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| A US official identified as Michael Furlong organized a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan with the purpose of finding and killing suspected Islamic militants, The New York Times reported Monday. |
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| Harding's intelligence background is significant because the administration has stepped up its counterterrorism efforts since the attempted airplane bombing on Christmas Day |
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| Defense juggernaut KBR Inc. was awarded a contract potentially worth $2.8 billion for support work in Iraq as U.S. forces continue to leave the country, military authorities said Tuesday |
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| Russia is pondering new applications for yet-to-be-built nuclear-powered spacecraft, including military satellites, nuclear power plants, and space tugs, Energia space corporation said Wednesday. |
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| It predicted that the new wave in social media could eventually lead to big rises in home insurance premiums. |
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| Israel's air force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and could fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting rival Iran within its range. |
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| The homemade IED is the extremists’ deadliest weapon and America is spending billions on trying to combat it. We are granted access to this secret, smart and bizarre world |
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| The military commonly enlists science in its efforts. But when science is humanity, the relationship gets a little stickier. |
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| As the Defense Budget Soars, Billions of Dollars are Channelled Offshore to Avoid Paying Taxes |
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| Once is an anomaly; twice is the beginning of a pattern. Right now, we’re seeing the same sequence of events for the second time in less than a decade, and it looks like the signature American way of war in our time is coming into focus. |
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| The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch. |
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| About $56 billion goes simply to “classified programs,” or to projects known only by their code names, like “Chalk Eagle” and “Link Plumeria.” That’s the Pentagon’s black budget. |
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| The Pentagon will no longer shape the U.S. military to fight two major conventional wars at once, but rather prepare for numerous conflicts and not all in the same style, according to a draft of a new strategic outlook the Pentagon is announcing on Monday. |
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| Setting up foreign subsidiaries allows American defense contractors not only to utilize cheaper labor and more favorable regulations, but also avoid paying taxes that fund key government safety net programs |
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| The pattern that has emerged is that of the U.S. shifting larger concentrations of troops from post-World War II bases in Europe and Japan to smaller, more dispersed forward basing locations south and east of Europe and progressively closer to Russia, Iran and China. |
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| In the years ahead, unmanned machines will increasingly fight our wars. |
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The military’s Joint Contracting Command-Iraq/Afghanistan on Sunday handed out a one year, $11.3 million, no-bid contract to Blackbird Technologies Inc., declaring that the firm was “the only contractor that can currently provide the subject matter expertise needed” for personnel rescue operations. |
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| US corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary fund are using the crisis in Haiti to make a profit, promote unpopular neoliberal policies, and extend military and economic control over the Haitian people. |
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| As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernment agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts. |
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The head of Blackwater and his employees may have killed or ordered the killing of people suspected of cooperating with federal investigators probing their activities, according to an anonymous affidavit filed in federal court Monday. |
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| Geneva-based charity Medecins Sans Frontieres backed his calls saying hundreds of lives were being put at risk as planes carrying vital medical supplies were being turned away by American air traffic controllers. |
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| The operation, Total Intelligence Solutions, has assembled a roster of former spooks -- high-ranking figures from agencies such as the CIA and defense intelligence -- that mirrors the slate of former military officials who run Blackwater. Its chairman is Cofer Black, the former head of counterterrorism at CIA known for his leading role in many of the agency's more controversial programs, including the rendition and interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects and the detention of some of them in secret prisons overseas. |
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| The United States attorney in Manhattan is merging the two units in his office that prosecute terrorism and international narcotics cases, saying that he wants to focus more on extremist Islamic groups whose members he believes are increasingly turning to the drug trade to finance their activities. |
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| Haiti has a longstanding history of US military intervention and occupation going back to the beginning of the 20th Century. US interventionism has contributed to the destruction of Haiti's national economy and the impoverishment of its population. |
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| The U.S. military is mobilizing thousands of soldiers, sailors and Marines along with members of the Air Force and Coast Guard for relief efforts in Haiti. Here are the main military components announced so far: |
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| Erik Prince, the founder and owner of the now infamous US corporation, Blackwater, hails from Holland, Michigan where his family was both powerful and prominent in two institutions – (1) the Republican Party and (2) the evangelical Christian Church. After scandals hit his large and lucrative firm, Prince ordered a curious rebranding that changed its name to Xe. |
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| The Army has informed Congress that it is terminating a robotic vehicle and an unmanned aircraft program that were once part of the Army’s largest modernization effort. |
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| Christmas Day false flag means big payoff for US mercenary firms |
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| Blackwater Worldwide's legal woes haven't dimmed the company's prospects in Afghanistan, where it's a contender to be a key part of President Barack Obama's strategy for stabilizing the country. |
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| The Air Force Research Laboratory set out in 2008 to build the ultimate assassination robot: a tiny, armed drone for U.S. special forces to employ in terminating “high-value targets.” |
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| Known by their opponents as "digital strip search" machines, the full-body scanners use one of two technologies—millimeter wave sensors or backscatter x-rays—to see through clothing, producing ghostly images of naked passengers. |
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| The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests |
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“Mr. Chertoff should not be allowed to abuse the trust the public has placed in him as a former public servant to privately gain from the sale of full-body scanners under the pretense that the scanners would have detected this particular type of explosive,’’ said Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org, which opposes the use of the scanners. |
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| Six years later, some of the Guardsmen assigned to provide security for Task Force RIO at the plant are dead, dying or suffering from serious health problems--including rashes, perforated septums and lung disease. One of the foremost experts in sodium dichromate, Dr. Herman Gibb, says the Guardsmen's symptoms are consistent with "significant exposure" to the chemical. |
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| Sure, the gear may look like it came straight out of Avatar or Battlestar Galactica. But all of the laser weapons, robots, sonic blasters and puke rays pictured here are real. |
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| With self-detonating grenades, thinking bullets and robot warriors, humans on the frontline could soon be a thing of the past. |
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| Most of the leading buyers of American military hardware in 2008 had two characteristics in common: they speak Arabic and their governments are opposed to democracy and basic freedoms. |
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| The U.S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend for the health, education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans. |
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President Obama has issued an amendment to Executive Order 12425, designating the international law enforcement agency Interpol as a “public international organization,” thus extending diplomatic immunity to the law enforcement group |
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| High fructose corn syrup is in nearly everything Americans eat, from fruit juices to bread to ketchup. It's cheap, but is such cheap sweetness worth it in the long run, when it may actually be killing us? |
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Tapping into drones’ video feeds was just the start. The U.S. military’s primary system for bringing overhead surveillance down to soldiers and Marines on the ground is also vulnerable to electronic interception, multiple military sources tell Danger Room. |
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| Private security contractors in Afghanistan are being accused of paying protection money to warlords and the Taliban along convoy routes, prompting an investigation by a House oversight committee. |
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| As President Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan unfolds, the number of contractors will likely jump by between 16,000 and 56,000, adding up to a total of 120,000-160,000, according to an updated study from the Congressional Research Service. |
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| India successfully tested a nuclear-capable ballistic missile from a ship near the east coast on Sunday, a defence official said. |
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| U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Monday took delivery of its first Predator aircraft drone to scan U.S. waters for smugglers. |
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| The U.S. Homeland Security Department has announced that it will release harmless gases and dye tracers into Boston's subway system next week to study the circulation of airborne contaminants through public transit networks in the event of a biological or chemical attack. |
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| Who needs anonymous sources when the government is perfectly capable of leaking its own secrets? |
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| If human activities could change climate, why not change it on purpose, to suit us better? From 1945 into the 1970s, much effort went into studies of weather modification. American entrepreneurs tried cloud-seeding to enhance local rainfall, Russian scientists offered fabulous schemes of planetary engineering, and military agencies secretly explored “climatological warfare.” |
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Military’s mad-science arm Darpa has awarded $9.9 million to the Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studies (TIPS), to develop treatments that can extend a “golden period” when injured war fighters have the best chance of coming back from massive blood loss. |
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| Todays soldier is enhanced by human controlled robots. Tommorows soldier will be a soldier cyborg, a cybernetic organism enhanced by everything technology has to offer. The future of combat holds even greater prospects for autonomous robots that kill at their own discretion. |
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| Russia is building arms plants in Venezuela to produce AK-103 automatic rifles and cartridges and is finalizing contracts to send 53 military helicopters to the Andean nation, Moscow's envoy to Venezuela said Monday |
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| The supposed payload was a more than $500 million satellite outfitted with an optical camera and telescope to supply imagery to the Japanese government for intelligence, defense and civilian remote sensing applications. The spacecraft will become the fifth operational member of Japan's spy satellite fleet. |
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The problem: The US Army—purveyors of all things camouflage green— thinks that spy planes are too slow to recognize remote battlegrounds. The solution: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles loaded with weaponized spy bots. The side-effect: World War III. |
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| The confirmation of the NSA's role, which began during the development of the software, is a sign of the agency's deepening involvement with the private sector when it comes to building defenses against cyberattacks. |
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| The criminal activities of the firm first came under scrutiny after a group of the firm’s members who were tasked to guard US diplomats in Iraq opened fire on civilians in Baghdad on September 2007, killing 17 people. |
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| Defense contractor KBR may have exposed as many as 100,000 people, including US troops, to cancer-causing toxins by burning waste in open-air pits in Iraq, says a series of class-action lawsuits filed against the company. |
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| The U.S. Senate approved the $65 billion 2010 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill Nov. 5 by a vote of 71 to 28. The spending package, which includes $18.7 billion for NASA for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, must now be reconciled with companion legislation that passed the House in June. |
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| China, which hopes to put a man on the moon by 2020, has long stated that it supported the peaceful uses of outer space and opposed the introduction of weapons there. |
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| As the pilots of Northwest flight 188 overshot their airport and streaked across the sky, controllers in Denver and Minneapolis tried repeatedly to reach the plane. They attempted for an hour and 18 minutes to make contact, calling the airline and other pilots for help. |
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| The FBI is still not reviewing reams of evidence collected in counterterrorism cases, and has fewer translators than it did a few years ago, an internal government watchdog said Monday. |
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| In a report released to the US Congress recently, analysts assessed what they termed “preparedness tests” between the US military and government agencies at the federal, state and local levels. |
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| The deadly trade in cluster bombs is funded by the world's biggest banks who have loaned or arranged finance worth $20bn (£12.5bn) to firms producing the controversial weapons, despite growing international efforts to ban them. |
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| China's military sought to assure the United States on Monday that its arms buildup was not a threat and said Beijing wanted to expand cooperation with the Pentagon to reduce the risk of future conflicts. |
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| "In 1993, we said that military conflicts have been ruled out, but life has shown this is not the case," AFP quoted Patrushev, as saying on Thursday. |
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| According to sources, the company has arms deals with Blackwater and is importing heavy arms and ammunition for the US company for its ongoing illicit operations in Pakistan. |
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| The Navy’s new recruiting slogan, “America’s Navy: A global force for good,” was designed from the outset to motivate existing sailors as much as to entice young people to enlist. |
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| A top American scientist who once worked for the Pentagon and the US space agency NASA was arrested Monday and charged with attempted spying for Israel, the Department of Justice said. |
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| Peace activists and concerned citizens from the surrounding area and up and down the East Coast quickly formed a campaign dubbed “Shut Down the AEC” (shutdowntheaec.net). Through a series of nonviolent protests and demonstrations, some of them involving arrests, protesters raised concerns and generated a flood of negative media attention for the Army’s latest recruitment tool. |
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| The Israeli navy will shortly begin deploying unmanned craft along the Mediterranean coast, particularly off the Hamas-held Gaza Strip in the south and Lebanon in the north where Hezbollah guerrillas operate. |
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| The next world war could take place in cyberspace, the UN telecommunications agency chief warned Tuesday as experts called for action to stamp out cyber attacks. |
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| The bill includes $128.2 billion in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and bars President Obama from transferring any of the suspects at Guantanamo Bay to the US for trials. |
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| The role of the Interior Ministry in the issuance of prohibited bore licenses to American security company DynCorp local partner Inter-Risk |
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| Hired security guards descend upon city in phony patrol cars |
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| U.S. military troops will begin getting required swine flu shots in the next week to 10 days, with active duty forces deploying to war zones and other critical areas going to the front of the vaccine line, a top military commander said Tuesday. |
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| One of the most alarming side effects of the federal government's war on drugs is the militarization of law enforcement in America. |
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In preparation for the distinct possibility of a mandatory vaccination of the American public, a county in Minnesota will hold a mass vaccination drill today dubbed “Operation Big Shot.” County officials expect “300 volunteers to conduct the drill alongside about 200 health department staff members. They emphasized that staffers will not dispense actual vaccinations,” according to The Star Tribune. |
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| The pair was launched aboard a Delta 2 rocket on Friday morning as part of the Space Tracking and Surveillance System demonstration for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. |
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| Governor David Paterson announced today that the New York Army National Guard is providing five helicopters to support the G20 Summit being held being held Thursday and Friday in Pittsburgh. |
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| Although so-called non-lethal weapons (NLWs) have been around for decades and range from CS gas to pepper spray and from the low-tech water cannon to the Taser, their use by military and police agencies world-wide are designed to ensure compliance from hostile "natives." |
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| A University of Chicago molecular genetics professor studying the origins of harmful bacteria died last weekend after contracting an infection linked to the plague, officials said today. |
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| “Did this really happen in America?” Asked in the Hurricane Katrina chronicle “Zeitoun,” by the wife of the man whose harrowing storm odyssey is the heart of the book, the question hangs over the story like a cloud. Answering it is the mission of this worthy addition to our understanding of the 2005 disaster. |
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