G.I.s in Iraq have a new weapon of choice: Iraqi AK-47s. “The soldiers (of the 4th Infantry Dvision) based around Baqouba (Iraq) are from an armor battalion, which means they have tanks, Humvees and armored personnel carriers. But they are short on rifles,” the Associated Press reports. A four-man tank crew is issued two M4 […]
August 2003
“The Army’s new state-of-the art infantry vehicle slated to make its combat debut in Iraq in October is vulnerable to the kind of rocket-propelled grenades now being used by Saddam Hussein’s guerrillas, a consultant’s report charges,” according to the Washington Times. The Army, which rebuts the report’s findings, plans to send 300 Stryker armored vehicles […]
The struggle over Orwellian homeland security measures is highlighted in two fascinating Wired News articles today: * “More and more people are becoming suspicious of radio-frequency identification tags — tiny transmitters that track the whereabouts of products with stunning accuracy. So the food industry is adding biosensors to the tags in a bid to present […]
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are used around the world to fertilize crops, monitor weather, and patrol borders. But here in the U.S., the drones haven’t gotten much of a workout in civilian life. The problem hasn’t been the technology. It’s been the regulations. The Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t want unmanned planes crashing into piloted ones. […]
They came flush with cash, packed with cutting-edge equipment, and were led by the field’s best-known figure — the man who discovered the Titanic. But a high-profile exploration of ancient shipwrecks has ended suddenly, with one of its central goals abandoned. Excitement ran high when Robert Ballard — the legendary underwater explorer who found the […]
