogen from water, to be bound with carbon to make our own 'fossil' fuel, as nature does. If you sequester that carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere you at least achieve break-even what it burns.

But that sequestration process to extract carbon from the thin atmospheric ~0.04% carbon dioxide would itself be a massive endeavor requiring additional energy. Would you run this Dr. Seuss Carbon-Gallomper with its giant sucking mechanical lungs for an hour to get a lump of carbon... or when no one is looking, feed trees and grass into it and get a dozen lumps a minute? Or sneak into a coal mine for a hundred? In the end the best way is to electrify transportation to the greatest extent possible, and pursue a sequestration strategy that operates independently of the fuel producers --- making use of plants and farmed algae as well as direct feats of applied chemical engineering.

Some calculations showing actual energy/thermal output of some ~2.5Gwt for a year from tonne of Thorium. This is an amazing, unprecedented amount of carbon-neutral energy for a fuel source that is present on every continent, and can be mined with a very small footprint.

We deserve the chance to discover what we could accomplish with such a win-win energy source. So many environmental 'solutions' come down to (you first) conservation or outright malicious sabotage of modern lifestyle. I want no fewer options for my own children than I have, and a whole lot more.

Got to go work on the blueprints for the Dr. Seuss Carbon-Gallomper. Because there really ought to be such a thing.

___
"Oh dear! We're late!" Down the nuclear rabbit hole we go.

The article mentions the military obliquely in the snappy opening patter ("Seeing the infrared spectrum has a number of applications that go beyond the nighttime war games glamorized in adventure flicks").

The only other mention (besides the picture) is near the end: "commando units wouldn’t be the only ones to wear souped up POV computers or contact lenses". I imagine commando units would quite like to have simple, portable mid-IR gear. Militaries seem to like sticking FLIR pods on everything they can. Yup turns out they would.

I'm not an expert, but I believe most military night vision uses primarily amplified ambient light with the option to use IR floodlights if needed. Shining big IR spotlights around is probably not much better than shining big regular spotlights around now that everyone has IR cameras. I'm sure the journalist just looked up a cool stock photo of night vision goggles.

Considering drones should be susceptible to conventional means of destruction (read: bullets, missiles), I was wondering why bother with directed energy weapons? The answer appears to be (1) discretion (because a drone dropping out of the sky is totally not attention-grabbing) (2) the ability to shoot through walls (okay, that's pretty cool), and (3) lower "cost per kill."

I like your plan. It is clear, concise and ends with the Sack of Rome, as all good plans should.

Small nuc plants
As many vehicles as possible running on batteries
Nuc supplied electricity to charge

These two items would be the biggest game changer. I do hope though that we will have a choice, whether to invite small nuclear into our own backyard (I certainly would being a survivalist) ... or, through the grid purchase a bit of big nuke energy a good ways from someone who has a big nuke in their backyard. As shown by the Dakotas' boost in median income as the rest of us hold the line or sink, oil/energy is a path to wealth creation, one of the only now that so much manufacturing and exports have gone. All it would take are a few states of the Union to go full nuclear. My own state of Oklahoma could literally light the country coast to coast with big nuclear and HVDC conduits to render it into properly synchronized AC on the interconnects. So far I have received the standard goose egg response to this idea.

Remaining Petrochemical stocks to produce plastics and provide machinery lubrication.

Don't forget fertilizer and energy for irrigation and farming, the two greatest Achilles' heels of modern life. Here is where a larger scale nuclear approach really could help, for the amount of process heat required to knock hydrogen from water and sequester nitrogen from the air to make ammonia could not easily be accomplished by the small nuke in your backyard. Which brings us finally to

Large scale effort to produce a fuel with high energy density and transportability to replace petrofuel in military uses like jets and planes. Our world is built on cheap accessible energy. Without it we will run the industrial revolution and civilization in reverse, and only stop when we once again party with the Visigoths.

I wish I could say that ammonia was the grail but it isn't really. My current angle is hydrogen knocked from water by nuclear energy (via heat and/or direct radiation) for transportation, but elemental hydrogen is really dangerous. We'll either deal with it (boom!) or find some way to stabilize it.

Your party hearty plan had me thinking of a barbarian horde arriving in... electric Goth carts.

The cloud - Computing's version of the housing bubble.

The Cloud Is My Master. I've been chosen.

You think defense doesn't get outsourced? Apparently the MIC doesn't think like you do. According to almost everyone in the industry, outsourcing in defense is common, increasing and the scope is widening over the whole range -- from design to manufacturing. http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2011/January/Pages/OutsourcingUSDefenseNationalSecurityImplications.aspx http://www.defencetalk.com/outsourcing-services-helps-defense-aerospace-reduce-costs-27510/

Instead of cutting where its needed (gross government pay and military), they cut everything else instead.

The problem with the Federal budget isn't military spending. Yes defense can be cut, but it's already the one budget item which has been cut the most in the last 50 years. Right now, our annual budget deficit exceeds the defense budget, so we could drop defense spending to zero and we'd still have a budget crisis. And FWIW, defense spending is on the chopping block as well if the Budget Control Act kicks in.

Likewise, the U.S. spends pretty close to the most of any country on public education per student. So our education problems aren't because of lack of funding. The "lack of money" for education is an illusion created by school administrators, either to cover up their own incompetence or to attempt to carve a bigger piece of the budget pie for themselves. Cutting defense and shifting the money to education is just swapping one form of wasteful spending for another.

What needs to be cut are the social programs - primarily Medicare and Medicaid. Social Security was a problem too, but its growth was mitigated with some of the reforms passed some years ago. Don't believe me? Go read the CBO reports. They've been saying this for over a decade now - Medicare and Medicaid projected to grow to consume 100% of tax revenue by 2050-2070 (the doomsday date changes from year to year). The notes on the NPR graph mention the same thing too - that the social programs are the parts of the budget which have grown the most. Unfortunately some people refuse to acknowledge that this is the real problem, and jealously guard these programs against any and all cuts - Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are all exempt from the Budget Control Act's mandatory budget cuts. And instead insist that everything can be fixed by cutting defense when simple math ($budget_deficit > $defense_budget) says it can't.

Don't trust what I tell you, don't trust what your friends in your political circles tell you. Read the CBO reports and decide for yourself. They're very enlightening.

I guess "cloud" at this point means, "Running your programs on a computer with a network connection."

Of course performance may fluctuate with the net. But volunteers may help to smooth things out and perform other tasks such as backups, like the folks at Mitmbs. (Man in the middle buffer service) Just think of the possibilities!

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=249

From National Defense Magazine: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=249#

"If China telecom intercepts that [encrypted message] and they are sitting on the middle of that, they can send you their public key with their public certificate and you will not know any better," he said. The holder of this certificate has the capability to decrypt encrypted communication links, whether it's web traffic, emails or instant messaging, Alperovitch said. "It is a flaw in the way the Internet operates," said Yoris Evers, director of worldwide public relations at McAfee.

What makes this really annoying is that a lot of .mil sites use self-signed certificates. When doing mil-2-mil browsing, you just get used to clicking whatever to get into the site. So, I can easily see how China could do a MITM without alarming any of the end users.

The US military wants robots. More robots. Robots that kill. Now.

Read Failure To Field The Right Robots Costs Lives, General Says. Lt. General Rick Lynch, commander of the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Corps, wants autonomous killbots. His corps lost 155 soldiers in Iraq, and he claims that 80% of them would have been saved if the right kind of robots were deployed. On watching "hotspots" for enemy activity: "Robots can take the soldiers' places. They can continuously keep watch on an area, and if nefarious activity is spotted, we can take appropriate action. ... We can kill those bastards before they plant the IEDs"

This is a combat general in charge of a major Army command making it happen.

"There's a resistance saying that armed ground robots are not ready for the battlefield. I'm not of that camp," he told National Defense. That includes the robot autonomously firing the weapon or, in other words, shooting without a human in the decision loop, he said. SWORDS never had that feature, and the idea of armed autonomous robots firing guns on the battlefield remains controversial. But Lynch was steadfast. "I believe we can do automatic target recognition ... to allow that capability. Autonomously," he repeated.

I actually used David Brin's quote in the article summary. Oops.

"David Brin, keeping on the topic of empowering citizens with mobile phone technology, delivered a self-described 'rant' on the lack of funds being spent to support citizen reservists to back up the military, homeland security officials and first responders in times of crisis. 'It is impossible for you to succeed without us!' he shouted at the assembled officials, while banging his fist on the table and at one point jumping off his chair to wave a mobile phone in their faces."

The original link from National Defense Magazine is dead, but you can see the comment thread on Schneier's blog here. Schneier's entire entry was just a link saying "This is embarrassing."

It's called spending money wisely.

Do you really need $2 billion stealth bomber to bomb people without radar? Or a $138 million stealth fighter (F-22) who's main design was air superiority against Soviet fighters and bombers, but now ill be relegated to dropping bombs and bouncing rocks?

Hell, there's weapon systems that even military doesn't even want! The Seawolf was built for jobs! The AH-66 Comanche lasted 22 years before being canceled. It's mission role was changed at least twice, and we got nothing.

Do we need to purchase all new precision guided weapons when we already have large stockpiles of "dumb" weapons?

It's called the Military Industrial Complex, and who warned us about that? Lefty-commie-peacenik Eisenhower. And Heaven forbid if the government actually spend it's money wisely.

This month's issue of National Defense Magazine lists some 'hits' and 'misses' in defense technology. 'Gun-toting robots' are judged a 'miss'. I've also sat and listened to Colonels and Generals unambiguously declare that they do not want armed robots. They think it's a bad idea tactically, logistically, legally, and morally.

So if the commanders don't want them, and industry thinks they're a bust, why are these researchers pushing the technology?

I met a RSO once. He laughed and joked about stuff like anyone else. There are jobs that are hardcore, and I imagine they put very trustworthy, career path people in those jobs. If you do a good job in sensitive positions for a lot of years, say on a nuke sub or in a missile silo, or you are a pilot and flew a lot of nuke missions, you're kind of a good fit for jobs like this. Not necessarily balls of steel, just proven capable of doing the right thing at the right time without really breaking a sweat.

Mistakes happen :

Global Hawk Destroyed

Now, for the first time -- the first time in any war zone -- the 'bots are carrying guns.

The three robots, which tote M249 rifles and are remotely controlled by a soldier through a terminal ...

Because with the current accident rate of unmanned airplanes all airlines of the world would be wiped out within months

A target accident rate of 1 crash per 2.000 flight hours like for the predator drone would mean an airplane in commercial operation has less than 6 months to live.

Folks, the safety level of unmanned aircrafts is still a few magnitudes from the current airline safety level and it will cost lots of money to get them anywhere near the level required to transport people.

Of course the corporations and their engineers who would love to get that money will tell you whatever you like to hear (and the fear of terrorists hijacking a plane seems to be much bigger than the fear of a planecrash due to a system malfunction).

Here is an interesting question.

In a fight between 1 F-22 and 2 EuroFighters, who would prevail? If the F-22 prevails, then the F-22 is an excellent investment.

However, the United States Air Force has never claimed that 1 F-22 can beat 2 EuroFighters. I suspect that the 2 EuroFighters would reduce the 1 F-22 into a pile of smoking rubble.

it looks like the drone technology is actually pretty good, at least with military spy aircraft.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2003 /May/Pentagon_Unhappy.htm

KFG

Common guys, "mysterious" force fields? if ed's had bothered to google the facts there wouldn't be a need for this post(same for that ABL article- currently neutered as a tech demonstrator).

Wired, aug/2002
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54641, 00.html

SecDef's Force Transformation
http://www.oft.osd.mil/

more info on Trophy(Rafael)
http://www.defense-update.com/products/t/trophy.ht m

similar effort using AESA(Raytheon's Quick Kill)
http://www.edefenseonline.com/default.asp?func=art icle&aref=02_14_2006_OM

info on AESA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Electronically _Scanned_Array

the need for such a system(fuel cost IS a factor but it's a fixed cost. See fob.gov
SP0600-06-R-0033 for example):
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2004 /Dec/SurvivalInCombat.htm

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned this system used by Carnival cruise lines:
http://www.atcsd.com/lrad.html
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techinnovations/ 2005-11-07-cruise-blast_x.htm

"mysterious" force fields? LOL. I'm moving my slashdot bookmark next to collegehumor and dumpalink.

I actually recall a news article (with a picture) talking about how Special Forces in Afghanistan were using pack mules to schlep around their gear, since they couldn't get jeeps up into the mountains.

http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/issues/2002 /Feb/Special_Ops_Equipment.htm

That article is from 2002 (first page of google), but I know the article I saw was from 2005.

The U.S. Navy is claiming it'll have operational railguns around the end of the decade that could easily hit this (200 km. horizontal range)...not that anyone else will have any anytime soon.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2002/02/07/tech- military.htm tells the first part (or may be the first and the second) of the story: The army started its own proprietary development, employing several contractors to design completly new system (of hardware and software, not only a software operating system). The development proved to be expensive and inefficient, not leading to anything usable---they got it reviewed, learned the lesson and changed their approach. They adopted and adapted mostly commertially available off the shelf parts, including the Windows operating system. Then they moved forward, up to actual tests of usable equipment.

The next part is told at http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/article.cfm ?Id=1238 The new design, including Windows, failed its test. The army again learned its lesson, the whole system was redesigned, and Linux adopted for its operating system.

The army did not take Linux out of sheer stupidity, not knowing other alternatives---the army took Linux after serious considerations of its rich and expensive experience with several other alternatives.

Mr. O'Dowd speaks of Linux being worse than Windows, and Windows being almost as bad as Linux. Looks like his Green Hills Software was part of the firs expensive exprience of the army, first losing its contracts to Windows, and then to Linux.

moreover the US Army understood and officialy adopts more and more free software (read "Evidence shows that Linux is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to Linux-based OS" in an article about the future land warrior (already referenced in a /. comment)

How about this time in particular?

• Balistic Missile Defense: (Second link - look above in section 2.6 as well)
• And mount it in one of these

The US military is working on VTOL UAVs such as Northrop Grumman's Fire Scout (e.g., for use by the Coast Guard) and Raytheon is building a Tactical Control System that allows one human operator to control multiple UAVs. Many other people also make VTOL UAVs, increasingly focusing on autonomous operations. (Nowadays it takes more than one operator to control a single UAV -- it would be nice to reverse that ratio in the future.) So I wonder what makes this Israeli drone so unique?

"The Fire Scout system, a vertical takeoff and landing tactical UAV, is in low-rate initial production for the U.S. Navy by [Northrop Grumman's] Integrated Systems sector. Fire Scout will fly at an altitude of up to 20,000 feet, and use an advanced payload with an electro-optical/ infrared sensor and a laser designator to survey littoral regions with pinpoint accuracy, giving military decision-makers the most current information about enemy resources and personnel on the ground. Fire Scout is a fully autonomous targeting and surveillance system that can fly almost silently above deployed Marines to watch for hidden enemies within 100 nautical miles."

"[Raytheon's] TCS, which allows the simultaneous control of multiple UAVs and their payloads from the same control station, was conceived as a joint-service program but never was adopted by the Air Force or the Army. The program is likely to survive, however, as a Navy-only system that eventually could be modified to accommodate UAVs from additional services, experts said."

The US military is working on VTOL UAVs such as Northrop Grumman's Fire Scout (e.g., for use by the Coast Guard) and Raytheon is building a Tactical Control System that allows one human operator to control multiple UAVs. Many other people also make VTOL UAVs, increasingly focusing on autonomous operations. (Nowadays it takes more than one operator to control a single UAV -- it would be nice to reverse that ratio in the future.) So I wonder what makes this Israeli drone so unique?

"The Fire Scout system, a vertical takeoff and landing tactical UAV, is in low-rate initial production for the U.S. Navy by [Northrop Grumman's] Integrated Systems sector. Fire Scout will fly at an altitude of up to 20,000 feet, and use an advanced payload with an electro-optical/ infrared sensor and a laser designator to survey littoral regions with pinpoint accuracy, giving military decision-makers the most current information about enemy resources and personnel on the ground. Fire Scout is a fully autonomous targeting and surveillance system that can fly almost silently above deployed Marines to watch for hidden enemies within 100 nautical miles."

"[Raytheon's] TCS, which allows the simultaneous control of multiple UAVs and their payloads from the same control station, was conceived as a joint-service program but never was adopted by the Air Force or the Army. The program is likely to survive, however, as a Navy-only system that eventually could be modified to accommodate UAVs from additional services, experts said."

Unlikely in theory, and in practice, nobody's got any bioweapons that vaccines and quarantine can't stop.

The U.S. doesn't have chemical or biological weapons

If that's the case, what are their chemical weapons incinerators for? Don't blame a conspiracy theory for your own ignorance.

"Instant banana peel" has been around since 1972.

It was used a couple of times in anti-Vietnam war rallies/riots (definitions depend on who you talk to). The rally/riot organizers loathed it -- it turned their nice focused, angry gathering into a party. The stuff is fun.